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"Mashable mentioned the launch of Renkoo before Christmas.  This week, guest writer Kristen Nicole caught up with Renkoo founders Joyce Parkand Adam Rifkin in an interview. \nRenkoo is a new social network that paves a better way for connecting with the friends you already have.  In beta mode since early April, its public launch last Thursday has brought much attention from the press as its revolutionary use of Comet, an enhanced form of Ajax, is hailed by the tech community for its ability to better the social realms of web 2.0 culture.\nJoyce Park, a former senior web developer at Friendster, and Adam Rifkin of KnowNow.com began to brainstorm about Renkoo in the wake of the dot com bust. Once the outcropping of social networks became the most prevalent form of interaction on the web, Park noted that \u201Cat the time a lot of people were thinking that social networking is cool, but we wondered \u2018what is it really going to be used for?\u2019\u201D  Well, for the extremely social people that have a difficult enough time keeping their work schedules organized, let alone finding a good time to simply meet up with friends.  Casual outings are a part of our everyday lives, and instead of spending erroneous time on the phone or in your email inbox, Renkoo automates, simplifies, and congregates the most vital aspects of arranging a get together, and those are the people involved.\nThe concept is simple.  Use Renkoo to begin the organization of a gathering.  Invite the people you want to see there.  If they haven\u2019t signed up for Renkoo, they are enrolled.  Now that you have everybody together, you can reach a consensus on when you\u2019ll meet.  The conversation is fed to you in various formats that you can choose from, so you can participate via your instant messenger, email, SMS or on Renkoo.  Their Comet technology enables Renkoo to allow two-way, real time communication for all that are taking part in the discussion.  If someone isn\u2019t logged in, the conversation will be displayed in full the next time they go to their Renkoo account.\nThis may sound a bit complicated for some, even in its simplicity.  This is in large part due to the new type of communication that Renkoo\u2019s service permits.  Some users may be slightly uncomfortable at first, solely because it\u2019s something they are not accustomed to.  This proved to be one of the challenges Park and Rifkin faced when experimenting their site while in beta mode. \nAnother challenge the makers of Renkoo faced are extremely important for a social site such as theirs, especially since it is designed for those that are looking to spend more time with people they are already close to.  \u201COne of the things that gets forgotten in the whole web 2.0 world is that even if it\u2019s possible in the technical world, we may not want to do it in the real world,\u201D Joyce remarked in our interview.  What Park means by this is that her team learned early on that replicating the natural way in which people interact in real life is a good guideline for how Renkoo should be arranged.  For example, the events created by users on Renkoo were initially public, as this is the standard for established sites such as Evite.  Yet the Renkoo team found that this wasn\u2019t the optimal way to go about smaller event planning.  \u201CWe made a conscious decision\u2026that events should be, by default, private, and that seems to be working out very well,\u201D Rifkin mentioned during the same interview.\nA driving force for the continued improvement of Renkoo during their nearly year-long beta testing mode was the reality that people are passionate about social networking.  So for a network founded on developing existing intimate relationships with friends to be anything less than genuine and usable was unacceptable for the well-seasoned Park and Rifkin.  \u201CThe kind of software we make is about people that you already know and love and want to spend time with.  You don\u2019t want to look bad in front of your friends,\u201D Park says as a testament to the degree of personal and professional effort she put into the development of Renkoo.  And it shows.  Renkoo, named as a derivation of a form of Japanese poetry called renku, is a collaborative composition from friends sitting together, each giving a verse to cultivate the collective piece of art.\nEditor's Note: Mashable HQ is offline today, so expect little or no posting.  Also check out Mashable's recent reviews of Renkoo competitors Vibely, MingleNow,   HeyLetsGo, ILCU and all the companies nominated for events category of the Social Networking Awards.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/12/29/renkoo/>