Back in the day, before the cell phone, people had to be where they said they’d be. There was no such thing as flaking out, and if you did, you were just a bad person. But these days, even when we make a firm commitment, the convenience of cell phones makes it really easy to flake out at the last second.
But co-founders Ryan Coyne and Will Quartner think that going out and having fun with your friends shouldn’t have to be so difficult, and thus was born TheWhoot.
TheWhoot is a social planning app, available on web, iOS, and Android, that lets people choose from four simple categories to outline their nightly plans and coordinate within their social circle. You may be working, staying in, relaxing out, or partying, and once you detail your general idea for the evening, you’ll instantly get access to what all your friends are doing.
It’s not like a Facebook Event, in that all plans are tossed out at 5am and new plans begin each day. The service is all about tonight, which is the first step in removing the flakes. With Facebook Events, the party next week might sound really awesome now, but it may not sound so great on the night of, after a long day’s work and a headache.
Another feature available with TheWhoot is the ability to Ping. You have five Pings per night, and it allows you to reach out to users who haven’t posted their plans tonight to see what they’re up to tonight. The cool part is that you post Pings anonymously, so if you happen to be the kid who’s always trying to wrangle a group together, you don’t have to be embarrassed that you’re hitting people up all the time.
New features will be added over the course of the next month, along with new forms of monetization for TheWhoot including in-app purchases to increase the Ping limit, and social analytics, which will allow users to get a feel for what the night will be like on a large scale. Think how many girls are going out tonight, or how many of your friends are relaxing as opposed to partying on a Thursday.
Social planning is a tough space to tackle, but I’m excited about what TheWhoot has done thus far. Perhaps we won’t all be so flaky anymore, or maybe that’s just dreaming. Only time, and TheWhoot’s new social analytics, can tell.