Facebook application SocialCalendar is steadily gaining popularity as a go-to calendar for users to manage their social lives on the network. With over 11 million total installs and about 2 million monthly active users, SocialCalendar is one of the only widely used, general purpose calendars on Facebook.
SocialCalendar lets you plan events among Facebook friends, get movie showtimes and integrate events into a public calendar. Users can also import and get email reminders about events, birthdays and anniversaries. The app also lets you use virtual good icons to mark events and allows you to give virtual goods, like a birthday cake, to friends for special occasions. The price of virtual goods on the site ranges from $0.50 to $1.00 (some are free as well). The calendar app also allows users to make gift wish lists through Amazon and distribute the lists to friends and family.
SocialCalendar is making some other interesting moves to monetize the app as well. First, the app has integrated, contextual advertisements from TV and movie studios and gifts and flower companies. Currently, SocialCalendar has a partnership with NBC to advertise the new late night comedy show, “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and integrate the show’s times into users’ calendars. SocialCalendar has a movie calendar, which allows users to see weekly movie openings and movies that have made the top box office list. Users can add movies to their SocialCalendars, and can see show times and buy tickets to local shows in their areas directly.
SocialCalendar has also partnered 1-800 Flowers.com to offer users the ability to easily send flowers for a friend’s birthday or special event. And SocialCalendar sells virtual goods, which the founder, Raj Lalwani, says are becoming increasingly popular with users.
Rival Facebook calendar app, FriendEvent Calendar, has an easier to see layout and clearly differentiates between events that are private or public, but doesn’t seem to have the viral following that SocialCalendar has on Facebook. SocialCalendar has some useful features to organize and mark events but I found myself wishing that it wasn’t simply a Facebook application. It seems like it would be pretty useful as a stand-alone application. SocialCalendar is also a Bebo app but doesn’t seem to have nearly as large as a following with only 31,000 users. Lalwani says that since the Bebo app isn’t keeping up with the pace of the Facebook app, the company is considering shutting it down.
Great to see really useful third party apps making an impact on Facebook. Well done!
Monthly calendar format is what we are used to.. Many calender app providers other than SocialCalender dont understand this.
First Comment from India. Other than that, no comment. Again, remember, this is from India.
Wrong – second comment. Have a good morning…
Cool tool!
Here is some useful information that I have found from research. In the last 120 days social networking sites have seen steady decrease in traffic where polls have shown that its mainly because of harassing advertisements. The numbers are staggering where there is an average traffic decrease over 30% between all social networking sites.
Now I need some information. I have spent four years and over a million dollars of personal funds and in sweat equity developing a site that I plan to launch this year. I am raising venture capital to launch and have raised another $1.5m out of the $6m goal I plan to reach prior to launching.
The site is a massive “Interactive Entertainmant & Information Search Portal With Social & Commercial Networking Integration”. The process to raise capital in Tampa has been rough and long and I am looking for any resources that can help speed the process up.
My prototype has been strong enough to recieve endorsements from Mike Alstott AKA A-Train (retired Bucs FB), George Wendt (my 3rd cousin, Norm from Cheers)and several political figures, which have all contributed to current Angel Equity.
I am redoing my corporate site as we speak and that will be posted by the end of March, which is located at eeihq.com.
The new search portal domain is YourNight.com
Any information and/or guidance is appreciated.
Regards,
RJ Garbowicz
President/CEO
Extreme Enterprises, Inc.
Maybe if you saved some of that “million dollars” for advertising and promotion you would not have to spam TC comments.
@Robert Basil
Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me. What is with you and the link to your facebook page. Isn’t that spamming? You should do some research before opening your mouth about YourNight.com, lest you come across a full blown pessimist.
Are you really that stupid that you don’t understand how FaceBook connect works? Please keep showing everyone how ignorant you are so they don’t waste time visiting your vaporware community.
—
Posted from my iPhone
Stupid or not, it is you who is spamming. I will not keep talking as I, unlike you, do not have time to keep talking solely for the purpose of getting the last word. Vaporware? Most people here don’t know what your talking about. However, our product does not at this point in time constitute vaporware. Only time will tell.
“However, our product does not at this point in time constitute vaporware.”
Boy, that sure does make your product sound promising to investors… hahahaha.
The comments from this story below me all I need to know. Good luck trying to con people into investing in your scheme.
http://www.tech...-gold/#comments
I wonder how long it will take for Facebook to implode under the weight of apps?
This is really nice utility app that taps the social graph.
This reads like a press release. Did SocialCalendar write this for you?
This app is one of the few that keeps advertisers in mind when building an application.
Too many apps, including the Facebook mothership, builds to service the global user community. The top games and wall-posting apps on Facebook of examples where there is no clear focus of servicing an advertiser community.
Calendars track birthdays and anniversaries where gifts need to be exchanged, a clear view of the advertisers with gift products like 1-800 flowers.
More developers need to learn from this professional organization. It’s great to have the development energy and youth of a Mark Z or Sheryl. Twitter is another example. It’s another dimension of complexity to build for the ad buyer. That comes only with publishing experience.
Have you guys seen Sponty? It solves a similar problem using a much cleaner interface:
http://thesponty.com
You’ll need an invite code for Sponty, when asked for it, go to http://thesponty.com/hn and you should be all set.
Also. SirCalendar (http://www.sircalendar.com) is a smaller Facebook app that stays out of your way and helps you easily keep track of your friends facebook events. Note: shameless self promotion.
http://www.sircalendar.com (now with a hyperlink!)
Sounds like 30boxes.com with all the limitations of facebook. I still have not found a fb app worth installing.
Agree with Jon. Seems like 30boxes downgrade. Looks like a lot of clutter to me, but hey, maybe I just don’t get it.
Wow, and I thought I was reading an advertorial.
Then I realized there is no mention of that word “advertorial”, so I guess this must be a real article of use to regular TechCrunch readers like me.
Nice post! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Ya friendevent is way better I dunno why its not bigger. It has so many more features than socialcalendar its more logical and cleann.
I dont kmow why they didnt add a link but here it is if u wana see what friendevent is like.
http://apps.fac...com/friendevent
I use Friend-Event for everything. It is a stand alone site that works well with Facebook. I recommend it.
I agree Friend-Event is a really nice app, makes me confused on why SocialCalendar is doing so well against them?
I use Friend-Event as well. It is very helpful. I can keep track of everything there!!! Thanks so much!!!
I mainly use friendevent off of Facebook. I don’t like relying on facebook for everything and it’s too tough to arrange stuff (parties and stuff) without using friendevent. Ya gotta get all your best friends on there to get 100% use of it, but as soon as you do, social life is way easier to manage.
FriendEvent really seemed to help me with planning some work events! I would highly recommend this website over any other social calendar that I have used in the past!