Local event websites

One category of local websites I haven't yet mentioned is what I would call local event websites. The ones I pay attention to are Zvents, Eventful and Going.com. Going.com has morphed a little bit recently into more of a slideshow social networking site for the clubbing scene and is probably pretty popular with the same kinds of local businesses that tend to advertise in trade in city weekly magazines -- bars, nightclubs, limo services, etc.

Zvents and Eventful are different. They aggregate event listings across the country and then license this information to media companies who put this content on their websites so that they can have a calendar of happenings or promote "what to do". Newspapers in particular understand the paid listing model for advertising -- after all, they fight to hold onto every dime of their classified revenue while craigslist eats it up. The paid event listing model is no different so local event sites have taken off.

Zvents and Eventful have both lined up dozens of media partners at an impressive clip, and they're are trying to invite local business owners to add to their event listings for free. They (and their partners) will make money when someone wants to promote their event above the other events listed.

The problem I see with this content is it is ephemeral. After an event occurs the content is useless. No one needs to archive and search things that happened in the past -- and reviewing something that only happens once does no one any good.

As a small business though, these sites do offer you a way to list events for free -- and they really want your information so they're pretty lenient when it comes to their definition of an event. A smart thing to do is create a recurring event, like a wine tasting, trivia night, or a open house kind of event that happens every Tuesday or every two weeks. That way, this listing will stay on these sites longer than the one timers. The good news for a small business too: Zvents and Eventful license their content out to many different websites so your listing can immediately appear in multiple places increasing your exposure.

We plan to help business owners share this kind of news and event information (we call it the inside scoop) on our site soon in the form of a news ticker. We hope by collecting this information directly from the business owners who are in our business center, we'll be able to share unique content -- not stuff you can find on any old event calendar. The inside scoop concept is really important for how we are evolving, so stay tuned.