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OK, thanks to all your comments so far - I'm a bit overwhelmed by the feedback to this kind of "no-brainer idea" (love it) and I wanted to answer them all one b
by pat-jay 11y ago
OK, thanks to all your comments so far - I'm a bit overwhelmed by the feedback to this kind of "no-brainer idea" (love it) and I wanted to answer them all one by one but this site doesn't let me as it yells "commenting too fast" at me all the time :P
SO I'M GOING TO WRAP UP ALL PREVIOUS COMMENTS W/ THE FOLLOWING ANSWERS, HOPE IT WORKS:
0. SOLUTION: The one and only Idea behind that was "I want a list of events, NOW - nothing else". I even didn't what to "search" events - I just want them in a list regarding where I am now and what's up next. Period.
I too think all others fail at this and it sucks especially when being drunk, travelling or not always using FB to search for events (which sucks, too, I think) and so on. Of course the site is extremely limited and consider it still as a protoype (in version 2 now), but I love it having so as I don't need to spend much time on it to see what's goin'. I built the site primarily for myself and use it almost every day. It works well, here in Zurich, as I'm always on the hunt for interesting people or happenings (tech and non-tech). And it comes ultra-handy when travelling to other cities or countries.
1. MARKET: Now, it seems like there's A HUGE DEMAND on fast, lean, lovely and NO BS event discovery sites as the market still doesn't provide anything properly. So I got the impression I'm at least kind of on the right track in solving this issue and hope to be able to improve the site as much as I can to fit that need - would be awesome.
2. CONTENT: Most events come from other sites like FB, Eventbrite, meetup etc. via their APIs (funny, but none are scraped!). I implemented dozens of these APIs within the last 2 years and they mostly seem to work fine. The goal was to have a huge diversity and as much content providers on board possible. Actually due to legal restriction (copyright crap - on event info, LOL) this is only a fraction of what I wanted to have implemented, but we'll see ;)
There's also tons of individuals who sign up and post their own events (of any kind), which is cool and also subject to huge growth in the not so distant future.
Think how cool it would be having postings about happy hours for bars and restaurants etc. - like they mostly do only/mostly on twitter at the moment. These events are mostly too small for Eventbrite & co. as well as most FB stuff but have 'em here could lead to a whole new use case, for example...
3. CONTENT CATEGORIES: These are a bit different than on all the other platforms. The intention with this site was to provide ALL KINDS of events, so also stuff like e.g. transportation (flight plans, train scheudules), public (authority) events like "when comes the garbage man" or public holidays, tv schedules (mostly US + UK at the moment) - that's the "media" category or "business" as in trade fairs, weather etc...
So categories are here less what the event is about as more of what kind it is - e.g. there might be a congress about climate issuees what makes in mostly an educational, community or business event but not a weather event as the happening is not of kind "weather".
4. UX: Yes, it's lean, simple and fast. As some of you mentioned maybe a little too simple or not "loved" enough ;) That's currently the 2nd iteration + I'm not a great designer and I like things ultra-simple. I think I spent more time deleting code and appearances than the opposite (ok "physically" impossible but it felt like that). Might get better, I hope B-)
Also, most stuff is build around the browser view of e.g. an iPhone 4 - so 320 x 480px. I wanted everything being still good to use on all those smaller displays and that's what's the site mostly is built around.
5. EVENT DISCOVERY: Yes, there is an option to see far future events. But it's currently only when signed in with an registered account (needs only email + PW, though). Then you can select another "moment" (aka `from date`) and a different timeframe too. The account registration stuff comes due to the "trigg" feature where you can also "trigg" events/locations/searches, as in "subscribe to", and get notified by mail (simple implementation, gets better in the future).
And yes, it might get a bit crowded in some larger cities as the categorization of imported events is still not so good. Also I noticed that the content quality is one of the biggest issues to cope with when building such a platform. But it seems to get better over time and when you're getting used to category selection to filter in/out e.g. stuff you're (not) interested in at the moment.
I also thought about implementing "editor accounts" where people can (voluntarily, at first) add, curate or improve event information and throw own (etrigg sponsored/supported) events/parties - a bit like yelp did in it's early days - if there's anybody interested feel free to drop me an email (providers who want "go large" and others, too): mail@etrigg.com
OK, I think I'm posting in a few hours again as more comments arrive or maybe HN might let me comment on individual comments and doesn't consider it as spam or something ;)
Thanks a lot guys + keep sharing, you rock!
If any questions, suggestions or whatever else feel free to contact me at info@etrigg.com.