Tungle, a scheduling and calendar sharing tool we wrote about during its launch in 2008, is rolling out a new version of its meeting scheduling platform, Tungle.me, that taps into your social graph and simplifies the process of finding and connecting with friends and colleagues. Tungle.me now includes a public directory, search functionality, and group meeting capabilities.
Tungle offers users a free web-based application that lets you share calendars across companies and platforms, schedule meetings with individuals or groups inside or outside their company and propose multiple meeting times in invitations. The service currently syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac, and Lotus Notes.
Tungle.me users can now opt-in to be included in a public directory on the site, allowing users to see colleagues’ schedules. On a users’ personal scheduling page, you can view their availability and schedule meetings with them without signing up for Tungle.me. Visitors can search for users by name or company name without needing to upload contacts or create new friend lists.
The new Group functionality for Tungle.me allows users to create and name private or public groups,
browse public groups in the directory, and save group aliases to contact lists. Non-users can also
schedule meetings with public groups without having to register for accounts. Groups can be created for associations, organizations, committees, departments, conferences, and more; making it easier to view others’ availability and schedule meetings between members.
Tungle also recently partnered with social planning application Plancast to integrate the Tungle.me widget into Plancast profiles. The startup has enhanced personalization with LinkedIn integration as well.
While Tungle’s vice president of marketing Jonathan Levitt declined to reveal the number of users Tungle currently has, he did say that Tungle.me is being used to schedule meetings in over 30 percent of Fortune 100 companies, over 700 Universities, and in more than 100 countries. Tungle’s main competitors are TimeBridge, and Jiffle.