With details on millions of events of all sorts all over the world, Facebook
is — among many other things — the closest thing the world has to a
universal repository of things to do, such as concerts, parties, book
readings and a whole lot more. But Facebook Events doesn’t seem to be
all that high up on Facebook’s list of priorities. The feature hasn’t
changed much over the years, and isn’t radically different on a phone
than it is on a PC browser.
Enter Hangtime. The product of a startup of the same name, founded by veteran entrepreneur Karl Jacob,
it’s an iPhone app — and web-based service — which aims to make it much
easier to find stuff you’ll like to do among all the options in
Facebook Events and other sources. The app debuted for the SXSW conference in March; version 2.0, a substantial upgrade, arrived on the App Store this week.
Overall, Hangtime has a nicely done interface: with a few swipes of
your thumb, you can view the events in your vicinity on a given day,
pull up specific information on a particular activity, see which of your
friends are attending or considering doing so and RSVP. Using a map,
you can also pinch-and-zoom to specify how big (or small) a geographic
area you want to cover.
In all cases, the Facebook events you’re seeing are ones with
settings that make them visible to you. But you’ll probably see plenty
of events you wouldn’t have otherwise encountered — they’re a lot more
browsable on Hangtime than they are on Facebook. The app is aimed
especially at young people with active social lives, but even
not-so-young types should find activities of interest.
The new version of the app pulls in the billboard-like artwork
associated with an event from Facebook. It also includes events listed
on Eventbrite,
although with less detail than for Facebook events. You can now specify
interests — such as Rock, Comedy, Dance and Books — so other topics you
don’t care about are winnowed out. And events with RSVPs from your
Facebook friends show up first, so you don’t miss them.
Hangtime has access to so much information on so many events that
making everything approachable isn’t a cakewalk. Once you’ve told the
app which types of events you’re interested in, you might still be
overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of stuff it tells you about; it would
be nice if you could filter it down on the fly. And I found the visual
aesthetic a tad intimidating at times, maybe because there’s a fair
amount of visual clutter (all the giant event images tend to clash with
each other) and information is displayed as white text on varying shades
of gray.
Still, I like Hangtime and I like the direction it’s going. Founder
Jacob told me that the company is working on an Android version — for
now, owners of Android phones can use the web version — as well as
additional sources of events. Other startups focused on events haven’t
been breakout hits; some, like Upcoming.org, which Yahoo bought and shut
down, haven’t made it at all.
By piggybacking on Facebook and other
big-time sources of activity data, Hangtime has a good shot at faring
better than some of its event-startup predecessors.
Sources :
http://techland.time.com/2013/05/10/hangtime-a-better-way-to-find-facebook-events/
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