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April 28, 2006

Renkoo “Beeta” Launches

Michael Arrington

50 comments »

Palo Alto based Renkoo, which just raised $3 million in venture financing, is opening its doors this morning to beta testers. They’ll immediately let in the first few hundred requests and then trickle in new users after that (if you don’t see a box to request a beta account, they haven’t switched over to the new site yet). Once you are a member, you can invite others to use the service.

Renkoo, like competitor Skobee, helps people plan events (the pre-evite stage). Want to gather a couple of friends and discuss when and where to have drinks next week? Renkoo is a perfect choice to help you do this. Socializr, Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams’ new startup, is also rumored to be entering this space.

I’ve tested Renkoo off and on during its development cycle, and it’s evolved rapidly. CEO Adam Rifkin gave me another walk through today to see some of the recent feature additions.

To use Renkoo, you set up a new event and invite people. If they are not yet Renkoo users, they will receive an invitation. If they are, they’ll receive a new event notification. Once people start interacting over an event, things get interesting.

Renkoo is an early “Comet” application (allowing real-time two way interactivity in a browser - Google Talk and Meebo are based on underlying Comet technologies). That means the event page updates in real time as your friends give their input. The experience is similar to instant messaging. Users who aren’t logged in see the comment stream once they are.

Renkoo also allows instant messenger, email and sms notifications of events, comments, etc. (all user controlled). Once an event is finalized, it can be exported in icalendar format (for desktop calendars like Outlook and iCal), or Google Calendar format. Support for additional web calendars and microformats is coming soon.

Renkoo was founded by Adam Rifkin, the founder of KnowNow, and Joyce Park, formerly a senior web developer at Friendster and an author of PHP5 and MySQL Bible.

Screen Shots (click for larger view):

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 1:16 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. stefeq

    April 28th, 2006 at 1:31 am

    still not opened

  2. David

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:04 am

    May I get an invite?

  3. blinks

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:45 am

    Looks cool, guess being in college these are all the rage, even the anti-social anti-conformity crowds run around talking about how they sat on the computer all night and critiqued peoples profiles and such. I’m a little amazed http://vobbo.com/ hasn’t had more attention though.

  4. Jesse Andrews

    April 28th, 2006 at 3:09 am

    Been using it for months. As Michael said it has been improving rapidly.

    They rebuilt the mod-pubsub - twisted - python library that is the heart of their “comet” app.

    Between that and dojo, it seems renkoo has not only built a cool app, but have lots of experience in the hottest technology around.

  5. quicksnap3

    April 28th, 2006 at 3:40 am

    Can’t see the register link? Need invite… please

  6. xxdesmus

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:14 am

    It’s still not open, may I get an invite please?

  7. Matt Barker

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:30 am

    Anybody got any invites for this? I’d love to check it out!

    mwbarker at gmail dot com

  8. Jon Beck

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:31 am

    I too would love an Invite if someone has one.

  9. Duc

    April 28th, 2006 at 5:37 am

    Invite please?

    duc _at_ slackaz _dot_ com

  10. Mike

    April 28th, 2006 at 6:13 am

    I’m personally sick of these reviews of beta only sites.

  11. Lynda

    April 28th, 2006 at 6:23 am

    Although it’s frustrating to not be able to test drive beta apps, I’m still glad to see them reviewed. I’m reading this blog to learn about what’s new and cool–not what’s on the shelves at Frys.

  12. Pablo

    April 28th, 2006 at 6:52 am

    Would love an invite!

    pfunk45 __@_ yahoo -dot- com

  13. Ryan

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:25 am

    Could I get an invite?

  14. Ryan

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:26 am

    Sorry forgot to include my email.

    criscokid at gmail dot com

  15. Henrique

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    I want one too! Please.

    h.s.fernandes (at) gmail (dot) com

    Thank you.

  16. Martin

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:48 am

    I wouldn’t mind an invite either…

    hiro AT foobar dot lu

  17. mitch

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:08 am

    If most of these sites waited till they got out of ‘beta’ to do a real launch, they prolly wouldn’t exist.

    sad but true.

  18. Debbie

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:19 am

    looks interesting, invite please :)

    online2much at gmail dot com

  19. Dima

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:19 am

    Onether useless website getting reviewed…. how are they planing to make money.. I bet even they don’t know… Is anybody going to pay for service like this…. hun… no way. So why would someone give them 3 million… because they have money and they want to get rid of them…. are we back into the 90s already??!?!?!?!?!
    Oh, by the way, I think it is very “old” to give your company a name which sounds crazy and hard to memorize. How one suppose to remember Renkoo… and Skobee for that matter?
    Can you guys use some of amount of those $3 mil to get yourself a decent name and domain which can be marketed?
    I bet you will not even going to market it in any way and just hope for word of mouth…. to bad there are b-zillion other companies who are trying/will try to do the same exact thing…. Sorry if I sound bashfull but at least I am sincere….
    Good luck!

