When Do We Get The Events We Want

Brian Dear of the Events And Venues Database (EVDB) is on a mission to maximise event discovery. Announcing an event is in essence a flyer or an attempt to focus and gain attention.

Initally EVDB was considering either building a portal or platform. Eventually, EVDB decided to build both:

• Eventful.com – let users share information about known events and scanning the future for events that matter to you. Features include search, calendars, tags, RSS & iCal feeds, groups, friends/family/contacts, auto-submission, an iTunes import, an AIM EventfulBot and ‘performers’ data
• The platform – centered around a RESTful API, EVDB is eminently mashable, the most notable example being PodBop.

Interestingly, EVDB is looking to demand aggregation – tools for users to express desire for events they wish would happen. Eventful demand is more than a simple wishlist, but includes the promise of fulfilment. The company doesn’t seek to sell intention data to record labels or promoters (for example) but create a marketplace between fans and performers.

Incidentally, Dear claims that Eventful.com is the largest utilisation of microformats in a live service…this is borne out somewhat by the fact that Ray Ozzie used Eventful.com as a source site in his demonstration of LiveClipboard yesterday morning. Finally, Dear demonstrated some of the viral event campaign tools – creating stickers for use on blogs and other third-party sites.