Punchbowl Blog

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

April Fool’s Day is upon us so watch your back! This fun holiday is marked by practical jokes and hoaxes but what is the origin of this wacky holiday? I did a little research and here’s what I learned. Very, very interesting…

First off, the origins of April Fool’s Day are pretty sketchy, but I found one theory that I really like. According to multiple sources, ancient cultures, including the Romans and the Hindus, celebrated New Year’s Day on or around April 1 as it closely follows the vernal equinox. However, in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar–the Gregorian Calendar–in which New Year’s was to be celebrated on January 1. France adopted the new calendar, however many people refused to accept the new date, or didn’t learn about it, and continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1. Other people began to make fun of them, sending them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe and beyond.

This hypothesis isn’t fully accepted due to the timing of the calendar changes throughout Europe. However, I like it and here’s why. Here at MyPunchbowl we like big celebrations. What is a bigger reason to celebrate than the New Year? Let’s go old-school and start a wave of New Year’s parties in April!

Okay, maybe that’s a little far-fetched, but if you want in on some April Fool’s Day fun check out our April Fool’s Day eCards. You can play a practical joke on someone without even leaving your desk (and thus leaving yourself vulnerable to be pranked)!

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

Over the past four years, I’ve frequented a hot dog diner in Natick, MA called “Casey’s Diner.” I first discovered Casey’s about six months after I moved into Natick (after a few unsuccessful attempts to find it). Casey’s is the most non-descript, perfect place to get lunch. They serve a very limited menu — specializing in hot dogs and hamburgers. On a given day, I’d estimate more than 50% of the crowd are regulars. The tiny diner has been part of Natick’s culture since 1922. Inside the diner, there are only 11 seats at the bar-like counter. Many customers order from the simple take-out window on the side of the building:

In my opinion, there is a lot that an entrepreneur can learn from watching the lunch shift at Casey’s. They run a very tight ship — and it’s a study in operations and customer service. Over the past few years, I’ve sat at the counter countless times watching Pat Casey and his team work their lunch magic. There is much to write about what they do so well — today, I’d like to cover how Pat has taught his customers to order at the take-out window.

When a customer comes up to the window (usually to order hot dogs), Pat typically says hello and asks “What can I get you today?” Those who have ordered at Casey’s in the past know that the hot dogs come “standard” with yellow mustard, relish, and chopped onions. In Casey’s parlance, this is an “all-around.” Customers can also choose to add ketchup. With everything on the hot dog, it’s called a “Wellesley” (as the old Natick joke goes: the neighboring town of Wellesley has everything). That’s what Casey’s offers on hot dogs — nothing more and nothing less. Simple, and very delicious.

Invariably during the lunch shift, a customer will come to the window and tell Pat that he wants a hot dog “but without relish” or “without the onions.” Quick as a flash, Pat Casey responds “I don’t care what you don’t want, tell me what you do want.”

Watching this interaction, I always feel a surge of inner glee. One customer at a time, Pat teaches his customers how to order at Casey’s. I secretly love watching the befuddled customers as they stutter and try to order again. You can practically see the realization on their face as they hone in on what they do want. Once in a while (on a particularly special day) Pat has to repeat his mantra. And on very rare occasions (and when Pat is in a mood) he simply doesn’t tolerate customers who don’t tell him what they want. “Why don’t you come back when you know what you want” he’ll say, as he shifts his attention to the next customer in line. (Oh, the glee!)

This anecdote has many wonderful lessons for entrepreneurs. Allow me to pick a few:

1. Teach your customers how to order. They’ll get what they want faster, and you’ll be able to service more customers.
2. Ask customers what they do want — and don’t spend time listening to them ramble on about what they don’t want. If I had a dollar for every time a MyPunchbowl customer told me what they didn’t want…
3. Repeat your core message as many times as needed until every single one of your customers hears your message. Don’t assume that everyone has heard your message even if you have told the last five people.
4. It’s harsh to admit, but some customers are expendable. If a customer is taking too much of your time and preventing you from servicing other customers, then it’s ok to ask the customer to move on.
5. Provide a great product, but don’t feel like you need to offer all possible options. Sometimes mustard, relish, and onions are good enough.

If you ever find yourself in Natick, Massachusetts during lunch hour, ask the locals how to get to Casey’s. When you show up, tell Pat what you want. Because he doesn’t care what you don’t want.

This post written by Eric Peden, Director of Operations & Analytics

One of the wonders of an Internet business is that we have reams of data to pore over from tools like Google Analytics and internal metrics:  Who sends us the most traffic? Which marketing programs are the most cost-effective? Where are hosts and guests willing to spend money?

