The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
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.
E.g., maybe the person who argued for the acquisition left the company, so nobody was around to advocate for it anymore. Or the company's strategy changed, either for sensible reasons or just because there's a new fashion. Or the person in charge of the acquisition is mainly rewarded for buying things, but the people needed to make the integration work are rewarded for something that the acquisition would hinder, so they ignore or sabotage it. Or everybody really meant well, but it was nobody's highest priority, so it just dies a slow death.
If you are uncertain about resuscitating Upcoming, here's a timely anecdote: I ran an annual scrub on my RSS feeds yesterday. Per category dead-feeds are usually around 1-2% (even including hot areas like tech).
This year my local feeds category, which long ago replaced upcoming.org for me, was over 30% dead feeds (from just one year ago). Newspapers, local focus blogs, etc. The category need is still there but through recent attrition of local content sites, failure to deliver from local-content aggregation services, bad content acquisitions (MSNBC/Everyblock's buying spree followed by its failure), the local content category is ready for new entrants.
I wish Andy the best in this and will be backing.
From the Kickstarter guide:
"Kickstarter cannot be used to fund websites or apps focused on e-commerce, business, and social networking." [1]
From the project:
"Most importantly, it surfaced what your friends were interested in attending. Upcoming was among the first generation of web apps to use the social network for anything beyond Friendster-like connections, helping to define Web 2.0." [2]
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waxpancake/the-return-o...
My understanding, looking at the recent projects in the Technology and Web categories, is that they've loosened their enforcement of that guideline over the last year. Take a look at a search for "Social" in Technology, and you'll see a bunch of sites/apps that push that guideline: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?term=social&ca...
I think the fact that Upcoming is, first and foremost, an arts/technology event calendar weighed in its favor over, say, a social network for cats.
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.
Every time there is some event, other people chide them for not having a Facebook, "Oh, you are too snobbish to have a Facebook, how do I even invite you to this.". If nothing else, upcoming.org seems like it would solve that problem -- specially if it allows stuff like easy event imports from Facebook.
There are also sites like creative loafing (Atlanta) or various other city paper like publications which have local events. They tend to be pretty "artsy". Facebook certainly isn't the only place to find these events. These sites/publications have appeal beyond just being an event calendar.
I believe their hope is that they can capitalize on whatever name recognition they have left. Maybe they'll pull it off, this guy has obviously had success in the past.
There are events your friends want you to show up. Whether that message is sent via Facebook, email, text, paper, or face to face is irrelevant. If you are wanted there, you will be there.
There are events you want friends of friends to show up. Facebook facilities this quite well, and if you don't have a Facebook account to do so but they still want you there, well, you'll likely be there.
Then there are events you want strangers to show up. Facebook serves this quite well. If the events require a ticket, Eventbrite's got that covered. If it's a business event then your Gcal or Outlook has it covered.
In this landscape, where does upcoming.org, where does an anti-Facebook solution stand? And is it enough to cover payroll?
Because snobbishness aside--I don't own a TV because TV atrophies your brain when I can create art because I'm artist--this... really isn't a problem anymore.
Over the years I experienced this first hand many times (regrettably, also a lot of "can't go, too busy working on Upcoming"), but I haven't seen anything since that's provided the sort of social+interest-based serendipity that Upcoming did in its heyday. A lot of times in the past few years when I've been traveling I've wish there was something like Upcoming that could recommend the most interesting things to do in a city that night (like 4SQ or Yelp for events).
So I am definitely looking forward to Upcoming's return.
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
Upcoming created the model for an events site tied to a social network, and since it was first, you could find almost any kind of event from a personal party to a stadium rock concert there.
Upcoming had very broad capabilities for tagging, geotagging, searching, following, and being notified about public events. It really shone for aficionados of particular music scenes in geographic areas, and for people who liked going to tech conferences. And knowing the events your friends are going to - or even thinking about going to - also helped catalyze attendance.
