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PlanJam is a newly relaunched site for, among other things, finding a date and a place to take your date.
Whether it’s your first date, blind date, or a romantic idea for that special occassion - our interactive interface will allow you to plan a fun, romantic, or affordable date from over 120 unique date ideas. From a romantic dinnner to the thrill of sky diving, PlanJam provides endless combinations of fun things to do.
If you find a date idea that interests you, drag the icon into the basket below to store it while you continue searching. Once you have finished building the date, you can choose share your date with others, or simply click on the finish planning button to view, map, and/or print your completed date.
Originally focused on the SoCal market, this is a site trying to do to many things, none of them very well.
The only thing of note is the drag-n-drop planning feature, which looks kind of interesting if you’re into multiple-event days or dates.
Planing a date: Countless other city guides like Citysearch, event-based sites like Heyletsgo, the list goes on. Same goes for finding local events. Planning a trip or planning an event? Unless I’m missing something, don’t we have Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, etc already? I don’t see what’s different about PlanJam and there is nothing on the site explaining what it does.
The database is so empty there is an echo. Hopefully that will change, at which time I’ll revisit the site create a few marathon dates.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I appreciate your critique of our website…although I feel that you may have misunderstood what our website was about.
You mentioned that we are SoCal based…so I really don’t understand why you were so surprised that our database is empty for your hometown (Boston). Now I assume that you didn’t just stop there and went with one of the pre-populated cities. If you started with New York City (which I assume you did because it’s closest to you), you should have at good amount of activities being displayed under each category. Remember though, it defaults to 10 miles…so if there are no parks/beaches within 10 miles of the zip you entered, you wont be able to find a place to fly kites (unless you do it in your backyard or on the street). You mentioned that “The database is so empty there is an echoâ€?…what zip code were you referring to?
“Planing a date: Countless other city guides like Citysearch, event-based sites like Heyletsgo, the list goes on.�
1. Citysearch is not in the date planning niche. The closest they come is to giving you an itinerary of date ideas (http://newyork.citysearch.com/roundup/39706). I’m surprised that you don’t find that a little restricting. As you can see, Citysearch only has 3 date ideas with 2-3 activities per date. Also, Citysearch does not help you plan these dates based on your zip code…what if you live in Brooklyn or Long Island?
2. Heyletsgo is a nice website if you’re looking for events that will be taking place in your neighborhood. That’s great and all, but PlanJam has no such feature. Now if you’re referring to the “event� icon on the home page, that is for “planning an event�…i.e. birthday party, wedding, etc. Are there competitors in that territory, sure, but you didn’t mention them.
The goal of PlanJam is to allow the user to find things to do in their neighborhood…beyond the nightlife, movie theaters, and restaurants. Citysearch has a remarkable amount of information, but you know what, I couldn’t find anything for Surfing, Local Beaches, Lookout Spots, or Picnic areas. I had no idea where to Rollerblade, Hike, Bike, Sky Dive, Play Basketball, or go Parasailing. I know this because we spent months aggregating all of this data from other people and hundreds of different websites. It would be nice to think that all of this information would be in one place, but it’s not that simple (notice that when you search our site for something you get the actual location…no sporting good stores, social clubs, or other fillers that are usually triggered by a keyword).
I am curious as to what you thought we weren’t doing well…you hinted at it but never really explained. Is it the interface? Icons? Navigation? If after reading this you still feel the same…that’s fine…we can’t force you to love our site. I just wanted to come on here and show a different side of the portrait you painted.
Best of Luck
Ron
I’m confused about point #2. You say PlanJam is local (10 mile radius) and then you say its has no local feature. I guess you mean neighborhood? Why wouldn’t you have that? I didn’t mention event planning competitors because by that time I was ready to move on and I’m interested in dating not event planners.
I was confused about your site because there is not explanation of how the site actually works, the FAQ is light and the blog is three posts about dating that I could see.
The site is almost too clean if you know what I mean. I undserstand you have to build up a database to make a site like this useful in other cities.
This is probably a good web service for existing high-volume sites. Would make a great widget for social nets and dating sites for example.
As far as the point I was trying to make, your blog doesnt allow for paragraph spacing so it looks like one big block of text. The point I was trying to make was that “heyletsgo” is a website that lets you find “events” in your neighborhood…for instance, a New Years Eve Party at a posh hotel. PlanJam, on the other hand, aggregates activities that are already available to you nearby and shows them to you up front. So for instance, say you made a date for the weekend and she live 40 miles away…you don’t really want to drive back to hang out in your neighborhood right? So you put in her zip and we will show you all ice skating rinks, bowling alleys, places to go hang gliding, etc. that are available within whatever radius you select (whether it is 10, 15, 25, or 50 miles). This can also be extended into the local scence…but again, only for finding “activities” to do in your neighborhood.
Of course you can google “bowling in 02101″ to get information on bowling alleys…but then what? You can’t save the information and you have to keep searching for each activity, assuming you can even think of them in the first place(and many will produce unrelated results…try hiking, basketball courts, or rollerblading in 02101). We also let you get point-to-point directions (thanks to yahoo) and we allow you to email your plan. Where else can you gather all this information, logically save it, and then get point-to-point directions…all without having to sign-up?
I don’t mind the critique…I know that there are tons of things that can be improved on…like providing more instruction to users. We are actually in the process of putting together a little flash tutorial to help users out. As far as the blog is concerned, I use it for basic dating tips, but thats just another added feature. I normally wouldn’t go through such a detailed blog response, but I really felt that this post deserved one. What I am confused about is what other date planning sites are out there?