One of my favorite questions to examine is:  What do we want the customer to do?  For starters, we want our hosts to enjoy the process of using our site and to feel good about how they are represented by our product.  And, we want guests to have a favorable impression of the host and of our site.

We can use our data to see how well we live up to these goals.  User behavior tracking shows us how hosts are using our workflow and if there are any confusing points that we need to address.  Host survey data gives us both qualitative feedback and solid trend analysis for our brand.  And, finally, we can track how many guests create an account and host their own events.  Ultimately, the quality of our product shows up in the numbers.

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

Besides web browsers, the program that I use most often and most successfully is definitely SnagIt. If you haven’t heard of it, SnagIt (made by TechSmith) is a screen capture tool plus an image editor. Basically it lets you capture an image of what’s on your screen (or a portion of it) and then you can edit that image, move things around and add text and arrows and stuff. That’s just the basics really, it does a whole lot more.

~disclaimer - there is no disclaimer! I have no relationship with TechSmith - I just love SnagIt!!~

I’ve used SnagIt for a few years now and I’d like to think I’m pretty good with it. But the best part of the program is that it doesn’t take long to get good with it. The Editor portion of the program has just enough of what you want to do. It’s like Photoshop but without all the slew of tools and buttons that you can’t easily figure out how to use and wow there are a lot of them and man all you really want to do is grab this line of text and move it a few pixels down! With the SnagIt editor you just draw a box around it and move it.

We find SnagIt invaluable for quickly testing out interface ideas or making mockups or pointing out something in an interface.

Enough said - if you’re at all curious they have a free 30 day trial. Seriously now, I don’t know anyone at TechSmith!! But maybe they’ll send me a T-shirt??

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

As you know from Matt’s post yesterday, we just launched MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders — an easy and dependable way to keep track of the birthdays that matter the most.

We got some great press coverage about MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders and I thought I’d share some of it with you.

Terrence Russell from VentureBeat writes:

 ”Although I’ve seen my share of reminder/event tools, what makes the Birthday Reminder service interesting is its call to action. Whereas Facebook and MySpace mostly leverage birth dates for gift giving/micro-transactions within their sites, the Birthday Reminder service folds seamlessly into MyPunchbowl’s activity driven focus by referring users to its party planning application and free eCards. From there, it kind of makes sense to transform static birthday reminders into…well, actual birthday parties.”

Josh Lowensohn from CNET’s Webware writes:

“Where the system holds real value is that it’s deeply tied into MyPunchbowl’s other services. For instance, if it’s someone you were never intending to get a gift or a real card for, you can simply use MyPunchbowl’s eCard service and send it to them using the information you’ve already gathered. By contrast, you can also turn around and begin planning a party right away using the built-in tools.”

So what do you think? Have you tried MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders yet? Create your own birthday reminder list for free at http://www.punchbowl.com/birthday-reminders.

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

By now I hope you’ve heard that we launched a new service today: MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders. I’m really proud of how this product came together, and I hope that it will be very useful to our customers. I thought I’d take a few moments to explain why we decided to create this new product.

Birthdays are a big part of our business. Whether it’s on our party planning site or on our free eCards site, our customers love to celebrate birthdays using MyPunchbowl. Personally, I use MyPunchbowl eCards a few times a month to wish someone a happy birthday with a personalized eCard, and about once or twice a year I’m involved with planning a birthday party on MyPunchbowl. As the CEO of MyPunchbowl, I know it’s important to improve our birthday-related functionality.

I’ve always looked at reminder services and thought they were very useful — especially for remembering birthdays. A handful of years ago, my wife signed up for a birthday alarm service, and I’ve seen how she’s used it to remember important birthdays. While she uses a web-based service, most of the birthdays I want to remember are in my personal calendar. Although my calendar usually helps me remember (at least during the week), more often than not I find myself wishing that I had gotten a reminder before the actual birthday.

Before we started working on the birthday reminders product, I spent a lot of time looking at the existing birthday reminder services. Most of the existing sites that are out there are very outdated or too simplistic. One site that stands apart is Facebook (both as a native service and several Facebook applications). Isn’t *everyone* on Facebook these days? Why would we launch a new service that already exists as part of Facebook?

As I see it, MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders solves a different problem. I don’t know about you, but like many Facebook users, I have hundreds of “friends” in my social network on Facebook. Frankly, I don’t care about most of their birthdays. MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders are for the 30-40 people you actually care about, and want a reminder. We see it as a much more personal service for keeping track of those birthdays that matter (and especially useful for birthdays of people who are *not* on Facebook, such as kids, parents and grandparents).

