Wow - - thanks for the chuckle (and the kudos) Divalicious and Cranky Mom we all loved reading your posts.  

-margo

Normally we wouldn't just post a press release to the blog, but things are a bit busy today, and I wanted to get this online right away.  I'll be posting with some more details shortly. 

invitation creation and event management site, which allows hosts to easily send stylish invitations to their guests using surroundSend technology (via Facebook, email, SMS, print and the web), now expands to include Twitter

New York, NY (August 5, 2008) - pingg, the invitation creation and event management site that brings style, functionality and personality to events you plan on the web, announced today, the expansion of its comprehensive invitation distribution platform to include Twitter. Using pingg’s surroundSend technology, pingg allows hosts to easily and seamlessly send their custom invitations via email, SMS, print (pingg prints, stamps and mails the invitations for you), the web, and via social networks such as Facebook. Now, with the addition of Twitter to the pingg surroundSend platform, hosts will be able to reach even more guests across their social networks and social media, enabling greater event promotion and easier RSVP functionality.

Once a host designs a custom pingg invitation, this new feature allows them to automatically and seamlessly post their invitations to their Twitter feed.   Anyone following the host’s Twitter feed can immediately click through Twitter to the web invitation to get all the event details and to RSVP.   At the host’s option, invited guests can also share the invitations by posting to their own Twitter feeds.

This expanded functionality gives hosts an even greater ability to reach their friends and to invite new people, while continuing to easily manage event RSVP’s received within Twitter and elsewhere, all from pingg’s single integrated platform.

Says Lorien Gabel, co-founder & CEO, “Before pingg, if hosts wanted to send event invitations to all of their guests, they likely had to cobble together a distribution plan which often included individual emails, text messages, print invites for those who weren’t online (parents & grandparents) and posts to Facebook, an un-organized and often time-consuming process.   With pingg, all these communication channels have been unified onto a single platform, allowing hosts to send invitations any way they wish and manage their events and RSVPS from one place, something that’s never been done before.”

Says co-founder & CTO, Matt Harrop, “Integrating Twitter functionality into the pingg platform allows us to provide hosts yet another way to easily and simply create, plan and manage their events on the web. As hosts continue to expand their communication channels, as well as join new social networks, we are prepared to expand and provide ways for them to send their invitations and manage their events across the platforms of their choice.”

pingg’s ultimate goal is to enable hosts to design stylish, customized invitations and easily share those invitations with their ever-expanding social networks.   pingg’s surroundSend platform ensures that the integrity of the design and the look & feel of the invitation are preserved and uniform, regardless of the platform being used for distribution.

With its stylish designs, integrated print and online features, easy to use tools, and now with the incorporation of Twitter, pingg will change the way you create, plan and manage your event on the web.   With pingg, every invitation is well sent!

Our development team has also been hard at work finding and fixing the bugs and glitches that are inevitable in a web application like pingg. We do our best to make every release and new feature perfect, but we're only human and things do sometimes get through. I'd like to thank our hosts who've taken the time to write to support@pingg.com to ask questions, and let us know about problems they discover.

Matt Harrop
co-founder

This year, The Today Show chose to go online and used pingg to design and send custom wedding invitations for the big event. The benefit of sending online invitations was that within hours of the winning couple, LaDonna and Darnell, being selected, their invitations had been designed and sent. As pingg also offers the option of sending both digital and print invitations from one place - the couple did not have to choose whether to send their invitation via email or postal mail. Thus guests also recieved a traditional print invitation a few days after the email invitation.

The elegant pingg invitations featured a beautiful image of cherry blossoms which brought the wedding theme, "East Meets West," to life. The unique cherry blossom image was found using pingg Plus+, our proprietary custom search tool. Pink, the bride's favorite color, was then selected as the background color, for the ultimate custom online invitation.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the producers and wedding planners were able to easily and simply keep track of guests / rsvps, send reminders ("don't forget to bring your ID for check in at security"), and add last minute names to the list. The day before the big event, wedding organizers exported the complete guest list for easy check-in.

