After Meetup and recently reviewed Renkoo, France based CityCita is bringing up together a new service that help groups create group events in a smart way with a nice series of features. CEO Jamin Rubio mentionned they are about to launch the service in private beta next Monday and the services will be aimed at the US market first although anyone will be able to register the service.
The interesting approach of CityCita is that is it truely group/topic based and geo-localized. You first need to register to start or join a new group which will eventually be accessible through a permanent URL (for example http://techcrunch.citycita.com). In order to do that you need to create a group, meaning any defining of choosing a tag (coca cola, jazz, web2.0, elvisfans,…) as well as a localization (a country and a city that are pre-defined). You can either leave that group for people to join or have limited access on based on an access code. As a visitor you can easily join a group by picking up first your interest through a tag cloud or a search and also find the closest group to your place of living. And if it does not exist then you are free to create one.
Once your group is set up you can start doing all kind of things with CityCita starting by creating events. They integrated APIs of Google and Yahoo maps for you to be able to define precisely the venue of that event and share it with the rest of the group. You will be able also to feed your group with all kinds of elements like pictures (API of flickr is integrated) todo list, hosted shared items (any digital documents). You can virtually manage of all aspects of a given group and the list of features if quite complete (change layout, group name, nominate assistants, de-activate members, step down as organizer and nominate volunteers). An interesting feature is the “Spread the word” where you can find all kinds of tools to create buzz on your group on and offline for example with easy-to-build flyers. For a better view and screenshots click here
The main difference with meetup is that it is really topic oriented meaning that you can really define your interest and not choose among a directory of pre-defined center of interests leaving room for any kind of specific group and passions. Unlike Renkoo the set of features around group management is much wider although the actual event organizing features seems to be more sophisticated in Renkoo. In a word CityCita is a fusion of Meetup/Renkoo with Yahoo Groups.
Like Meetup, CityCita is free and ad-supported if you wish to create one group and will become premium (from 9 to 25$/months) for organizers if you wish to create more than one group. In premium accounts you will get a series of extra features like billing mechanism (think party fees, conferences,..), hosting,…
Globally CityCita is well designed and well thought, it will be helpful to anyone wishing to manage a group of users and create event related to it even if it takes a little while to digest all the options to get into it.
CicyCita just closed a first seed round with seasoned internet professionals (one of them is heading one of the hottest radio station in France) and they put together a team of talented professionals. However reaching critical size will be their challenge and they will have to find the right marketing channels to make it big. Social management/organization is clearly a hot topic where startup and the big guys (Yahoo are half way with Yahoo Groups there and MySpace could easily plug an add-on) are getting into. Meetup is leading the way with (only) 2 million members and there is still a long way to go. So let’s follow up to see how this is all progressing.
If you wish to beta-test CityCita you can leave you email address here. For larger screenshots click here.
Fun! *Signs up for beta test.
This would be huge if they incorporated geo-locating with cellphones also. Then you could see who in the group is close by.
We have had local group service for months. Every member signs up in their city and all posts are aggregated by city with many more features and custom advantages. Check it out onmycity.com
Looks like someone got some inspiration from 37signals
These sites as poping up faster than my ability to sign up.
This is exactly the space we’re trying to enter with a project I’m part of for the University of Michigan, liveUgli.com. Like Saul suggests, we are working on using wifi/cell signals for location around campus (a campus being a convenient playground for this kind of thing).
Naturally, it would be great to use something like Google Cal/CityCita as a backend, but they just are not made for this kind of large institutional use. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a large city get behind one of these services? So if you were traveling somewhere there would be a single definitive place to look up what was going on there, with all the sharing/RSS etc.. benefits of a G-cal. Essentially, if G-cal could allow creation of a network of calendars/groups, not just individual calendars. This is the level of aggregation we’re working towards, anyways. I think we’re on the verge of some cool stuff, especially if the APIs add just a bit more.
Congratulations !
Wow. What a total rip of Basecamp. Let’s hope their workflows are more original.
/me goes to signup for beta
Plugging in locaiton-based cellphone data will be truly useful, as Saul has suggested. The free and premium accounts is perfect to ensure monetization beyond just ads.
Dan – take a look at my pet project, BlockRocker.com. BR aggregates Eventful and Upcoming.org over Google Maps, and starts you off in your ballpark with IP localization. And, anyone can post anything to the site, of course. There’s also tagging (anyone can tag anything), but I’m still working on the tagcloud-esque interface.
“Wow. What a total rip of Basecamp. Let’s hope their workflows are more original.”
That’s the first thing I noticed. They completely ripped the basecamp / backpackit layout.
I agree with Saul. A mobile integration of geolocalization feature would be a killer feature. As for the layout it indeeds look very familiar and inspired by the basecamp. CityCita might want to build on the identity of their service a bit more although this is not critical.
Outside the US, cellphones are life. This service needs to be mobiel…period.
Basecamp is the simplest and fastest of them all.
I have one small question. If anybody can help, do email me or just post it here.
Is there a Web Group service in Web 2.0 style that does have features and is AJAXy.
I’ve tried Yahoo!, MSN, Google Groups, all of them are too lame. I need the group for social networking with friends who aren’t so tech-savvy and really can’t find anything that good until now.
Can anybody help?
~ CC
Ouriel, I appreciate your posts to TechCrunch, but I was hoping you could get Michael or someone else to proof them before posting. I understand English is not your native language, but there have been occasions where it would have been easier for me to learn French and then read the post over on techcrunch.com.fr.
Keep up the good work! Thanks!
Has anyone seen http://www.gather.at ? It seems like they are doing something similar.
MyKidsPlanet.com has been doing something “truely group/topic based and geo-localized” for over a year.
This free service gives a group an instant and complete web-based communications infrastructure.
Based on “Activities,” the service has already been in use for over a year with the YMCA’s Y-Indian program and other groups and organizations — there’s a variety of groups now using MyKidsPlanet.com with great success — classes, clubs, teams, and more.
These groups and organizations embrace MyKidsPlanet.com because it organizes and streamlines communications not only for the groups themselves, but also for the parents who have kids in multiple activities.
These groups have control over Documents, Pictures, News, Discussion topics, and a complete Calendar of Events.
There’s also automated communications, instant notifications, and other tools that make it easy for group leaders to keep everyone on the same page.
And every MyKidsPlanet.com subscriber can join or create as many groups as they wish.
What’s more, MyKidsPlanet.com even supports hierarchical organizations, letting them streamline and align communications among all levels of the organization as well as with members. No one else is doing anything like that.
What you are describing here is nothing new, believe me. It’s been done — and it’s being done all day, every day at http://www.MyKidsPlanet.com.
There are theme-based meetup sites, too.
http://www.socster.com/
Won’t matter soon, though – Google is going to crush everyone!