Even though over 800 people were packed into The Estate last Friday night for the TechCrunch Boston Meetup, I was able to navigate the club surprisingly well and speak with almost all of the event’s sponsors. I also endeavored to do a little research this weekend while I was still in recovery mode. So after combining what I have seen, heard, and read over the past couple of days, I am left feeling impressed by more than a few companies.
I’ll start with the seasoned veteran: TripAdvisor.com. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, it compiles user-generated content and recommendations on everything from trip locations and hotels to flights and vacation packages. Even though the site has been around for nearly eight years and nets more than 25 million unique visitors a month, the company continues to make it out to local events (its U.S. headquarters are in Needham, MA) and remain involved in the emerging tech community.
A representative from the company said that TripAdvisor.com was hiring aggressively in all departments, so their motivation for sponsoring the meetup was mostly to seek out new talent. Either way, they brought a ton of free t-shirts for everyone, so they receive a nod of approval from me for the effort that they continue to put in when it comes to customer, industry, and employee relations. Also, the accolades they received in a recent episode of The Office, and the fact that this entry is posted on their site means that the company will probably always hold a special place in my heart.
But I’ll move on to more pressing issues, or rather, companies that you most likely don’t already know about. In terms of sites directed towards the average consumer, my favorite of the night had to be MyPunchbowl.com. This site launched in January and currently has an undisclosed number of registered users, but judging from the way they were received at the event, their member base must be steadily rising. MyPunchbowl is the brain child of Punchbowl Software, and its goal is to improve the overall user experience by offering “end-to-end” party planning. In other words, the site helps members with everything from picking the date of their party to sharing pictures and stories with guests after the festivities are over.
After browsing the site and some of its features, I agree that its software is easy and fun to use. I also like how the site allows you to personalize your virtual invitations (as opposed to sending them out in bulk) and the fact that MyPunchbowl helps you out with checklists of all the minor details that you might otherwise overlook. All in all, I like the product and the design, and the fact that this site is only ten months old bodes well for the future of the company. The site is also run by four guys (as of now), which kind of disproves the notion that men can’t plan a good party.
I am awarding honorable mention awards to Mzinga, Moola, and Wine Library TV. Based on my interaction with the people at Mzinga, I am pretty sure that the company creates Facebook-like applications for businesses. So basically, they create social networking forums for a business’s customers and employees in order to gather and mine useful information from them. A cool concept, even though the social networking angle is starting to feel a little stale to me these days.
Moola is a site that gives you a penny, which you can then double every time you beat another contestant in a head-to-head game. So if for some reason you are able to win a string of 30 games in a row, you’ll be ten million dollars richer (or more like six million, if you consider the havoc that taxes could wreak on your prize money). The mediocre games on Moola.com don’t really interest me, but its business model does. The site will be ad supported, so in order to play a game, you need to watch an ad and correctly answer a question about it. It sounds annoying, but when money is on the line, I suspect that a lot of people will follow these prompts. This is great news for advertisers, who can ensure that people are at least looking at their internet ads.
My last nod goes to Wine Library TV, or the personality behind WLTV, Gary Vaynerchuk. In an effort to overcome stereotypes about the wine industry and encourage more people (of all backgrounds) to enjoy the world of wine, Vaynerchuk records five episodes of his own personal wine tasting each week for the site. His approach may be a bit overwhelming, but you can never say that Vaynerchuk is boring. Honestly, I just love the fact that he reviewed Trader Joe’s famous Two Buck Chucks.
Even though this site isn’t as tech-oriented as the other sponsors from the Boston meetup, I think it shows how flexible of a tool that the internet really is. User-generated sites and blogs can help anyone push any sort of agenda, and in this case, Vaynerchuk wants to make wine fun for everyone.
That’s about all I have got to say for today. If I offended any companies by not posting about their product or offering them some type of meaningless honorable mention, just know that I have no authority to award anything to anyone. I just thought it would be fun. It’s a Monday, and I’ve got to do something to entertain myself.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 19th, 2007 and is filed under Brand new sites, Tech companies, The odd stuff.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