With a pingg invitation, not only did the winning couple get a beautiful custom invitation, but they and their guests also enjoyed a custom wedding event web page that featured photos from the couple's engagement day, the couple's submission video for the Today Show, and a place for guests to post notes to the happy couple.

Needless to say, pingg was thrilled to be part of Today Throws a Wedding: Race to the Altar festivities. We wish LaDonna & Darnell great happiness.

Have a wedding, engagement party or shower in your future? Design a memorable custom digital and print invitation, with pingg.

Margo Spiritus
VP, Marketing & Business Development
pingg.com

We were also thrilled that the article allows us to now discuss both sides of the digital vs. print debate as it concerns more formal events. Many “old-school” etiquette experts would argue that a wedding is no place for digital invitations, and that notion is something that pingg has always taken into consideration, which is why we offer hosts the opportunity to send both digital and print invitations. Because pingg allows you to create actual customized digital invitations, rather than a link to a web-page, when hosts create their guestlist, we allow them to choose which guests should receive digital invitations via email and which guests should receive the printed invitation via post (pingg does all of the mailing), or, alternatively, hosts can choose to send both an email as well as a printed invitation to all of their guests.

We at pingg think that it is the combination of the online webpage/event management site as well as the ability to print custom invitations, that allow hosts to have their cake and eat it too, i.e. to seamlessly fuse the feel of print with the advantages of online management. For those brides who want the keepsake of an invitation, not only can they keep the printed invitation and store it in a wedding album, but they also have the opportunity to build the online webage as a virtual keepsake by posting pictures, uploading videos, including a personal note or poem on the webpage invitation, as well as the ability to see their guests comments and well wishes.

Judging by the enormous number of people using pingg to send their wedding related invitations—whether they be engagements, showers, brunches, bachelor/ette parties and reception invitations—brides and grooms are agreeing with our philosophy that digital invitations only enhance the event planning process.

We here at pingg hope that people will continue to enjoy and discover the quality and intimacy that arises when you are given the opportunity to share more of yourselves with your friends and family via a digital and custom printed invitation, than you would be able to using traditional invitations.

Margo Spiritus
VP, Marketing & Business Development

Since this isn't the first time that we've heard a refrain like Maggies, we've spent a lot of time selecting original, virtually-unseen designs that style conscious hosts will be excited to use and discover. For those who choose to use the free invitation, as opposed to uploading their own images or buying a custom photo from pingg Plus+, we've worked hard to curate an amazing collection of invitations. Some of our new favorites are designs that come from our web branding agency extraordinaire, P.S. New York. They are a series of eight sparking lights images that can be found in the “patterns/textures” category under “Themes”. The pink/green version seems to be a favorite. It has already been popular for engagement invitations, weddings, showers and dinner parties.

Our Designer Series is the place were we give our users the opportunity to use original artwork from established, as well as up-and-coming artists, all for free. We recently added two new artists, an extremely talented illustrator and graphic designer, Jennifer Daniels as well as a unique mixed-media artist, Stephanie DosReis. We urge you to check out each of our designers to add that extra unique stylized quality to your own personal event.


In order for you, the host, to have as many options as possible in creating your personalized invitation, we are continually adding artists to our Designer Series on a regular basis. Of course if you are an artists yourself (graphic designer, illustrator, painter, photographer, mixed media etc.) and are interested in participating, please email us at artists@pingg.com.

We hope you enjoy all of the new invitation additions. It is our goal that hosts discover new designs and invitations that will inspire their events each time they visit pingg.com.

• The status box, with the preview and send buttons included have been moved to the bottom of the page.
• The extra space on the right side of the page has been used to give the invitation creation functions more room, making them less cramped.
• It's now easy to select the delivery method for invitations on a guest by guest basis.  Now you can choose which guests to invite by email, postcards, or SMS one by one.
• Reminders and thank you notes are now more flexible, and also more straight forward.  We've set up some defaults that people will be happy with, and also made it easy to change their content, and when and who they're sent to.

