White label social networking platform CrowdVine, which we have covered a couple of times in this past year, has released a new offering called “CrowdVine for Conferences” that further cements its focus of hosting networks meant for conference attendees.
The free version of CrowdVine for Conferences provides much of the same, simple functionality of a non-conference network (now dubbed “CrowdVine for Groups”). But if you are organizing a conference with 300 attendees or less, you’ll have access to a handful of useful features. Network members can indicate not only their friends but the people they “want to meet” at the conference. Conference organizers can integrate Twitter streams and 3rd-party wikis. And everyone can export the contact information of attendees as vCards after the conference ends (a feature I so wish Facebook and other social networks would adopt).
If you’re willing to pay, you can raise the attendee limit to 1000 ,or unlimited, and gain access to even more features. Advertisements can be removed, you will be given a “dedicated community manager” who helps to foster your network, attendee data can be analyzed to determine who contributed most to the event, speaker information can be imported, sponsorships can be incorporated, and a sessions calendar can be set up. CrowdVine has also partnered with Pathable to create custom, physical badges that show tags and likenesses for each attendee.
For an example of what CrowdVine can do for conferences, check out the Future of Web Apps network and, in particular, its sessions calendar.
Read this coverage to learn about how Confabb is organizing conference information as well.
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Crowdvine supported FOO camp and did an awesome job. I’ve since recommended them to the people doing barcampbank - more context around the other attendees is really helpful.
Yeah, this is a clear plug, but it has the benefit of being true.
We used CrowdVine for Maker Faire Bay Area, and it was great to see all the makers connecting with each other; they’re showing off their projects to the crowds at Maker Faire, and that can make it difficult to get to know each other during the faire. CrowdVine provided an opportunity for them to get in touch with each other before and after the event.
I also use it for my CitizenSci.com site as a way for people in that space to connect.
I worked with Tony and Jay in the past, so of course I’m biased. But I can also say that knowing Tony’s work, we were really delighted to learn that he was rolling out a social networking app.
Mark, thanks for the review.
The calendar software is called icalico and was built by Evan Henshaw-Plath and Kellan Elliott-McCrea. I believe their intention is to open source it. We’ve been using it for multi-track conferences to help attendees track which sessions they want to go to. The integration with CrowdVine also lets us show which sessions are popular in your network or within a tag. Kellan works on Flickr and Evan is one of the engineers on the Fire Eagle project being built by Yahoo brick house.
I feel like there are far too many of these as is..whats different?
Dan, there’s definitely not enough services for conference organizers. We were tired of going to conferences and wading through a printed attendee list. The only other competitor we saw had software that overwhelmed the attendees with features and as a result didn’t get any usage. We’re simple enough that attendees can use it without a learning curve.
That’s also our differentiator on our general purpose social networking service. There’s a lot of uses where the most important “content” is the people and the activity you want people meeting and connecting. Dating, alumni directories, company intranets have been really successful on CV. There’s also a trend toward componentization of web applications, so we think our simplicity puts us in a good spot to be the social network component that you hook up with other components.
I don’t know if there can really be too many of these services .. I mean everyone carves a niche and then has loyal customers .
I think its like saying there are too may restaurants or too many apartments .
Some will rise and others will sink …
I met Tony through twitter a few months ago and I think that it’s very coincidental that I recommended Crowdvine today, before I knew he was covered on TC. I think that ad-hoc social networks that are specific to a single event is clearly in demand and I look forward to using Crowdvine for some of the events that I’m involved in.
Anybody know how much the unlimited package costs? Can’t find it on the site.
Jordon, call for pricing. We have set pricing for the plus and premium packages, but in our experience customers who want the max package tend to have custom needs which need a custom price. We think our service sets us apart and we work hard for all of our professional clients to make sure they have a great experience.
You can call or email me directly:
tony@crowdvine.com
(707) 953-3868
I’ve been recommending Crowdvine to many people since I met Tony at the Data Sharing Summit in SF a few month back. It’s easy to setup, looks appealing and has all the bells and whistles an event organizer would need. Keep building a fantastic product Tony!