Any event based site is basically a social network - they are designed to allow interaction among friends to coordinate virtual or real world activities. The venerable Evite is still the king of online event coordination. None of the recent startups (renkoo, socializr, mypunchbowl and the deadpooled Skobee) have presented much of a challenge. And none of the event aggregators/search engines, including upcoming, zvents or eventful, have managed to dominate their space, either.
So there’s still room for the killer event site, and startups keep trying. A couple of weeks ago we wrote about MadeIt, a new site that not only allows users to create new events but also to add content before and after. Like the others, though, it centers on the invitation to an event and whether you are going or not.
St. Louis based IMThere, which I discovered on TechnicallySpeaking, is a little different, and joins MadeIt as the most recent startups to try to crack the event nut. IMThere is focused less on getting invitations to events out to friends and talking them into accepting. Instead, it allows users to upload events, focusing less on the private invitation stuff (parties, dinners, etc.). Instead, the site’s early content is mostly about public events like concerts, video game releases, TV premiers, movie releases, etc.
Other users can then add their own content, ranging from comments about the event to uploading pictures from mobile phones during the event itself.
The resulting content is more interesting to the public than those private dinner parties. And top level navigation allows browsing by person, venue, artist, etc. So you can see all the events your friends participated in, see all the past and future concerts at a local venue, and see all past and future album releases and concerts by a particular artist. Users can also search events by popularity, region, etc.
The result seems to be a compelling user experience that could result in real local communities springing up and interacting around stuff that’s happening around them. Mobile interaction is excellent, so heavy users will be accessing it from all of their devices regularly.
See the demo/overview video here. There’s no guarantee IMThere won’t be in the deadpool in six months, but if they can quickly grow a core set of passionate users, they could have a nice property on their hands. IMThere is the first project from parent company Ramped Media.
What about going.com?
This is what we’ve been waiting for. A well written article giving context and hard info on a great new product.
A simple idea well executed, beautifully designed and with genuine potential. I wish them well.
Arrington, more posts like this in future.
What about wannago.com ?
Actually, we’re based in St. Louis, Missouri, not Chicago. Right now our team is virtual is spread across the US.
I have problem with logo. I’m not sure if I see four mutant breast bra. I think they need re-fresh design logo. I don’t mean to offended the company.
I think logo need to be fix.
Hey, Ben.
I don’t want to insult your company and design team. But….Does your logo look like swastika. It’s four direction logo.
Yes, it is… “Oh no…”
Title is fine.
You need new logo design.
Considering the founders, I don’t think the logo was attended at all to be a swastika. The initial site design had the logo in color, http://aainaism.com/images/imthere.gif . The jewel icon for the logo was also include in the 50 top favorite icons list that was floating around for a while. Thanks for the comments!
I was looking forward to the big-ass list of Crunchbase stats for renkoo, socializr, Skobee, and zvents. No love?
The logo is strong, indicative of the service and utterly inoffensive. It resembles neither a swastika nor a “four mutant breast bra” to my eyes.
I like webpage design.
Maybe you should promote logo contest thing like win I-POD or win Job at IMThere. Rememeber the early google design.
http://www.google.com/customlogos.html
The people who create first Google Logo got job and big paid too. Today, Google is billion dollar corporation. I think you should do the same.
Yeah, I actually agree. That’s the best designed site I’ve seen featured on TC in a long, long time. It actually sort of looks like a Yahoo! property based on the type, which is the official branding type of the Y!.
@11, @8 circuitously: Don’t kid yourself. The Google logo sucks, and it hamstrings them immeasurably from a branding standpoint. The person who “designed” shouldn’t be working creatively, in any capacity, in any format, ever.
Thanks for all of the comments so far! It’s a thrill to be TechCrunch’d.
As mentioned above, we will be in California presenting at Under The Radar in mid-November.
We have differentiated ImThere from the other sites mentioned by taking a more community and mobile-based approach. Users can share their experiences live through pictures and comments (video soon) from an event using their mobile phone, which gets linked along with other users’ submissions to the central event. They can also find and say “ImThere” to events through their mobile phone as well. All of this populates their social timeline, making their user page a true representation of their social life.
Our events are different in nature from other services as well. We feature locationless events like TV premieres, product releases, and virtual events. These events break down the usual location barrier that keeps true, viral communities from forming around them. We’re taking this a huge step farther with a system we’re launching at Under The Rader. Keep an eye out!
If you’re interested in hearing more about ImThere or have suggestions, feel free to get in touch at info@ramped.com!
Oops, the exclamation point got added to the email address — it’s info@ramped.com
Looks like a wordpress blog with a few plugins to me.
“Cracking the event nut”
um! Now that brings back some memories!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Nice to see you guys on here! I remember way back to the time that we hung out at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis talking about where our startups were going next…
We’re both hitting the limelight at the same time, very nice!
Congrats guys!
With four mutant breast bra logo… Hmmmm.
Someday you may spot the most beautiful woman in the world. She may look like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jessica Simpson, Aishwarya Rai. Gong Li, tyra banks, and with Mike Arrington evil eyes. Later, she decide to have first breast enlargement implants.
Humans without four heands. Which one you perfer to touch upper left, upper right, below left or below right.
This site has been around for days…and getting no traction. http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
@18: And I’m guessing yours is going nowhere?
I think the design looks quite good and the idea of public events to me looks far more appealing. As for the logo maybe they will get another one soon.
facebook events is about the only real player in the event space
yup, technicallyspeaking.com. another great lookery co-founder.
Good luck to these guys, but I’m still not sure a pure “all things to all people” events site has legs. I personally need another reason to visit a site. Also where is the recommendation element for events? By contrast, I currently have my friends on facebook telling me about upcoming social events and the recommendation system on last.fm telling me about upcoming music events…..
John, thanks for the comment! We do have a couple of ways to discover events aside from just browsing around:
* Related events are shown when viewing an event
* The Friends sidebar calendar lets you keep track on the events your friends are going to — as does the Friends main tab
* Friends can very easily invite you to the events they’re going to
* You can text ImThere from your mobile phone to receive a list of events going on that day/night in your area
We are launching a new system in mid-November that will greatly expand the content on ImThere (even past our existing unique events like TV premieres, product releases, and virtual events), which I believe will give you reason to make ImThere a frequent visit.
@Scott Rafer - yeah, I wish I owned “technicallyspeaking.com” - but unfortunately some professor out of Nebraska owned that the last time I checked. My blog is at http://rexduffdixon.com/
Thanks!
All these sites are UGC only, which is why they all suck. The only event site I’ve found that actually has good editorial content PLUS UGC is http://socializer.com. They’re only in DC/Baltimore though, which is lame.
Analysis leaves out one major point. Evite is focused on private events with a guest list. As opposed to imthere, going, eventful et. al. who are focused on public events. This is a big difference and would say that they are as a result not directly competitive with Evite.
Going.com blows all these amateur sites out of the water (at least in new york city). Not sure why that wasn’t mentioned in this article.
Mike A,
Going.com’s Crunchbase should be included in this article.
thx
-vijay
it’s nice, but why make my guests sign-up to another service when I can announce events on a website they already members of?
I think Facebook beats all other events based services (at least in a university town like mine)
for example, here’s an open event we just had:
http://tamu.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5432143039
bonus: in facebook events, I can invite even non-members and they can rsvp without sign-up.