Doodle is a free web app which helps you find suitable dates for group events, like an appointment, a conference call etc. It’s been around for a while as a hacker project, but after growing has now turned into a real startup.
The proposition has always been simple: create a poll for a suitable meeting time and let people fill in the blanks about when they are available. It’s a an idea which works very well, and is easily messed up. London-based ikordo closed through lack of funding, a complex interface and the inability to convert its largely corporate target market to the idea. By contrast Doodle has grown virally amongst geeks.
However, the London and Zurich-based Doodle, has just gone live with an Outlook plugin which allows Outlook users to automatically fill in Doodle polls and to book tentative and final slots in their calendar. In adddition, the generic MyDoodle ICS Calendar feed will connect Doodle to all other major calendars like Google Calendar, Sunbird, or Mac’s iCal and keep users updated on the state of their Doodle polls.
Doodle’s competitors include Tungle and Timebridge.
But guess what?
Tungle also comes as an Outlook plugin that automatically loads all of your contacts and calendar events (either from Outlook itself or other calendar apps like Google Calendar). You can choose to share your schedule with others who also have the plugin installed, and you can invite others to a meeting whether or not they use Outlook. Tungle raised $1.5m from JLA Ventures and Des Jardins Venture Capital in May 2007. TimeBridge, originally started out as a deeply integrated Outlook plug-in but re-launched with a full web only interface that integrates with your Google and Outlook calendars, and others. Jiffle is another competitor, also with Outlook sharing.
Both are larger and have more funding than Doodle, however, they currently claims a healthy and growing 2.5 million unique users with 80,000 users in the UK.
So perhaps Doodle will rely on other aspects to set it apart?
It’s unveiling a branded service to enable organisations to run their own private Doodle meeting scheduler. And a version to create a new poll via email rather than the Web using an email bot via init[@]doodle.com.
More significantly they are also opening up their RESTful Doodle API to enable developers to create new apps on their platform to improve scheduling of meetings, conference calls and social events. Developers could create email-based interfaces and Windows-based desktop widgets, or even integrate Doodle into mobile platforms, like Blackberry, and web portals. The Doodle API is RESTful and supports the OAuth, the promising protocol to allow secure authorization of web services. And they’re offering a week in Zurich to the developer with the best Doodle-based application.
Personally I like Doodle. I’ve been using it since it was created and it basically just works, so I’d recommend anyone giving it a try.
Congrats guys, Doodle rocks!
Tried them all, and have had the most success (most appointments booked) with timedriver.com. Very stable and a superb UI for booking and scheduling time slots. Integrates with Outlook.
I tried most of them. I’ve been using Tungle for the last four months. Works great with Google as well as Outlook. I also used it with Salesforce using a small script. I use it both for 1-1 or group meetings. To the point and fast.
I just hooked Tungle up to my Outlook – super easy! Gonna try scheduling a few meetings now.
Don’t know about the service, but unfortunate name…it worked for Yahoo and Google but at this point double-O’s look childish and unoriginal.
Tungle works. My sales team uses it to connect with each other and clients so I know it’s easy. I like the salesforce integration idea – whats the small script?
Hi Andrew – Glad to have your team on Tungle! We actually have a blog post explaining how to use Tungle inside your Salesforce account:
http://blog.tungle.com/tungleblog/2009/01/tungle-for-salesforce.html
It’s a user-created script that was shared with us, and we’ve had some great feedback on it. Feel free to shoot us an email if you have any questions.
Happy Tungling!
I don’t understand this companies branding at all. Doodle.com is a great domain and the name Doodle has tremendous creative potential yet they’ve registered a plain blue font as their logo.
Also their website is void of anything memorable, and…umm… who was I talking about?
You should also mention the patent pending product Pick A Place that crazymenu has had: http://www.crazymenu.com/pap
It’s more slick and works with IM via an IM bot for instant response gathering. It allows users to pick the best time and place.
There is also a facebook version of it as well:
http://apps.facebook.com/pickaplace/
Includes one the best contact importer UI out there not to mention the database of existing half million locations in US and world wide.
Enjoy
Look out for a redesigned and improved http://www.mixin.com coming soon…
Not listed here is MeetingMade (www.meetingmade.com), a competitor to all. MeetingMade is great because it has all the functionality without any software/download requirements. Even solutions that say you need to install software, at some point require it.
It also has an algorithm that produces the best fit for all. Your not limited to specific slots.
Aimed at the consumer market and less complex than the others is the Dutch start-up http://sortofdate.com/ which is currently in beta.