We’re extremely excited to be announcing a partnership with Plancast – here’s why: This particular integration means much more than the coming together of feature / function for an enhanced user experience. It represents something much bigger - something that affects us all; a significant shift in an ecosystem already on a speeding train towards revolution. The social web has changed how we conduct business. It has given birth to an era of unprecedented transparency and collaboration and has changed the way we work and play.
My first experience in the work force was through a mechanical engineering internship at 3M in the masking tape manufacturing department. Being a highly secured environment, I was given security cards, password for my email, a different password for the intranet, a password for my the entry door of the manufacturing facility, a hard hat and metal plated boots. I had so many things to remember that I ended-up putting everything on yes, a 3M post-it. Interestingly, this highly secure method was used by most of the engineers, managers and secretaries – a flagrant flaw in a most highly secure environment.
Fast forward, 2010. Businesses need to react quickly, respond efficiently with accuracy. Generations X and Y are creating our own set of rules of how we want to conduct business. The barriers between organizations and geographic regions are being torn down. Privacy of information is still very important, but, we are asking for better control of what can or won’t be shared, in order to make it easier to conduct business. A revolution to say the least. The veil of secrecy under which the generations before us were raised are being challenged. We now live in a connected, open and more transparent world. What was once considered private and guarded information is being published and shared at breakneck speeds. In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was asked about the future of privacy. His response: “Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friends list, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable.”
Plancast, with its ability to publish one’s social plans, helps professionals publish their intent. By publishing intent, professionals can find and connect with others that have similar interest, and mutual business objectives. It increases the propensity to network and conduct real business. Plancast has seen tremendous growth since it was first launched. Already, key social media experts like, Robert Scoble, Dave McClure, to name a few have taken a liking to the service and are openly promoting the events that they are attending and their whereabouts.
Tungle.me is the last mile. Tungle.me makes scheduling easy. Once you know who you want to meet and where you both will be, Tungle.me allows you to easily schedule a time for the meeting. As some of you may know, since our launch in May of 2009, Tungle.me has always seen a minimum of 30% month-to-month growth rate. We already have users in 30% of all Fortune 500, and more than 700 universities around the world are using Tungle.me. Scheduling meetings is a pain, and Tungle.me solves it. The ability to let others know when you are free to meet – without giving away what you are doing is proving to be trade off that busy professionals are willing to make to avoid to pain staking ping-pong and time wasted trying to find time to meet with colleagues, clients, and other professionals.
By joining forces, professionals can express their intent with Plancast – and at the same time, benefit from Tungle.me’s ability to setup meetings to conduct real business – the last mile. It goes without saying that both services do not replace the efforts required to build relationships and put forward a compelling value proposition – but it does bring down the barriers to find like minded people, and connect – two very time consuming and low value creating tasks.
To kick off this partnership, Tungle and Plancast have worked to integrate the Tungle.me widget into Plancast profiles. See an example here (click to enlarge):
