eventful

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Eventful is a web service which aims to help users search for, track, and share information about events. Eventful is a service of Eventful, Inc. (formerly EVDB, Inc.) of San Diego, California. EVDB stands for "Events and Venues Database", and anyone may add information about events, venues, performers.

Zvents, Going.com, EventOrb.com, ShowClix, now-in.org, TheWantedEdition-Events, and Yahoo!'s Upcoming, are competing services.^[1]

Functionality

Eventful users can search for events worldwide by time, location, performer, and descriptive keyword. Users can create private or public calendars, including "smart" calendars which automatically update when events matching search criteria are added or existing events are modified. As of July 2007 the company claimed it had approximately 4 million future events in its search engine index.^[2]

A newer part of the service, Eventful Demand, allows users to declare an event or performance they would like to see locally, and then campaign for others to join their "demand". With enough declared interest, a targeted performer might then decide to plan an actual event. (A performers database was added to Eventful when Eventful Demand was launched, and "performer" is broadly defined to include any person or group of interest to others.) Among the notable performers using Eventful Demand are Pretty Ricky, a group whose album Late Night Special reached #1 on the Billboard 200 charts in January 2007. Their 2007 tour is being determined entirely by fans who demand them via Eventful Demand. Various presidential campaigns for the 2008 U.S. election have been using Eventful Demand, most notably John Edwards,^[3][4] Barack Obama, and Ron Paul. The company announced its users had created the 500,000th demand on August 16.^[5] The company claims the service has over 2 million users and is growing at approximately 100,000 new users per week.^[6]

A major feature of Eventful is My Eventful, which enables users to view their Watch List, which is a list of events they can optionally indicate they are "going to", as well as a list of events from the combined Watch Lists of all other users designated as "friends" in the social-networking sense of the term. My Eventful also provides users with a way to view and manage a list of favorite performers and venues, as well as a list of "saved searches" akin to Google Alerts. My Eventful also summarizes all Demands that a user has joined or started.

Users can import their iTunes libraries or Last.fm profiles to indicate which performers are "favorites". The service then sends notifications when nearby events featuring these favorite performers are scheduled to occur.

A web services API is provided to use Eventful info in other programs and websites, such as mashups, as well as to load new or modify existing data about events, venues, or performers.

History

Eventful, Inc. was founded as EVDB, Inc. in January 2004 in La Jolla, California, by Brian Dear, a veteran of eBay, the late-90s Mp3.com, and early consumer-Linux startup Eazel. A public beta test under the name EVDB.com was launched in March 2005, and the service changed its name to Eventful.com in September 2005. The company was renamed Eventful, Inc. in August 2006.

Since inception the company has raised approximately $19.6 million in financing.^[7] Investors include Esther Dyson, Evan Williams, Mark Pincus, Josh Kopelman, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bay Partners, and Omidyar Network.

See also

• Bookwhen - calendar based booking

References

1. ^ "Eventful". Crunchbase.com. 2007. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/eventful. Retrieved on 2007-08-23. 
2. ^ Wong, Grace (2007-08-03). "Eventful serves up what's on". CNN Money.com. http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/03/technology/eventful/index.htm/. 
3. ^ Blitzer, Wolf (2007-07-17). "Edwards on Demand". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPOjugpbNkw. 
4. ^ Stirland, Sarah (2007-09-24). "Tiny Town Blazes New Campaign Trail, Using Social Network". WIRED.com. http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/09/eventful_edwards. 
5. ^ Dear, Brian (2007). "500,000 demands and counting". Eventful, Inc.. http://blog.eventful.com/archives/2007/08/500000_demands.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-16. 
6. ^ Wong, Grace (2007-08-03). "Eventful serves up what's on". CNN Money.com. http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/03/technology/eventful/index.htm/. 
7. ^ "Eventful Company Profile". CrunchBase. 2009. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/eventful. Retrieved on 2009-05-02. 

External links

• Eventful website
• Eventful API website
• Silicon Beat: organizing the world's events EVDB launch coverage in a blog from the San Jose Mercury News
• Billboard Magazine: Pretty RIcky Teams with Eventful.com