Reminds me of when I worked at Yahoo, and in 2009 I had to track down someone who worked on Upcoming. I found someone who had Upcoming listed in their Backyard profile, but "Oh, I don't work on that anymore. Last I heard {other person} was working on it." So I tracked down that person, only to hear the same response. Following the chain, four or five people and half a day later I finally found the one person in the entire company who worked on Upcoming.org, but only part-time in a community support role. Having recently started at Yahoo, I quickly began to realize what was wrong.
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.
I have know knowledge of this incident. But often corporations don't make sense from the outside because it's really about some hidden state.
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.
I was upcoming.org user 500 or so and set up the Hong Kong info in it then. It was heartbreaking to see it atrophy and die. Another in the long list of acquisitions that demonstrate the ability of Yahoo's corporate mediocrity to smother good ideas.
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 liked Upcoming and generally am a fan of Andy's work, but doesn't kickstarter frown on these types of projects? Are they making an exception because of Andy's contribution to the site as a prominent leader in the community?
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]
Solid question, and I don't blame you for being skeptical. I went through the normal submission process, and was reviewed by a moderator I don't know and have never met. I very explicitly didn't want any special treatment. I was told it met their guidelines.
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.
My understanding is that web sites shouldn't be crowd-funded because they have no end, given the need for ongoing hosting, as opposed to products that are a discreet "thing".
That's a good point. In this case, I think it's pretty clear that you are funding the resurrection-attempt. No guarantees it will work and that the site will then stick around, but you'll be funding the initial resuscitation.
As Jason Scott (@textfiles) notes on Twitter, this will be something of a first: with all the old content coming back, Archive Team/archive.org "literally provided a backup of a site while it swapped owners."
Making the two top tiers be sponsorships is interesting. Those raised about half the total so far. I wonder if anyone was thinking, hey, this is a pretty cheap way to get good visibility. Especially the $1000 city sponsorship, since you can just pick big cities like NYC.
I was wondering about that. I guess picking the cities would be on a first come, first serve basis... which could get ugly if you find out you can't pick your favorite city -after- you've spent $1000.
It's been 10 years since Upcoming was created, and the site is dead right now, so, obviously one answer is "nothing". However, let's timewarp to 2004-2007 or so.
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.
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.
Who are these magical unicorns? Because it's starting to feel like outrage porn to point out how people just don't want to invite themselves to a Facebook event.
Since you use the phrase "magical unicorns" -- I know 10-15 people (and not just 'tech' people; they work in different fields like art, writing, etc.) who refuse to use Facebook because it erodes privacy and atrophies your brain (which I personally think is a very sensible position, even though I use Facebook).
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.
I remember Upcoming.org from 2003, back then it was a problem needing a solution but within a few years it was already pointless like plancast or the variety of other event listings and invitation systems.
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.
The scenario where Upcoming excelled, or at least the one that that seemed to "convert" users and why I think 10yrs later it's still so fondly remembered (looking at the response on Twitter has been nice) is when Upcoming told you about that event that you didn't know about and would have kicked yourself for missing ("if only I had known this thing I would have loved to go to was happening last night!").
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).
I don't see how this would solve the problem. What would motivate Facebook users to import the events to upcoming.org? These are people who already have traded privacy for convenience. Hate for Facebook is only motivation for the people that hate Facebook. Are their enough magical unicorns to motivate the added effort of posting events twice? Total internet users - facebook users is pretty small, especially in the US.
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.
Magical Unicorns don't exist. People who distrust Facebook do, including my entire development team (5). It's not outrage porn to worry about the privacy practices (or lack thereof) of these companies.
I don't use Facebook (for reasons much more mundane than any other hyperbolic "evil" privacy stuff), and events are probably the single biggest thing I tend to miss out on (or find out about at the last minute) because of that.
So I am definitely looking forward to Upcoming's return.
The Kickstarter campaign appears to be a way for Andy to determine that there is still enough demand for what Upcoming provided for it to be worth building for him.
This is the first project I've backed on kickstarter - I often miss events, mostly concerts, that come through and would love to see what other, like-minded people are doing/thinking of doing.
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.
It feels good to have a beloved service (potentially) returning, but I believe there's another opportunity here that's being missed. I don't know if it's been tried before, but there's a way to organize a service like this, one that relies completely on user-generated content, that would likely be much more resilient: a cooperative.
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.
Ex-Upcoming employee here. I have no expertise to suggest that a cooperative model can work on the internet, but I agree.
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.
Do you think we will see web app projects being backed like this on kickstarter more often? Imagine geocities or some other site being resucitated using 2014 tech.
OK, I think an app this simple doesn't need funding, specially in a world where people die of starvation and malaria. Yet all I get for my observation is downvotes.
You didn't mention that you thought the app was simple. You said you thought running crowdfunding for it was dishonest and immoral.
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.
I think we can debate that point, but what I can't understand is the reason behind the downvotes. Downvoting prevents the debate entirely, and I find it unreasonable.
Your first comment said "I find it dishonest and immoral". You should have followed that sentence with some explanation about why you felt it was dishonest or immoral. Perhaps you don't realise just how offensive that sentence is?
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.
Nobody asked for an argument, and by downvoting any argument on my part was prevented. I can explain why I find it immoral: I think the world has many real and deep problems, and investing in a web application that is not hard to build and solves a superfluous first world problem, is a waste of resources. Conversely, I think profiting from it is dishonest and immoral. You may disagree with my reasoning and you may have a different world view to compare, but the downvotes just terminate the conversation.
> Nobody asked for an argument, and by downvoting any
> argument on my part was prevented.
I feel like we're all being trolled, but how is your failure to present a cogent argument in your initial comment affected by downvotes that occur at a later time? You did the online equivalent to walking up to someone and saying to their face that they are dishonest and immoral, without any rationale for such an offensive position. In real life, you'd be punched in the face or, at the very least, escorted off their property. Is the fact that you're being downvoted really that surprising to you?
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.
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.