We’ve written about Plancast, a “Foursquare For The Future,” that essentially broadcasts your plans to your online social circle. We’re big fans of the startup, which just raised seed funding from an impressive group of investors. Startup Go Tribal is rolling out a different take on the social planning application, launching a site for a more targeted audience: women.
Go Tribal has simple ambitions. The site basically aims to help women answer the question, “who’s down to go out?” Users can sign set up an account and broadcast message to their friends to see who is down for going out. Of course, you can tap into your social graph via Facebook Connect, Gmail and Twitter, but all of the planning needs to take place on Go Tribal’s site and each participant needs to sign up for an account to start “planning.” Once you see which friends are available, you can vote on, discuss, and finalize your plans. In terms of privacy, there are three levels of privacy for plans. You can opt to go public with your plans, private (plans are only visible to your Go Tribal friends) or locked (plans are only visible to the people invited to the plan).
Go Tribal is oriented towards helping member form informal plans, like grabbing a impromptu dinner with friends. Shruti Challa, CEO and co-founder of Go Tribal, says the service aims to eliminate planning via text, email or Facebook. But one of the virtues of these mediums and networks is that all three can be easily accessible from your mobile device. Although Go Tribal doesn’t have a mobile app available, the startup offers SMS notifications so that you can stay up-to-date with any changes to a plan.
So how does the startup make money? Well, because Go Tribal has a targeted audience, it can offer targeted advertising to restaurants, bars and other local establishments. Challa says that the site is also in the process of incorporating deals at certain restaurants and bars.
It should be interesting to see if Go Tribal can take off. The conventional behavior for people to make casual plans usually takes place over email, Facebook or SMS. It may be tough for the startup to change that natural behavior right away, but with an attractive interface and the proper partnerships (I’m thinking a Yelp or CitySearch partnership), the site could find a loyal following.