Design Analysis of Plancast

I joined a new social networking service today by the name of Plancast. It's a service much like Twitter but instead of proclaiming what you are currently doing, you post any future plans that you may have so that others can see what you will be doing and decide whiter they can/want to join you for your plan. A friend that i work with designed the company logo and he lives with the guys that invented and developed the idea. It may not be the most unique idea since it's roughly based on the Twitter idea but it's still very clever none-the-less. Like Twitter, people can follow you and you can follow others and every time that someone posts a new plan of theirs, anyone that is following them can see the plan and meet up with the friend when the plan occurs. The person that posts the plan writes a small description of what will be happening along with location, time, and any other relevant information. Others that want to join can click the "count me in" button and be included. They can also write comments on the posts of events to ask any questions about the event. It's a really neat idea thats just started getting off the ground running. It's very easy to setup an account. Just visit the site, choose a screen name and password, and your in. You can choose a picture to be your avatar for any posts you make and theres eve an iPhone app for the service, so you can be in the know on the go. Your home page on the site is very simple; it shows your info at the left and any upcoming plans that the people your following have on the right. The service isn't very popular yet so it hasn't been corrupted with ads or anything so the user interface is still fresh and clean. In order to be socially successful in this service, you must have your actual friends following you. A cool feature it has is the search function for finding your friends. You can connect to Facebook, Twitter, or your e-mail and it will find people in your contact lists that use the service and allow you to start following. That way people you actually know and will enjoy hanging out with show up to your events. It's a very cool service with a lot of potential and hopefully it will take off in the near future.