San Diego’s Eventful Looks to Put Consumers in Charge, with Backward Glance at eBay

capabilities, beginning with technologies that monitor users’ interests and offer them new choices in concerts and other events based on their past preferences. At roughly the same time, Eventful moved to a multi-platform strategy that has enabled the company to distribute its content through e-mail reminders, online calendars, widgets, mobile apps, and social networking sites. Eventful spokesman Chris Lehman says users can sign up for e-mail alerts when their favorite performers are coming to town and create a personal watch list of events they are interested in. They can also share events with friends, and they can add their own events for free.

More than 3,000 partners also license Eventful’s content and platform to power local entertainment content across their own online, mobile, email and digital signage platforms, according to Lehman. The company’s content is used in digital signage by local television websites throughout the country, as well as Tully’s Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, and other retailers.

During the 2008 election campaigns, Eventful’s Web tools enabled candidates to enhance their local outreach online and integrate event widgets into their Web strategies. The company also unveiled Eventful Demand, a free online service that let campaign supporters lobby for political figures to make local appearances. Candidates using the service also could track the demand and adjust their whistle stops accordingly.

As the service evolved, Lehman says, “We realized that it was becoming a direct representation of why people are on the Web to begin with. They want to influence and impact the world around them. As a company, if you can fulfill this expectation you can win the hearts and minds of consumers—any type of consumer.”

More recently, Eventful has been extending what it now calls its “Demand it!” (patent pending) throughout the entertainment industry, enabling artists and bands to determine the local markets where they are in highest demand.

Glazier contends that digital technology has forever changed the recorded music industry, making it infinitely easier to find new music and to create personal playlists with thousands of songs. With this great leveling of recorded music, Grazier says these are the glory days for live music.

“In the past, radio producers curated songs for consumers,” Glazier says. “Now the fire hose is 1,000 miles wide and you can get direct or indirect access to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.