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Songkick.com is an events site, for live music events around the world, and they're awesome. They've even got a plugin for iTunes to recommend you gigs based on what you listen to. (I no longer work there, but their product looks better than ever.)
I think this could be turned into a startup. thoughts?
The idea was to improve the user experience - basically by putting a Pandora-like system in behind a Google-like front end. We launched it, it worked great. With a few clicks the site would sort everything in the city by what you'd be most interested in, and keep that sorting (without signing up) for the next time you came. But about a month in we concluded that the UI was not the issue. I agree with StrawberryFrog in that the issue is structual.
I think that there's still a big missing piece. Something's got to get event listers and event seekers in one place that adds more value than just finding things to do (and I don't think content like local news is anywhere near enough). I'm half expecting something to evolve out of Facebook events, but it's not there yet.
Also, crunching the revenue numbers from local (Vancouver) weeklies, then multiplying worldwide, it's not the kind of money that you can take a lot of investment for. People just don't spend much time looking for things to do.
Short answer: it's a feature, not a product. But to what product does this feature get added? I don't know yet... There's been a _lot_ of failed attempts already.
I think this could be turned into a startup. thoughts?
I think it's definitely a good idea...the hurdle you would face is getting the data. Maybe the existing event sites thought of spidering data but were unsuccessful. How would you do it differently?
I've mostly moved on from the problem, but would be happy to talk to anyone who's interested, share my experience, etc.
I think this could be turned into a startup. thoughts?
1. Location-aware mobile searching. I can't recall how many times I've been driving around with my wife on a Friday night wondering "what should we do tonight?" ... if you built a startup around this post/concept, I think it would be a big mistake not to put a lot of resources into an iPhone/smartphone app. Think of it like Yelp's iPhone app but for events.
2. Let event coordinators sell tickets to paid events from your site. Don't do ecommerce and take a transaction fee. Just let them plug-in PayPal/Google CO info and be done with it. You'll immediately have an advantage over sites that don't do this.
Heads up for: - Craigslist. If you start scraping their sites, they will probably block you at some point. - Facebook. FB is growing rapidly as a place for events/RSVPs and it fits well within the "social graph" ... the latest FB iPhone app puts events front and center. Expect them to be a big competitor in this space.
Other low-hanging fruit: - City/chamber websites. Every city or chamber of commerce website has an event calendar. You'll probably want to scrape those. - Community colleges, libraries, etc. have non-credit/weekend classes and workshops. If you had a way for them to sell tickets, it might be a nice draw.
That's all I got for now ...
* The date and time of the event
* The event location
* Price
* Any other relevant information (dress-code, what to bring, etc) or at least a prominent link to said information
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's definitely a good idea...the hurdle you would face is getting the data. Maybe the existing event sites thought of spidering data but were unsuccessful. How would you do it differently?
The event-scraping problem has motivated a year of technology development on my part. Parsley, Parselets, date_range, csvget, SelectorGadget, and a bunch of unreleased niftiness. I've mostly moved on from the problem, but would be happy to talk to anyone who's interested, share my experience, etc.
"I think a spider should be employed that searches
the web for events and adds them into the database."
If you can do this you can make money, but I don't think it's so trivial...
I think this could be turned into a startup. thoughts?
Starting launching a startup in this space, but then took a sharp turn and launched Urbantastic.com instead. The idea was to improve the user experience - basically by putting a Pandora-like system in behind a Google-like front end. We launched it, it worked great. With a few clicks the site would sort everything in the city by what you'd be most interested in, and keep that sorting (without signing up) for the next…
Upcoming sux as well, not to mention it constantly defaults to the wrong location even tho my yahoo profile spells it out.
Another thing: too much about "bands playing" which drowns out all event lists, put bands in a folder, offer other categories ...