Capsule debuts mobile apps to better coordinate events

No more missing out on the great pictures from last night, Capsule looks to keep it all in one place

Coordinating a party can give even the most organized person a major headache. From getting out the invites to making sure everyone gets to the same place at the same time and collecting all the photos taken, there are Web tools that can assist in party planning, but few have collected multiple tools in order to help synthesize event information from beginning to end.

One company is bringing its service out of beta Thursday and launching an iPhone and Android app to provide a method of sharing event details and photos from the invite through the planning and aggregation up to the archival process.

Capsule, which was founded in 2011, aims to create a seamless way to connect private groups of people so that they can share in the information and photos from any event that they participated in together.

I have created many Facebook events in order to easily send information to a select group of my friends and provide a forum for planning and coordination -- but one big area where Facebook events falls behind is that once the event happens, the page seems to die. People don't save those pages as memories or add photos from the event to share with one another -- Capsule wants that to be a major function of its service so that everyone can see the same group of photos and even video taken at the party.

"Memories often end up getting lost or never shared after an event happens," Capsule CEO and co-founder Cyrus Farudi told me in an interview. "And we want to take all those broken pieces and create a system where people are all able to enjoy all of the pieces of the event floating out there -- and can share it in a private network."

With just $300,000 in angel funding, Capsule is poised to see how quickly the service can organically grow before it starts to implement its monetization strategy, which could eventually include partnerships with hotels, airlines, car services and other groups that would like to reach out with targeted deals for group events.

"From bachelor parties to weddings and family reunions, everyone can find a use for better event planning tools," said Co-founder and CTO Omri Cohen. "And since you may have ongoing groups, you get the perk of having all the memories with that group of friends all in one place."

How does it work

A user can sign-up for the service or connect it through their Facebook and name an event and invite whomever and as many people to the event as they wish.

Once the event is created, more details can be added, such as location, time, and further details. Each event or group created is designated a unique email address and phone number that invitees can use to connect with the whole group or use to request more details. For instance, if someone in the group forgets what time the event is, they can text the unique group phone number the command #time and will receive a text from the Capsule service with the event time posted on the service.

The iPhone and Android applications also offer a Capsule Cam that allows users to take photos at the event or in relation to the event and will auto-upload them to the event wall so that people can see everything being captured in real time.

Attendees could also use their own camera function or upload from their computer after the fact -- but I do love the idea of real-time updates going onto the site so that no one hordes those pictures for three weeks or forever.

The unique email and phone number also allows those within the group to send mass communication to everyone in the group for even great coordination. 

While Capsules are private by default, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t connect with the other services. Users can pull in and push out content to and from other social networks including Facebook and Twitter.

“The problem we saw was that all the existing services for planning, communicating, and photo sharing around events and groups were incomplete," said Omri Cohen. "Pieces of the process had been solved, but there wasn’t a solution that handled the entire life-cycle properly. It seems natural that the same service you use to plan and invite should also allow you to communicate with the group and share photos.” 

Event planning site, Eventbrite announced in May that it has raised a $50 million Series E round of funding led by Tiger Global with participation from several other firms. And earlier this month, the event industry online facilitator Eved announced $9.5 million series B funding round, led by New World Ventures and MK Capital, with previous investor Merrick Ventures participating.

It will be interesting to see if the consolitdation of Eved, Eventbrite, Facebook and Flickr in the form of Capsule is the solution to the problem of silowed memories or if that is the nature of the game.