What’s the hottest new thing imported from Detroit?  UpTo, the new calendar sharing app.  A couple of days ago, I had a chance to speak to founder and CEO Greg Schwartz about UpTo, his new motor city  venture.  UpTo is the social calendar sharing app that has been out for about two weeks.  Already, Greg has noticed that his main users are small business owners, people who were really needing something more modern from their calendar apps.

In the recent past , small businesses used Google calendars almost exclusively. Google Calendar is fairly utilitarian: you either share your whole calendar with someone, or you share nothing at all.  And, the interface is just Google’s traditional minimalist set.  UpTo has an advantage over Google Calendar in that it lets you control what you share through a rich, modern interface.  UpTo also adds social features that really enrich the calendar experience by easily sharing the activities that are relevant, while keeping private those events that are for your eyes only.

Sharing your calendar in this more modern way helps create visibility for important events by cutting down on the noise of ones that are not relevant.  UpTo can even help you when you are running late, its social features let you contact all the people associated with the event with one easy step.  You can also share the contact information of attendees automatically, meaning that you can easily contact that guy that you met in that one meeting that time, just by using this handy app.

So what does your business have to pay to get all these great features? Bupkis.  UpTo plans to leverage an advertising model, using the events that you choose to share to provide valuable targeted advertising, while still keeping your private meetings and doctor’s appointments a secret from advertisers.

UpTo’s CEO Schwartz claims that “Facebook is the recent past, Twitter is in the moment, UpTo is for the future”.  Could he be right?  Only time will tell, but for right now UpTo  automatically integrates with iCal, Google calendar and Outlook, and is available on iOS today.  Expect android and web based versions in the near future.