Digi Jeff: Peter, what's your position at Plancast?
Peter Sauer: There are 3 of us full-time and I'm the only non-coder, which means I do a lot of the other stuff. Business Development, HR, Community Management, Marketing, helping with product direction, etc.
Digi Jeff: Briefly explain what Plancast is?
Peter Sauer: Plancast helps you discover where your friends are going, so you can connect with them in real life. Whether it's going to a conference, a concert, or grabbing drinks with friends, people do all sorts of things that currently get buried in old-school calendars, or never get written down at all. We're helping people share that info. No more "hey, I wish I would've known you were going to the Chamillionaire concert - I totally would've gone."
Digi Jeff: How is Plancast different from Facebook events and Google Calendar?
Peter Sauer: Facebook events is based around the event organizer. If you're hosting a party, you'll go on there, add all of the details, send out invites to all of your friends, etc. But let's say you're going to something like the TechCrunch August Capital party, a concert, or a movie. You're not going to make a facebook event for that stuff - that would be weird. Plancast, on the other hand, let's you say "Hey, I'm planning to go to this" even if you aren't organizing it.
Google Calendar is a personal calendar tool. You are the only person that sees your calendar unless you use the Google Calendar widget or share it publicly - which most people never do. Even if you do, there is no social element to it. If one of your friends sees you're going to a concert and decides they want to go it, there is no place for them to say they're going. They'll probably put the event in their personal calendar, where again it gets buried from being seen by your friends.
Digi Jeff: How do you think Plancast can be used by celebrities?
Peter Sauer: Easy. A celebrity can post all of their concerts, appearances, etc, which allows fans to easily track where they're going to be (we have a subscription system, so anytime you share a new plan, we let your audience know about it). When a fan sees one of your events and says they're planning to go, all of their subscribers are notified of it. It's almost like a retweet on Twitter - it's really great for spreading the word.
We offer optional auto-posting to twitter/facebook/buzz sharing - so add something on Plancast and it'll automatically tweet out, post to your Facebook and post on Google Buzz. If you're using one of our widgets or our full API, it'll appear on your site too. Only hitting the tip of the iceberg here - I encourage you to play around with the site. We're also in the process of building some other new features which should be very beneficial for celebs/fans as well.
Digi Jeff: How does Plancast plan to make revenue?
Peter Sauer: Will you be offering premium services? Peter Sauer: We raised a seed round of funding in March, which allows us to focus on building the product right now, but we have several ideas for when the times comes to focus on revenue.
Can you tell us anything cool we can expect from Plancast in the future that you're working on?
Peter Sauer: Be on the lookout for an updated iPhone app very soon. We have a bunch of other things in the works, but nothing I can talk about quite yet.
Do you guys have Plancast on Android? If not when can Android users expect?
Peter Sauer: We have an API which a 3rd party developer used to create a basic Android app. It's still in early stages, but we're excited to see how it, as well as other uses of our API, evolve. Additionally, we have a mobile site (http://m.plancast.com) which is probably the most frequently used method for accessing Plancast from Android devices.
Do you have any plans with integrating with foursquare?
Peter Sauer: Not currently, but there's definitely potential to make some interesting mashups using APIs from both companies.
You can connect with me on Plancast at: http://plancast.com/digijeff
Plancast Facebook Tab Application (created by @digijeff) After learning Plancast had an API, I had to make a Facebook app that would allow Facebook users to show their plans right on their profile/page. For this example on my Facebook page I used Robert Scoble as an example because he is very active on Plancast.
The Facebook app will create a tab called "Plancast" and will display your current plans and brief information about you (on the right hand side). I added a [share] button so you can quickly share a plan right on your wall. The plans link right out to Plancast. I think this Facebook app will be really useful for avid Plancast users.
