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Yes neilk, awesome. Let me also add... I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that

Yes neilk, awesome. Let me also add... I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status. People learn about most events from their friends or their existing communities. This should not seem strange because people become friends with one another (or join communities) through having aligned interests. This solution seems optimized already. I don't think you can beat it, or at least not in a way that creates enough value to justify a standalone "event community". Does it hit home that you, OP, may be essentially trying to create a community around people with the common interest of "We like to attend events"? Ah, but you say: "Well, the key value will be that people will link to their friends and they will interact around the events that they will attend together. We're covered." Indeed, this is usually listed in the first set of bulleted features people start whiteboarding: Idea #27: Let's Build an Event Site! * Aggregate all events from everywhere... except recurring Sunday church services, random unknown people's birthday (who published their private event as public), and dozens of guys who are making up interesting-sounding events just trying to do lead generation for their Quixtar, TEAM, etc get-rich-using-something-similar-to-a-pyramid-scheme-but-we-swear-its-not-a-pyramid-scheme group. * Let people pick what events they are interested in and add them to their 'list'. * Let people invite their friends to use this service too and they can link up their profiles as "friends" in the system. (awesome, we're viral!) ... At this point in the bullet-list, OP, someone needs to state the obvious (either you or your co-founder) and suddenly say, "Well, can't they just use email to invite friends to events?" ... then the both of you can avoid going down this path and focus on problems that people actually have and are willing to pay you to solve. Ah, and I just have to mention that no one really cares that much about calendars either. It is exceptionally rare that people use them outside of work. And really, if you are employed at a major corp, you can't very likely import your schedule for your wild week at Sturgis into your work calendar. Some people frown on knowing the tacky aspects of your life outside of work.

saliem 17y ago
yes neilk made an excellent assessment. people do care about discovering events, it depends on what their situation is. as for social status, foursquare is making good inroads with that. anyone want to be mayor of your local hotspot? :)
- thetrumanshow 17y ago
  Agree, any evidence I have to make such a statement is truly anecdotal, stemming from a failed attempt at building a product in a similar vein. Therefore, ignore my cynicism and carry on.
joe_the_user 17y ago
I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status. Now that seems like a rather gross generalization... Meetup.com is a fairly large and somewhat successful site based on events drawing on strangers (There are 66,241 Meetup Groups around the world meeting about 22,993 interests). Maybe you just don't find these people high enough status? Of course, this doesn't mean that the other problems of an event site are easy to solve. Meetup does generate quite an excess of emails but I put up with them since I find of the groups interesting.
marram 17y ago
"""I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status.""" My definition of an event is: A social gathering of my friends, or friends of friends. I don't care about random trivia nights, but I might check them out if my immediate friends are going to them. I believe that an "event community" is a misguided notion. Going to the same event as a perfect stranger is not a strong enough context for socialization.
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  * Going to the same event as a perfect stranger is not a strong enough context for socialization* People who have just moved to a new place do a lot of that, soon they get a new peer group. Finding the right events is easier than it once was with online tools, but still not trivial.
neilk 17y ago
Your first bullet point hits the nail on the head. Yes, this is the sad reality of many event-related sites today. There are some who avoid it by being super-exclusive and private, but that's another story. I will disagree about the calendaring thing. Perhaps my friends are all overscheduled Bay Area people but we do use calendars outside of work. Furthermore, promoters and venue owners do have to use something like a calendar tool, eventually, and that is a potential gateway to grabbing good event data and republishing it. I don't know of anyone that's courting this side of the market well. Offering these people the carrot of better tools plus the even tastier carrot of automatic connections with fans, syndication, promotion, might work.

saliem 17y ago

yes neilk made an excellent assessment. people do care about discovering events, it depends on what their situation is. as for social status, foursquare is making good inroads with that. anyone want to be mayor of your local hotspot? :)

thetrumanshow 17y ago
Agree, any evidence I have to make such a statement is truly anecdotal, stemming from a failed attempt at building a product in a similar vein. Therefore, ignore my cynicism and carry on.

joe_the_user 17y ago

I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status. Now that seems like a rather gross generalization... Meetup.com is a fairly large and somewhat successful site based on events drawing on strangers (There are 66,241 Meetup Groups around the world meeting about 22,993 interests). Maybe you just don't find these people high enough status? Of course, this doesn't mean that the other problems of an event site are easy to solve. Meetup does generate quite an excess of emails but I put up with them since I find of the groups interesting.

marram 17y ago

"""I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status.""" My definition of an event is: A social gathering of my friends, or friends of friends. I don't care about random trivia nights, but I might check them out if my immediate friends are going to them. I believe that an "event community" is a misguided notion. Going to the same event as a perfect stranger is not a strong enough context for socialization.

StrawberryFrog 17y ago
* Going to the same event as a perfect stranger is not a strong enough context for socialization* People who have just moved to a new place do a lot of that, soon they get a new peer group. Finding the right events is easier than it once was with online tools, but still not trivial.

neilk 17y ago

Your first bullet point hits the nail on the head. Yes, this is the sad reality of many event-related sites today. There are some who avoid it by being super-exclusive and private, but that's another story. I will disagree about the calendaring thing. Perhaps my friends are all overscheduled Bay Area people but we do use calendars outside of work. Furthermore, promoters and venue owners do have to use something like a calendar tool, eventually, and that is a potential gateway to grabbing good event data and republishing it. I don't know of anyone that's courting this side of the market well. Offering these people the carrot of better tools plus the even tastier carrot of automatic connections with fans, syndication, promotion, might work.