On the event management side, we've made more extensive changes:

• The most important event reporting features are now at the top of the page.  The summary of RSVPs, Guest Count, and other key event information are front and center, so it's easy to find out what's happening with your event at a quick glance.
• An event activity log has been added to the event report.  The log shows a running list of activities, letting you watch RSVPs come in, and generally track what's happening with your event on a line by line basis.
• The activity log can be downloaded as a .csv file, and loaded into Excel or another spreadsheet.  This feature is useful for professionals, and anyone else who wants to keep detailed records.
• The guest list function has been enhanced in a number of ways.  There are now easy to use buttons to add guests to your invitation, edit your guest list, and also print or export your list. 
• A powerful bounce fixer has been introduced.  With one click you can bring up a list of invitations that failed to be delivered, and take immediate corrective action to get the invitations to these recipients.
• Your guests +1 count and the names of their guests are now editable.  If one of your guests emails you, or lets you know directly that they're bringing someone, you can now update their RSVP and keep your head count accurate.
• We've introduced a reply feature to your guests private messages.  With one click, you can send a private message directly to any of your guests, right from the guest list.
• Creating and editing reminders, messages and thank you notes is now a one step process.  Each type of message can be set up on one screen, with no need to go through a confirmation process. 
• Reviewing and updating your current invitation has been centralized into one tab, and it's now easy to resend your invitation to selected guests, or all your guests if you so choose.

Overall, we've streamlined the process of creating and managing an invitation and also introduced a number of frequently suggested features.  As always, we appreciate all of your input and are excited to keep introducing new and improved features based on your comments and feedback. Please let us know your thoughts on any of the above changes or any additional changes that would facilitate your event planning by emailing us at support@pingg.com. Thanks for reading and we look forward to bringing you more news from pingg.

Just in time for Earth Day, we've partnered with two of our favorites, Celia Chen, Editor in Chief of notesonaparty.com and Danielle Venokur, Founder of DV Green (sustainable event design), for "A Night of Eco-Chic Entertaining." Tomorrow night at the Astor Center, we're brining together NYC's top event planners, marketers and hostesses as well as press for a green cocktail party featuring organic food and wine, sustainable tabletop and stationery design, organic flowers, eco-frienly cocktails and mixers, organic chocolates, hybrid transportation and the newest in event management technology to show them that entertaining in style doesn't mean compromising on the environment.

Co-hosts include Josh Dorfman (media personality, The Lazy Environmentalist); Annie Churchill and Billy Gilbane III (co-founders of New Yorkers for a Green New York); Gerald Prolman (CEO of Organic Style); Danna Weiss (eco-life stylist); Adam Devine (GreenSQFT) and Collette Leonard (Reyka Vodka).

VIP guests expected to attend include: Summer Rayne Oakes (model & eco-spokesperson), Nikki Cascone (Top Chef) and Gail Simmons (Top Chef , Food & Wine), Rafe Totengco (designer) among others.

Thanks to notesonaparty.com for these 10 great tips for Eco-Chic Entertaining tips.

1. Send Digital Invitations. Easy, inexpensive and paper-free.

2. Serve Organic and Locally Grown Food. Buy farm fresh, eat well.

3. Drink Organic Cocktails. Better ingredients make better cocktails.

4. Rent Glassware. Disposables look cheap and are wasteful.

5. Play Your iPod. A portable DJ without all the gear.

6. Use Organic Flowers and Eco-Friendly Decor. Sustainable is chic

7. Choose a Convenient Venue. Stay local and travel less.

8. Print on Recycled Paper with Non-Toxic Ink. Be stationery smart.

9. Compost and Recycle Garbage. Clean up waste responsibly.

10. Buy Carbon Offsets. Reduce energy then pay for your party imprint.

Margo Spiritus
VP, Marketing & Business Development