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):
still not opened
May I get an invite?
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.
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.
Can’t see the register link? Need invite… please
It’s still not open, may I get an invite please?
Anybody got any invites for this? I’d love to check it out!
mwbarker at gmail dot com
I too would love an Invite if someone has one.
Invite please?
duc _at_ slackaz _dot_ com
I’m personally sick of these reviews of beta only sites.
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.
Would love an invite!
pfunk45 __@_ yahoo -dot- com
Could I get an invite?
Sorry forgot to include my email.
criscokid at gmail dot com
I want one too! Please.
h.s.fernandes (at) gmail (dot) com
Thank you.
I wouldn’t mind an invite either…
hiro AT foobar dot lu
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.
looks interesting, invite please
online2much at gmail dot com
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!
#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
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…
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.
All this VC, not much substance. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeta!
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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.
“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.
“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.
i like it because it’s pink.
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.
Invite please? bemick at gmail.com
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
invite over here please!
krising at gmail dot com
I would also appreciate an invite.
eric at funkfoot dot com
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.
Oliver, you are right… we contributed our date picker and time picker widgets back to the Dojo Toolkit.
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.
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Does anyone has an invite left? i want to take look at the inside.
Check out a site I created that is similar to Renkoo. http://www.setameeting.com.