  20. Joe Hurd

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:31 am

    #22 Dina — why so harsh? In case you haven’t noticed, the online advertising market is back… if you take some time to use the site (and I hope you do), you’ll quickly see the monetization opportunities. One hint: plan a few events with your friends — real time — and start thinking about the ways one can monetize. The team at Renkoo are all kicka** developers — what they are building is best of breed and pretty cool.

    For all of you that are wondering, a renkoo (actually renku in Japanese) is a poem, like a haiku, that is different in that you write a renku together with your friends — get it?

    Joe

  21. Dima

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:45 am

    Hi Joe,

    I didn’t mean to offend anyone by my comment or have anything bad to say about people running the company and kicka** developers… I was talking about the concept itself and the name choosen for the company. I don’t think that the concept itself can be monetized in current environment where you have tens of companies doing the same thing and doing it for free. Yes, you can rely on advertising market but I can’t be the ONLY revenue stream. Again, this is my personal view and you don’t have to agree with me. I have a bunch of friends and whenever we need to plan something together we do it on through IM since all of us using the same service Yahoo in my case). It is much quicker than setting up the web space and sending invites, etc…

  22. Mario

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:52 am

    Well, Renkoo seems nice and all, but how better it is than Google Calendar’s own events setter and manager?

    Unless it is waaay better, I don’t see how it could suceed.

    By the way, what is the business model?

    Mario.

  23. TheWeb20Dev

    April 28th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    All this VC, not much substance. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeta!

  24. Ted Smith

    April 28th, 2006 at 9:45 am

    Wireless World: Bundled services market ‘makeover’
    A swift makeover in the communications world is under way, as traditional boundaries that once separated wired and wireless services are fast fading away, leading to a creative new era of so-called bundled services, experts tell UPI’s Wireless World.
    This transformation of the communications industry is primarily a result of the rapid combination of new technologies — and the evolving, competitive marketplace. By Gene Koprowski

    http://www.upi.com/Hi-Tech/vie.....0119-6074r

  25. Stephan

    April 28th, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Sko_bee_, Renkoo _bee_ta? Um? Did they happen to hire the same branding firm or what? I know the bay area’s small..but what are the chances? You’d think 3m in funding might buy you some creativity…instead we get a front page that looks like http://feedicons.com. What the hell? Nonetheless this looks a ton better than evite.

  26. Torrance

    April 28th, 2006 at 10:10 am

    “if you take some time to use the site (and I hope you do), you’ll quickly see the monetization opportunities. One hint: plan a few events with your friends — real time — and start thinking about the ways one can monetize.”

    I’m sorry but what exactly does that mean? What does planning multiple events have to do with revenue generation? I see no clear money making opportunities (other than banner ads) on the website. $3 million dollars down the drain!

    Also, I would love to try it out but would like to know what value it will bring me over Evite? Evite has the same features and has, at times, useful ads.

  27. Torrey

    April 28th, 2006 at 11:05 am

    “Sko_bee_, Renkoo _bee_ta? Um? Did they happen to hire the same branding firm or what?”

    Renkoo had a bee as its mascot since its inception in March 2005. Skobee.com wasn’t registered until Sept. 2005.

  28. michael

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    i like it because it’s pink.

  29. Blaze

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

    Im usually not that negative but my eyes glazed over as soon as I saw those screenshots. I mean pink, c’mon. Mario makes a good point.

  30. Brian

    April 28th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

    Invite please? bemick at gmail.com

  31. Mike

    April 29th, 2006 at 4:19 am

    I find this project really interesting, although I don’t know how they plan to earn money…
    I’m sad not beeing abled to test this service, can someone invite me please?
    mrosenwirth at yahoo dot com

  32. Kurt

    April 29th, 2006 at 10:45 am

    invite over here please!

    krising at gmail dot com

  33. Eric

    April 30th, 2006 at 9:02 pm

    I would also appreciate an invite.

    eric at funkfoot dot com

  34. Oliver Tse

    May 1st, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    One of the coolest things about Renkoo is their calendar widget. I think they are using Dojo under the covers, but if you get a chance, check it out. The calendar widget is well executed.

  35. Dylan

    May 1st, 2006 at 4:57 pm

    Oliver, you are right… we contributed our date picker and time picker widgets back to the Dojo Toolkit.

  36. Michele

    June 8th, 2006 at 5:19 pm

    I don’t know if my post will show up that I put in earlier today so here goes again. I would like to check out using Renkoo to organize a memorial set to take place on July 1’st. Do I need to be invited? Will everyone I send invites to have to download beta? I think I am running Internet Explorer beta now. If I need to be invited could someone please invite me asap at mickstranded at hotmail dot com? thanks so much.

  37. Samer Bazzi

    July 10th, 2006 at 9:10 am

    Check out this new web based IM client built using AJAX. Messenger provides access to your favorite IM clients via a browser, messenger services include AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, IRC and many more.

  38. Seo Update

    October 8th, 2006 at 4:21 am

    Does anyone has an invite left? i want to take look at the inside.

  39. Josh

    December 6th, 2006 at 10:11 am

    Check out a site I created that is similar to Renkoo. http://www.setameeting.com.

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