With email, text messages and Facebook, it should be easier than ever to organise friends, right? Not so, says Elliot Goldwater and he’s got what he believes is the solution – the GiddyUp mobile app.
The idea behind GiddyUp is to make it easier to get together with your friends. With the app, launched today, you can create an RSVP-able event with the basic what/where/when details.? After that, you select who you want to invite from your truest social network (your contacts list) and you’re done.
Your friends then receive GiddyUp receive push notifications to respond to your event, while your friends without GiddyUp receive a text message with a link to a mobile webpage that provides all the response functionality they need. Allow the below video to explain the app a little better before we get to the app’s CEO and co-founder, Elliot Goldwater.
JOE: So what is the concept behind GiddyUp? Was it derived from a frustrating personal experience in organising a night out?
EG: There wasn’t so much an “aha moment” as there was an erosion of our patience over time. The GiddyUp team comes from the same circle of friends and between living in New York and San Francisco and always wanting to be out and about, the endless email chains and the myriad of text messages flying back and forth was just too much to handle.
Everybody has been through this and gone through the hassle, sowe decided as a team that there needed to be an easier way. The two co-founders; John Zurbach and I actually have investment banking backgrounds, which provided a unique perspective during GiddyUp development. We were constantly asking ourselves, what would we, normal social guys find useful as opposed to what new gimmicky tool could we include to stand out.
JOE: What makes GiddyUp preferential for users that tend to boot up Facebook for event invitations?
EG: First and foremost – faster response times. While GiddyUp has all the functionality to plan longer-term events, typically associated with Facebook or Evite for, our core focus are shorter-lead time events. For these types of events, the organiser and participants need to know what the plans are quickly.
GiddyUp alerts users via push notification and non-users via SMS, drastically reducing response times typically associated with those other platforms. Everybody knows who’s “In” and who’s “Out” in a matter of minutes.
GiddyUp is also incredibly mobile. Whether you’re sitting at work, on your way home from the gym, or on your way to the bar, you’ll be able to create, respond and stay in touch using GiddyUp.
Lastly, we’re trying to remove a lot of noise and clutter that exists on Facebook. People use Facebook Events for anything and everything, including lost cell phones! We want to unclutter your social graph and keep it to the events and friends that actually matter to you.
JOE: What can people expect from the app?
EG: I think that people will really appreciate how simple GiddyUp is. We give you all the tools to plan a party; date & time (with calendar sync), Google mapping capabilities and a notes section. At the same time, all you need to get an event started is a title and friends.
If you don’t have concrete plans, and just want to hang out with some friends, send out a GiddyUp titled: “Drinks Tonight?” to a few friends. You’ll know right away who has interest and then you can hash out the plans in the built-in group chat. Getting together with your friends can be a hassle; our goal is to make the planning process as easy as possible.
JOE: What kind of initial response have you received for GiddyUp pre-launch?
EG: The response so far has been tremendous and I think the driving force behind that is the fact that the problem we’re trying to tackle resonates with everybody. Who hasn’t experienced the endless email chains, 200 text messages and last minute phone calls necessary to get a few friends together? People also have a great appreciation for the fact that we took the time to develop simultaneously on both iOS and Android.
There are a lot of “social planning” tools out there, but what good are they if you can only plan events with your iPhone friends?
We developed GiddyUp to include the broadest universe possible, so not only can iOS and Android users respond, any phone with SMS capabilities and an internet connection can be notified of an event, see all the details and respond, without signing up. We’ve eliminated a lot of the traditional barriers associated with these types of products.
JOE: What are the long-term goals and plans for GiddyUp?
EG: Right now, we’re really focused on the product and getting users, users and more users. A lot of our initial work will be responding to feedback, we want to make GiddyUp as helpful to users as possible. Longer-term, we don’t think there is currently a way for users to share, and plan an event, around all the awesome experiences and places we see everyday.
If you see a new restaurant you want to try online or in a newsletter, your options for sharing are generally Facebook, Twitter, or email. While those options allow you to broadcast your thoughts to a huge audience, none of them get you any closer to rounding up a few friends and actually going to try it. We want GiddyUp to be the medium by which people share and plan cool new things.
JOE: How would you describe GiddyUp as simply as possible to someone who had never heard of the app?
EG: GiddyUp is an on-the-go social planner that will revolutionise the way people get together, by taking the hassle out of planning an outing with your friends.
So can GiddyUp live up to the hype? You can download the app today from the iOS App Store and Google Play (Android) for free, so try it out or check out the official website here and let us know how you got on in the comments section below.
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