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The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

kickstarter.com

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Re: The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

#11

Post by crystaln »

Raphael wrote: post #3

What does Upcoming.org do better than Facebook, Google+, and Meetup.com?

Lots of things. For starters:

Facebook is pretty limited for broad event promotion.

Google+ - really? who is looking for events there?

Meetup.com - expensive and really only for small-medium groups, not events

Re: The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

#12

Post by alaskamiller »

scelerat wrote: post #9
Raphael wrote: post #3

What does Upcoming.org do better than Facebook, Google+, and Meetup.com?

For starters, it's not Facebook or Google+. Many people are looking for ways to be less dependent on FB and Google+. If the Upcoming folk shape this the right way, both in product design and pitch, they will capture people who are tired of creepily pervasive social networks but still want to set up events easily.

Who are these magical unicorns? Because it's starting to feel like outrage porn to point out how people just don't want to invite themselves to a Facebook event.

Re: The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

#17

Post by drgath »

Reminds me of when I worked at Yahoo, and in 2009 I had to track down someone who worked on Upcoming. I found someone who had Upcoming listed in their Backyard profile, but "Oh, I don't work on that anymore. Last I heard {other person} was working on it." So I tracked down that person, only to hear the same response. Following the chain, four or five people and half a day later I finally found the one person in the entire company who worked on Upcoming.org, but only part-time in a community support role. Having recently started at Yahoo, I quickly began to realize what was wrong.

Luckily things have changed considerably since then, and very happy to see Upcoming being handed back to its creator. Same thing should have happened with Delicious, but when they were looking for a buyer, Yahoo (allegedly) refused to sell it back to Joshua Schachter.

Re: The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

#18

Post by aspidistra »

feca wrote: post #16

OK, I think an app this simple doesn't need funding, specially in a world where people die of starvation and malaria. Yet all I get for my observation is downvotes.

You didn't mention that you thought the app was simple. You said you thought running crowdfunding for it was dishonest and immoral.

In any case... Parsing 35TB of HTML, JavaScript and images, and then releasing that as structured data, on top of rebuilding a sustainable web service? I don't think it is simple at all. It's not exactly a hackathon project.

Re: The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

#20

Post by feca »

aspidistra wrote: post #18
feca wrote: post #16

OK, I think an app this simple doesn't need funding, specially in a world where people die of starvation and malaria. Yet all I get for my observation is downvotes.

You didn't mention that you thought the app was simple. You said you thought running crowdfunding for it was dishonest and immoral. In any case... Parsing 35TB of HTML, JavaScript and images, and then releasing that as structured data, on top of rebuilding a sustainable web service? I don't think it is simple at all. It's not exactly a hackathon project.

I think we can debate that point, but what I can't understand is the reason behind the downvotes. Downvoting prevents the debate entirely, and I find it unreasonable.
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