The Dinosaur vs. The Cloud

“Why is it so hard to kill a web 1.0 dinosaur” asks Scott Kirsner in his blog this week? To investigate, Scott interviews Matt Douglas, founder of MyPunchbowl.

If you are not familiar with MyPunchbowl, it is a great party planning site. I will be using it to send out both ecards and invitations to our holiday parties, although it can do much more.

“In many ways, they've built a site that has surpassed the Web 1.0 dinosaur of party planning, Evite” writes Kirsner. “MyPunchbowl makes it much easier to decide upon the best date for a gathering among a group of friends, or organize a potluck where everyone brings a different dish, for instance… but MyPunchbowl (founded in 2007) still lags way behind Evite (founded in 1997) in terms of usage.”

Yet MyPunchbowl forges ahead, announcing this week the acquisition of some assets from GroupGo of Waltham to help party hosts find local vendors, such as a flower shop, a balloon-delivery service, or a Mexican restaurant with a private dining room.

I asked Matt Douglas if had a technological advantage over established competitors? “Yes, absolutely -- we're heavily involved with Cloud Computing. In fact, you can mention that the new MyPunchbowl local vendor portal is built off of the Amazon EC2 cluster. Fast, robust, and scalable; perfect for a project like the local vendor portal and for a startup like MyPunchbowl.”

So we have here not just a clash of applications, but a clash of technologies. My bet is on Cloud technology and on MyPunchbowl.
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Full disclosure: the eCoast Angels, of which I am a member, participated in the original financing of MyPunchbowl.