Eventful is an online calendar and events discovery service owned by Entercom. The service allows users to search for and track upcoming entertainment events in their area involving specific performers, indicate and share their intent to attend certain events, and indicate their "demand" for certain acts to appear in their region.
Functionality
Users can search for events worldwide by time, location, performer, and descriptive keyword. Users can create private or public calendars, including "smart" calendars which automatically update when events matching search criteria are added or existing events are modified. As of July 2007, the company claimed it had approximately 4 million future events in its search engine index. Users can optionally share their intention of attending an event with friends, and designate their favorite performers and venues to be used for recommendations. Eventful Demand allows users to declare an event or performance they would like to see locally, and then campaign for others to join their "demand". Statistics from "demands" can be used by event organizers to gauge interest in holding an event in that location. An API is provided to use Eventful information in other programs and websites, such as mashups, as well as to load new or modify existing data about events, venues, or performers.
History
Eventful, was founded as EVDB, Inc. in January 2004 in La Jolla, California, by Brian Dear, a veteran of eBay, the late-90s Mp3.com, and early consumer-Linux startup Eazel. A public beta test under the name EVDB.com was launched in March 2005, and the service changed its name to Eventful.com in September 2005. Since inception, the company has raised approximately $19.6 million in financing. Investors include Esther Dyson, Evan Williams, Mark Pincus, Josh Kopelman, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bay Partners, and Omidyar Network. In 2008, a number of notable users of the Demand system began to emerge; various campaigns during the 2008 presidential election used the system, most notably John Edwards, In 2009, Eventful was notably used in relation to the film Paranormal Activity; its director Oren Peli invited users to vote for where the film would be screened next on its limited release by utilizing the Demand system. Twelve of the thirteen venues sold out. The company announced in June 2012 that the service had grown to over 20 million users. In July 2014, Eventful was acquired by CBS Corporation through its Local Media division for an undisclosed amount. The purchase aligned the service with the company's radio station group and its own local event strategies. The service was then spun off with the rest of CBS Radio into CBS Radio's merger with Entercom.
