Social planning is a difficult space to tackle. Plenty of apps have tried and failed at creating a popular social planning app, and even Foursquare’s Swarm has shied away from being a utility to transform into a multi-layered game.
But LivnList, an app that launched recently on the App Store, is hoping to get social planning right.
After signing up for the service (and inviting friends), users can check out an activity feed of different things their friends are doing (or plan to do), with filters to search by date or location. Alongside the activity feed, users can also look at their friends’ profiles to see all the open events that are upcoming.
Each event has its own group chat so that users can discuss logistics, etc. and as soon as a user joins an event, it is stored in their own personal LivnList calendar.
For folks who are more plan-oriented, the app allows you to create your own events with either a picture or video invite and send it to specific friends within the app.
Obviously, for LivnList (or any social planning app) to be successful, it must escape ’empty room syndrome,’ meaning that users won’t likely find much use out of the app unless their friends are on it.
Traditionally, folks have used email or text messages to get together with their friends, and though more full-featured options have become available the behavior hasn’t changed much. LivnList certainly offers a wide range of features that will make it easier (and probably more fun) to hang out with friends, but getting people to change their behavior could prove difficult.
That said, the app has an easy-to-use UI and is the first social planning app (that I’ve seen, anyway) to incorporate video invites, which adds a more personal feel to the idea of hanging out.
You can check out LivnList yourself right here.
