This month saw the soft launch of one-of-a-kind party planning, wish list and gift-giving website www.giveamonkey.com. It’s the first step in what founder and owner Tammi Clark hopes will be a long and fruitful journey.

Tired of trying to organise parties by email (after all does everyone have ALL their real friends and family on social networking sites?) and fed up with trawling the web for gift ideas after receiving unimaginative Christmas lists from her family, she knew a party and wish list website had to make things easier.

Nothing she could find on the web offered her a truly intuitive event/party planning and wish list solution, so she set about having a site developed. But it had to do more than just list gifts…it had to be completely interactive, social, flexible, simple to use, and above all, totally free for the user.

One thought led to the next, and soon giveamonkey didn’t just suggest gift ideas to populate birthday lists, wedding lists and so forth, but let the user organise any kind of celebration, anywhere they want. A full invitation and RSVP service with Google maps, space to share photographs, videos and friends’ comments was, in the ever-more social world of the internet, vital. Soon Tammi began to establish relationships with venues where users might host their parties or events. Not only can venue owners and promoters have every venue listed publicly with a complete description, reviews and photographs, but they can also manage contacts, bookings and attendance numbers through the site. As an added bonus for both users and promoters, giveamonkey highlights featured events and hotspots on a weekly basis.

Where giveamonkey differs enormously though is the ability to organise your social life all in one place. Nowhere else can you research possible venues, create a dedicated party page which can be public or private, send invitations, thank-you notes as well as providing related gift lists for attendees. At a glance you can see a full list of parties you’re hosting and invited to, wish lists you’ve created and the gift lists of friends and family. And because interaction through social media was always the ultimate wish, giveamonkey allows users to post their wish lists and events to Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites with a couple of clicks of the mouse. On top of this your friends don’t have to join to view or accept your invites or even buy from your wish lists – so even social network-phobes can use giveamonkey.com.

And talking of wish lists, not only can members use the giftermonkey bookmarking tool to add items to their wish list from any site on the internet, but giveamonkey also features suggested gift ideas from a variety of online retailers. So if you’re stuck for inspiration you can search featured gifts or even browse wish lists which users have chosen to make public. giveamonkey’s ever-expanding network of retailers and product suppliers can choose which products to promote, and suggest to the giveamonkey team which items will have popular appeal.

To the giveamonkey team (as it soon evolved to be, with Daniel, Aimee, Courtney and Anthony joining the ranks), what was also important was that the spirit of giveamonkey wasn’t solely about having fun, but encouraging people to give a little back. To that end wish lists were expanded to include charity pledges. So a birthday list might include either request to donate to a chosen charity, such as “pledge £5 to the RNLI”, or a personal pledge such as “take me on a walk by the sea”. giveamonkey’s own profits will be no exception to the mantra of giving: the site has pledged to donate 10% of its profits to charity annually.

Timing is crucial of course. September is back to school time, the nights are drawing in, and, reluctantly or otherwise, thoughts begin to turn to the festive season. With Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night and various other holidays cropping up between now and Christmas giveamonkey has appeared at the right time to make party planning and present-buying that bit easier.

So not only can users organise their perfect Christmas, share family gift lists and organise all their party invitations in one place, but they can hunt down public parties to attend. New Year’s Eve too stressful to host? Friends all bogged down with prior responsibilities? The public party search lets users search for open venues and events to attend and your diary lets you see if you have double booked and enter reminders for mundane appointments – dentist anyone?

Next on the giveamonkey wish list is a party in October to celebrate the hard launch. Will it be organised through giveamonkey.com? What better way could there be?