EDIT: The Zappn blog recently posted a list of new features that have been added since launch. I highly recommend checking them out and just giving the site a tour.
I started this post back in May (the 29th, to be exact), but did not finish it as several features of the Zappn.com site were still in development. To ensure your first experience with them was a favorable one, I let them resolve said issues before I posted it. Of course, then I also got lazy and forgot to do the actual posting.
——-
I spent several hours tonight at the Zappn.com launch event, which was an excellent party and a perfect way to bring to life a new kind of social network. You see, at Zappn, it’s not about who you know, but rather what you do. So, for the inauguration of the new service, the Swindlr crew threw a party and let everyone sign up for an account and make comments during the party.
I was one of the lucky few to get a special beta of their iPhone app that let me make comments from my iPhone during the course of the party. Of course, anyone that was on Twitter and put #zappnlaunch in their tweet was also automatically parsed from Twitter and posted, as well. But I still felt special.
Anyway, the guys had a really sweet setup for the party. They had several computers set up with the several “Zappn girls” (special Zappn ambassadors for Kansas City that were onsite) to help get people set up with their new account and to show them how the site worked. They also partnered with Coca-Cola to provide Sprite Green to all attendees (verdict: pretty good, but not good enough to become my drink of choice; however, it is excellent when mixed with vodka and pomegranate juice). To top the night off, NOMATHMATICS was there to provide some excellent audible ambience to the evening.
So now, let me break down the service for you:
Right now, when you want to organize an event, you send out invites to all your friends via Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, whatever. Then, at the event, you and your friends take tons of pictures and throughout the night you either post the pictures and your feelings to Twitter or Facebook, or you wait until you get home and you (and all your friends) post the pictures to Snapfish, Photobucket, whatever, and then you use Twitter, email, etc. to tell all your friends to go check them out.
Well, Zappn incorporates all of those things into one service. So now, you go to Zappn and you create an event. Then you invite your friends via Zappn to come to your event. Then, while at the event, you upload your pictures and comments to Zappn directly from the event. And when you get home, you import your photos and upload them to Zappn. So, buy the end of the whole “eventstravaganza”, you can go back and see everything in one place.
The iPhone app is still a work in progress and is the only thing preventing this service from being the premier event organizer on the Internet. Once it hits, you can be certain that any event worth attending will be a Zappn event.
As soon as the iPhone app is available, I promise to have a review of it up, as it is being developed to have additional features to help with finding events to attend and allowing you to easily update your Zappn events on-the-go. I’ll be watching this space, and I suggest that you do, too.
Â

I can think of something else preventing Zappn from being the premier event organizer on the Internet … you can’t invite people to events if they aren’t already members of Zappn! None of the people I wanted to invite to my party are on there yet, so I wasn’t able to use it and had to go back to Facebook. The boys say it’s coming, but it seems like the kind of important feature that should be there from the beginning.
I can think of something else preventing Zappn from being the premier event organizer on the Internet … you can’t invite people to events if they aren’t already members of Zappn! None of the people I wanted to invite to my party are on there yet, so I wasn’t able to use it and had to go back to Facebook. The boys say it’s coming, but it seems like the kind of important feature that should be there from the beginning.
What I do is copy the link and just email it to people as a workaround for now. That’s how I organized our event to Weston, MO (that we canceled at the last minute due to pregnancy).
But I agree, that is a feature I sorely miss and am looking forward to seeing.
What I do is copy the link and just email it to people as a workaround for now. That’s how I organized our event to Weston, MO (that we canceled at the last minute due to pregnancy).
But I agree, that is a feature I sorely miss and am looking forward to seeing.