Quick Pitch: Whereberry helps you make non-virtual plans with friends.
Genius Idea: Focusing on future plans instead of current checkins
If you have a list of activities you want to do, chances are most of them would be more fun with a friend. Whereberry, which launched Tuesday, makes that list social so that it's easier to coordinate plans.
After connecting your profile to Whereberry, your Facebook friends who have also signed up are automatically added as your friends. As with Twitter, you can also choose to "follow" anyone on the platform. You will get email notifications when these people post events, and those events will also show up in your Whereberry newsfeed.
Within the newsfeed, it's easy to add to your own list activities that your friend posted and to work out logistics in a group. There's also an option to post the activity to your Facebook feed and avoid the "Does anyone want to go to a movie this weekend?" comment thread.
Whereberry focuses not on what you've done, as most checkin services originally did, but rather on what you plan to do. These types of preemptive check-in services are popping up everywhere -- recommendation engine Ditto, plan maker ImUp4, and location-based Q&A app Localmind are just a few examples. Even Foursquare has cast its gaze toward the future.
When people note what they are going to do rather than what they've done, brands connected with that activity have an opportunity to reach consumers at a decision point. Not so if the consumer is already standing in the restaurant. Whereberry eventually plans to sell brands the opportunity to offer deals to relevant consumers.
That monetization plan makes sense, but Whereberry will need to acquire users first -- something that may be tricky as many wonder whether anyone needs another social service.
If you don't already have friends on Whereberry, it's hard to make a case for joining. While there's a list of activities that populates the newsfeeds of the friend-less, activity guides can be found on the Internet without connecting a Facebook profile. The post-to-Facebook feature is one way you might convince friends to join you on the platform, but truthfully, it's easier to just post a status message.
But the startup didn't earn a spot in Y Combinator this winter for nothing. A social network for making plans like Whereberry would be useful if a good chunk of your friends used it. The million dollar question is how to incentivize that environment.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
