Plancast: Your new social calendar

The day of Filofaxes and email calendars has gone. Evites are passé and even Meetup invitations are becoming less common. Today is the day of Plancast.


Plancast is a useful site that allows you to interact with your social network in a whole new way. Forget the formality of "inviting" people to an event or having to RSVP if you'd like to attend. When you sign up for Plancast, you are essentially announcing your plans to your social circle. It's an implied open invitation for your friends to join you.

Get started by connecting with your friends who are on Plancast (or invite them to join), add your plans to your profile, see what your network is up to, and then hit the road and have some fun! You always have the option of tweeting your plans out to your Twitter followers or posting them to your Facebook wall. Plancast can also be synced with Facebook so your Facebook Events are displayed with the rest of your plans.

Your EventBrite invitations can also be imported into Plancast (see the option under settings > external services) and you can also export plans to another calendar (e.g. Yahoo!, Google, Outlook, etc.) or get them via RSS feed.  Lastly, if you don't want the world to know where you are, you can lock down your account so your plans are only visible to people you approve.

In addition to an easy user interface, Plancast is continuing to add new features. It updated its homepage this month and now you can see local events that are happening outside of your circle. This opens up a whole new world. With a feed that is targeted to your city, you can connect with new people and discover events that you and your friends may not know about. 

I, for one, have become quite dependent on Plancast. It's easy to use, efficient, and a great social networking tool (and, no, I'm not being compensated to say so).

Already on Plancast? Share what you think with the newbies out there. Not on Plancast yet, why not give it a whirl by creating your first plan today!

7 comments:

  1. Plancast is the most useless site being hyped by friends of TechCrunch. A site for geeks only.

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  2. Anonymous: Not sure why people don't have the courage to use their name when they criticize, but so be it. I am not a "friend" of TechCrunch. I don't know anyone who works there. I blog about things I've found useful and think others might enjoy, as well. If by "geek" you mean people who are engaged, people who follow trends and stay current in their industries, or who see the value in networking and social media, I guess I'm a geek. And I guess the incredibly influential people in my network are "geeks", as well. Very successful geeks, too.

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  3. Plancast (http://plancast.com/stevendrowe) definitely has potential however only 1 person out of the many contacts in my database have signed up to it. When word gets out I guess it will be more interactive.

    One great feature I do like is the syncing with http://www.tungle.me

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  4. Anonymous - Thanks for the motivation! :)

    Amber - Thanks for the post! It's great to hear you've taken notice and are enjoying the new features we recently launched. More to come soon.

    Steven - Glad to see you're on Plancast, and thanks for the kind words. At this point, our user-base is much stronger in the US (our most concentrated area is in and around San Francisco) than in Canada, where I noticed you're based. Give us a little more time to spread northward :). In the meantime, you may want to try using our invite feature to share plans with non-Plancast users. It's integrated with Facebook/Twitter (it's in the right column of every plan page).

    All the best,

    Peter
    http://plancast.com/peter

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  5. Amber,
    Thank you for the chic new way to plan my week.
    Count me in as a geek, not a hide-n-speak.

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  6. Steven: Thanks for your comment! Until you get your social circle on the bandwagon, you might want to utilize the "local" plans function a bit more. That way you can connect with others who are already using Plancast (and maybe even meet some cool new people!). Thanks so much for adding to the conversation ;->

    Peter: I would assume you work for Plancast, eh? Thank you for visiting my blog and contributing to the dialogue here. I really appreciate it! At first, I just signed up but didn't really use Plancast. Now, I'm addicted. LA has a very active social media community, therefore there is always lots going on. Plancast has become indispensable to me and a crucial part of my social networking. I hope everyone else enjoys the site as much as I do!

    SKChicago: Thanks so much for your comment. Love it! A hide and speak--brilliant! Geeks are the new black. Go Team Geek ;->

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  7. I love Plancast. It's so helpful and I can also see what my friends are up to and if I want to join them. Like you said, it's my new social calendar. Also very valuable. :)

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