Online Event Listings - Are You Doing it Right?
By Todd Stauffer for Jackson Free Press • May 16th, 2007
Fellow AAN webbie types (and those who love them)…
I’ve been asked to give a presentation (and follow that up with a white paper) at the convention this year on the topic “Online Event Listings Best Practices.” While I’ve made it my mission to surf many, many member (and non-member) websites to get ideas and see what works, I thought I’d check here to see if I could generate a response or two here to the following questions:
1. Do you (techie, editor, publisher, etc.) feel like your pub is *currently* doing a particularly good job of listing events on your site? If so, please contact me and let’s chat about what you’re doing different or particularly well.
2. Are you working on (or have you recently completed) a new event listing tool? Or a new implementation of event listings? If you’re out there and I haven’t talked to you yet, please let me know so I can get the scoop.
3. Have you done any local market research or focus groups regarding event listings online and/or in your paper? I’d very much like to talk to anyone who has done such a thing.
Please reply here, call me at 601.362.6121 x3 or write me: todd at jacksonfreepress dot com. Anything that needs to be embargoed or should be kept confidential, etc., will be — but if you can contribute to this “best practices” effort, it will be very much appreciated. Thanks!
- Todd Stauffer
Publisher, Jackson Free Press
Tags: best practices, event listing, market research, web development
LauraFries.com:
May 22, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Todd -
Great topic; I can’t wait to see what you come up with. I think that maintaining the events franchise is of paramount importance to alt sites. Just as events listings drove pickup in the print product, so too can they drive traffic online - without them, I’m not sure what the business model consists of.
I consider sites like Pollstar.com, Upcoming.org and Eventful.com to be prime competitors - their functionality makes it super easy to scan for upcoming events, even though they don’t have the content inventory of alts.
Anyone else know of any sites with good events functionality?
Todd Stauffer:
May 23, 2007 at 3:11 pm
I consider sites like Pollstar.com, Upcoming.org and Eventful.com to be prime competitors - their functionality makes it super easy to scan for upcoming events, even though they don’t have the content inventory of alts.
That’s exactly the issue I’m going to address — I think we need to take a look at the ways in which online events can be a web *application* that the reader interacts with and not just listings or a database search. It’s definitely a “Newspaper Next” discussion…what problems for the reader/visitor do we solve with our events tools online?
Laura…you’ve hit on a lot of the competitors…there are some decent example of dailies doing interesting things and, of course, some alts are leading the way on interesting solutions.
I think we need to protect events from a Craigslist-like paradigm shift by being there *first* with not only the best-effort and best content, but also the best, local events “apps.”
Roxanne:
May 25, 2007 at 1:01 pm
This might be a bit tangential, but is there a way for AAN members to partner with Facebook vis-a-vis listings?
Todd Stauffer:
May 25, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Wow, that is tangential. :-)
No, I’m kidding. I think there could be some sort of partnership or national gathering of alt-events…that’s be a great idea.
I don’t know what FaceBook’s Take Over The World (TOTW) mission statement is — as opposed to Google TOTW and Yahoo!’s TOTW mission statements, which are clearly outlined on the About page of their sites — but my question is…
…why FaceBook? I’ve never been able to get in (I’m not in an approved school or workplace) to see what all the fuss is about.
Roxanne:
May 25, 2007 at 11:37 pm
While FB started out as a college site, it’s now open to everyone. And they’re actively seeking new tools for their users. I’ve been futzing with FB for a few weeks now and find it to be a much better experience than other social networking sites. And I like the local calendar stuff they offer.
Because it was initially a college site, FB already has a gajilion young, educated users. Sounds like a big part the alt listings audience to me.
Todd Stauffer:
May 27, 2007 at 10:29 am
OK, Roxanne, I checked out FaceBook and you’re right…I think there is something there. First of all, the “regional” landing pages for FaceBook definitely have something going for them, with the events listed right in with the groups, new users, recent updates and so on. The “Jackson, Mississippi” page that I ended up on has some interesting offering for folks looking to make connections and get out to do something. What they lack, as is true of many of these social networking sites, is content. That’s ripe for some sort of partnership.
Second, I like what you linked to about FaceBook’s attempts to take on MySpace; it looks like they’re very open to partnerships that make the partners money, even if FB doesn’t see an upside immediately. Muy interesante.
One thing I want to talk about in Portland is getting our event content out there via widgets — the idea being that you can get individuals or groups to put your weekly-branded events on their sites using code that you provide. I think that’s one solution for a lot of social networking situations, where you can have your readers extend your brand into these realms because the widget you create is convenient and content-rich. Then when they click an event they’re back on your site.