Lots of other products found niches that had special needs (for instance, Lanyrd or EventBrite), and Facebook completely owns casual events like barbecues and stuff. But nobody's done an events site that had quite the same mix of community and capability. Most of the sites who wanted to grab the Upcoming-esque market were focused on monetizing through profiling users, and then selling ads, or special offers for tickets. Seems like it should work, but it doesn't seem to have panned out. (Also, I know this may shock people, but Ticketmaster is really difficult to work with.)
However, it's not the tech capabilities that people really miss, it's the community. And probably most people are betting on Andy Baio. He is a well-trusted person who is a passionate fan of independent art and culture, and has a history of creating wonderful communities - like Upcoming, KickStarter, and XOXO.
I also like the idea of having a development blog to follow, hopefully similar to what Chris Granger did with Light Table though perhaps with more technical posts. Are there other examples of good development blogs to follow? Ideally, I'd like blogs where the writer explained choices that s/he had to make.
Forgive me if this is half-baked. I'm not an expert by any means.
Add a pledge level of, say, $150, with the reward being that you become a founding consumer-member of the upcoming.org co-op. The way co-ops work, the surplus or benefit of the co-op's operations is periodically distributed (as a "patronage dividend") to the members in proportion to their "patronage" of the co-op in that period. In a worker co-op, patronage is usually defined as hours worked and the surplus is basically the profits of the business (cash). In a consumer co-op like a natural food store, a member's patronage is how much they spend in the store, and the patronage dividend comes in the form of lower prices.
You could define patronage in the upcoming.org co-op as participation in the site: contributing content, performing moderation, that sort of thing. The patronage dividend can be distributed in the form of free or discounted admissions to events or other rewards of that sort. Otherwise, it would operate the same as it would as a for-profit corporation (probably ad-supported in some way).
(In case it's not clear, I'm not saying the site should be members-only. Anyone would still be able to have full use the site, but those who pay the $150 membership contribution would just have additional privileges and/or responsibilities.)
As far as operations, it could be a multi-stakeholder co-op, as in a hybrid worker/consumer co-op. There would be two classes of members, one for employees and one for users. Some proportion of seats on the board of directors would be elected by each class (maybe 50/50). The board would then hire managers charged with keeping everything running (monitoring budgets and all that). In that way, the user-members would have a voice in major decisions, via their board vote.
There would be no risk of the founder selling out, because it's a standard part of the by-laws of most co-ops that memberships/votes are non-transferable and the co-op as a whole can't be sold unless it's to an entity that maintains the rights of the members (i.e. another co-op).
The main downsides are more organizational complexity and overhead and the fact that the founder has a much smaller upside potential. In other words, the best-case scenario for the founder is pretty much a stable job.
Obviously a lot of details would have to be worked out, but I can't help thinking that all the talk about building something sustainable for "the community" is pretty rhetorical if you're not willing to actually give the community a stake in it.
Personally, the experience of watching Upcoming wither and die is what got me first interested in alternative ways to pay for social networks and other community service websites. Co-operatives are one possible model.
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.
Some of your later comments say something along the lines of "why pay money for this when people are starving?" Well, you can apply that to everything. What computer are you using right now? Why didn't you buy a €30 raspberry pi and donate the rest to a clean water charity?
Interesting innovative ideas or discussion about developin world problems do get upvotes. Merely saying "why spend on this instead of starving children" will allost always get downvotes because it's not an interesting discussion.
I don't think there's anything dishonest and immoral about the reasons given there.
> Nobody asked for an argument, and by downvoting any
> argument on my part was prevented.
What you write is being held to a higher standard than what you are accustomed to. You can choose to use this as an opportunity to grow and improve your writing and better present your thoughts or you can choose to complain at how unfair it is. In your Redis comment[0] you talk about having manners and respect for other people's work. Perhaps you can hold yourself to this same standard.
You haven't presented any reasoning to disagree with, even when it was specifically asked for.