WhozAround: Twitter For Your Calendar

This summer I've had the pleasure of watching a new tech company be born right in my back yard. It's called Peoples' Software, and it's the brain child of two of the smartest community-minded entrepreneurs I know: Susan Mernit and Lisa Williams.

People's Software is one of the latest projects of TechStars, a venture capital and mentoring program in Boulder, Colorado that's generating some very interesting and cutting-edge startups. Among them is the social network aggregator service SocialThing, which was just acquired by AOL.

Lisa Williams provides a sneak peak of their company's first Facebook app, WhozAround, on the People's Software blog. She calls it "Twitter for your calendar," and it's all about making it easy to organize events without requiring people to sign up for another service. The events come to you through the social network or platform you use most -- initially Facebook, but eventually also Twitter, e-mail and your mobile device. This makes a ton of sense, especially the mobile component, for which eVite -- the service I use for invitations -- is a disaster.

I haven't seen the full service yet, but based on the track record of these two smart, accomplished women, I think it's worth following. Tomorrow I'll be hearing more about People's Software and other TechStars programs at a presentation in Boulder.

Full disclosure: Susan is running next year's Knight News Challenge, for which I'm a screener, and Lisa is a News Challenge winner from the previous year for PlaceBlogger. I also briefly worked with Susan at AOL years ago. I initially learned about their project because I know them, but it's not why I'm talking about it. I really think they're onto something with the idea of leveraging social services people are already using instead of creating yet another destination.

whozaround, techstars, peoplessoftware