Evite competitor Renkoo has landed an additional $6 million in funding, led by Maveron Equity Partners, according to a report from VentureBeat. This is the company's second round of funding. I had a rather extensive interview with Joyce Park of Renkoo last year, not too long after the company's first round of funding. You may recall that Renkoo has set out to create a web-based, cross platform (and cross-device) system to help groups plan casual events.
Whether you prefer communications via email, instant messaging or SMS text messages, Renkoo will bridge the gap for all its users, ensuring that everyone stays in the loop, in real-time. This collaborative communication technique for getting together with a group of friends is an obvious next step in the grand scheme of things, even if the concept hasn't quite hit mainstream just yet. Nevertheless, there are several other services out there that will use this technique to help you achieve the same goal, including Planypus, which has also received an undisclosed amount of funding in the past 12 months.
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What solidified the event-planning tool's direction for needing a more integrated system for communicating amongst friends was eVite's recently launched mobile tool. Evite's answer to startups like Renkoo not only addressed the need for a multi-device system, but also addressed the trend for using such communication tools for the purpose of planning casual get togethers, branching off in a vertical that Evite hopes will broaden its user base to younger and more mobile demographics.