The latest round of insider backscratching at PC Forum and Etech brought some breathless coverage of E-V-D-B another "announce today, launch tomorrow" entry to what perhaps we should start calling "Web 1.8".
Anyone else think upcoming.org ought to be crowned "the Flickr of Events" and evdb seems more aptly labelled "upcoming"? Regardless - it is the unlaunched evdb that is hailed as "the ultimate event database" and not a mention from these folks regarding upcoming.org - which just launched some awesome new features.
Before the A listers crown an unlaunched site "the Flickr/Craigslist of Events" (I'd have thought craigslist was the craigslist of events) I wish they'd have the decency to mention actual websites like upcoming.org, WhizSpark, and EVNT which aside from implementing many of the same ideas, all have the supreme benefit of actually existing for users to check out for themselves. Good will to all: but we'd all do better in the long run with more bits shipping, less hype and less insider backscratching.
For EVDB - the other question aside from what is going on here that isn't a VC backed lifting from the overworked Andy Baio of upcoming.org - seems to be - is this the CDDB/gracenote thing all over again? Build a database of events and venues based on user input, and then close the data down behind a commercial license? I guess that is the web 1.0 part of Web 1.8.
That and the evdb site isn't very useable. i doubt many folks will go through the painful many step process to add events...
until somebody sits down and learns to extract good event information out of text, the event space is going to be littered with failures.
Posted by: rabble | April 06, 2005 at 02:41 PM