We built MyPunchbowl Birthday Reminders so that our customers could build a useful list of birthday reminders — just the ones you want to make sure you don’t forget. In my list, I have my close friends, my nieces and nephews, my brothers, and other close family members (yes cuz, you made it in). My entire list is about 35 people. I don’t expect it to grow much, and it’s really comforting to know that I’ll get a few reminders before the actual birthday rolls around. And one of my favorite features? MyPunchbowl keeps track of the age of everyone on my list. Very useful.

If you haven’t set up your birthday reminder list yet, give it a shot: it will only take 5 minutes to get started and you can always come back and add more. Try it out for free at http://www.punchbowl.com/birthday-reminders

Here’s a screenshot of our new service. Let us know what you think in the comments of this blog post.

This post written by Eric Peden, Director of Operations & Analytics

At MyPunchbowl, we’re always looking for reasons to celebrate. The quirkier, the better. I noticed on a random website that Saturday is National Corn Dog Day.  Now, corn dogs have a special place in our family…my son and I share one every time we go to the zoo or to a baseball game.  So, we’ll be celebrating this…well…”holiday”…with pride on Saturday.  Two corn dogs, freshly battered with mustard, and another trip to the zoo.

Looking for more goofy reasons to celebrate?  This website is a great starting place.  My personal favorite?  August 8:  “Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Night”.  Looks like we’ll be starting a new tradition at the Peden household this summer.

What’s your favorite reason — or non-reason — to party?

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

Our latest site update includes many new and exciting enhancements. We’re particularly happy with the new polish that we’ve given to “guest view” (how the invitation is seen by your guests). We processed a ton of feedback from hosts and guests alike to create a better guest experience. Here are the highlights:

• Top header redesigned for a cleaner look

• Tab design updated for a better user experience

• “Continue” and “Previous” buttons at the bottom of each screen for smooth navigation

• Better layout for Save the Dates

Check out a screenshot:

Be sure to ask your guests what they think when you plan your next event!

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

As you are probably aware by now today is St. Patrick’s Day. MyPunchbowl offers several ways for people to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in their own way–either as a host of a St. Patrick’s Day party, perhaps as a guest to a party, or by designing and sending free eCards.

In my position as marketing manager, my goal is to drive traffic on days like today when the likelihood of sending eCards for a given holiday are much higher than any other day.

Earlier today I did a Twitter search for St. Patrick’s Day and noticed that five of the top ten trending topics were related to St. Patrick’s Day. Keep in mind that only on St. Patrick’s Day would you find a color in the trending topics and know exactly why it’s made it’s way to the top of Twitter’s most mentioned list.

If only I had a way to easily reach out to all of these people! Just reading through the pages of search results, it’s clear that most of them are excited about the holiday and more often than not are just tweeting to wish their followers a happy St. Patrick’s Day. I just want to shout from the rooftops to them about how they can fully customize a St. Patrick’s Day eCard on MyPunchbowl that they can share on Twitter.

On more than one occasion, I’ve wanted a way to Tweet all of the people who mentioned a particular trending topic but there is no such thing. Next best option: advertising.

There’s been a lot written about Twitter and the possibility of advertising. As recently as yesterday Michael Arrington wrote about how Twitter is experimenting with text advertising. As a Twitter user I understand those people who don’t want there to be advertising on the site. However, as a marketer I really appreciate the ability to finely target advertising to a group that is active, tech savvy, and enthusiastic about a particular topic.

As Twitter keeps growing and becomes more mainstream (I heard it mentioned on “The View” the other day), I think it will be impossible for them not to offer advertising. When that day comes maybe you’ll see MyPunchbowl there.

This post written by Eric Peden, Director of Operations & Analytics

I recently returned home from my monthly trip to MyPunchbowl headquarters, and I struck up a conversation with a woman seated next to me. We inevitably landed on a familiar question:  “What do you do?”

MyPunchbowl is a fun company to talk about — who doesn’t like parties? — and the site generally intrigues folks who are hearing about us for the first time. We talked about how she could use the site for her church gatherings, and we discussed a few of the ups and downs of working for a startup.

But when I asked her, “What do you do?”, her response was different. “I solve problems for University Hospital in Cincinnati,” she replied.

I liked the directness of what she said, even if it didn’t offer many details about the nature of her job. (Turns out, she was a nurse administrator.)  My seatmate had a very clear idea in her own mind about what she did every day:  wake up, go to work, solve problems.  And with that kind of clear purpose, I’m pretty sure she’s good at what she does.