Poppin [Demo Video]
Events themselves are social in nature, and yet the way we organize events, browse what's happening in the area, and decide on which event to attend, is not social at all.
Poppin is a social network for events, enabling the end-user to discover
events in his/her vicinity which cater to his/her preferences. How we cater to
personal interests through the use of "communities" is the key factor
differentiating us from competitors.
The Poppin mobile application (iOS & Android) provides the end-user
with an interactive map and event listing, featuring all events within
traveling distance, providing a search and filters for start time,
duration, size of event, event type, community, exclusivity,
amongst other event features.
Users can click on an event they are interested in attending to see more information, to see which of their friends are attending, and to chat with users at the event or others who are also interested in attending.
- start time / duration: The date/time and length of the event. Events are sorted by "interest" (Are the events similar to past events you have attended? How many of your friends are going?) and by "date" (earliest first).
- size of event: Small, Medium, Large, or if the event creator decides to release the information (consent checkbox), the actual number of users who have said they are attending with this app will be shown.
- max size: The Event organizer can specify a max attendee size. If the maximum number of people RSVP to the event, the event will be "remove/hidden/marked as inactive".
- event type: Preset choices. An event can be a party, a fundraiser, a hackathon, a networking event, a carnival, etc...
- price: Free or $.
- incentive: None or "Free Food" etc...
- community: Being a social application, an event can be tagged as being a part of zero or more communities. A community can be a town, school, club, or organization.
- exclusivity: Events can be public or private. Private events can be set to allow users who are "invited" by someone at the event, who are friends of the event organizer, or mutual friends of the event organizer. Possibly also allow exclusivity based on "communities" the user is a part of, thus making some communities "private" (by common email e.g. mail.utoronto.ca or by invite).
When the user signs up, they can connect their Facebook and/or Phone contacts to sync "friends list". This enables the app to see the events that your friends are attending.
In addition to seeing and interacting with events created through the app, public Facebook events and Facebook events from a connected account will also be shown. Their status as a "Facebook" event will be indicated.
Optional feature which we may add if the opportunity presents itself after we've completed the core of the application.
Users can chat with other users who are either interested in attending an event or are already at an event. If the user at the event consents (by checking in at the event), they will be indicated as "At The Event" in the chat next to their name. This allows people interested in going to ask about exactly what is occurring at the event and their opinions of the ongoings of the event.
We are targeting the existing user base of EventBrite, Facebook Events and other event services, with an emphasis on smaller social events. We will not be handling tickets/payments (which EventBrite does do).
There are two sides to this user base, the Event Organizer and the Event Attendee.
More specifically, the Event Attendee could be a hard working adult, wanting an excuse to catch up with some friends (or maybe even give them pleasant surprise!) after having spent a tad too much time at work. On the other side, a younger student that had just moved to a new area or town and wants to find out what activities and events are around. Definitely a newly met acquaintance could show you around but how could they know all your interests already? Heading to an event of your choice and size would be much more preferable.
Currently, if an Event Organizer wants to advertise for an event, he/she will create an Event on Facebook and/or EventBrite (or other similar service). At this point, the majority of the attendee demographic is from word of mouth, and from Facebook's "Suggested Events" algorithms which relies mostly on mutual friends attending. Larger events may pay for additional advertising, either through traditional advertising media or by "boosting" their Facebook posts.
On the other side of the coin, an Event Attendee will see an advertisement for an event, hear about an event via word of mouth, or possibly browse events on EventBrite (mainly limited to larger events).
It's 6pm on a Saturday night and John (an Event Attendee) is bored but he would rather go out and have some fun. So he opens his favourite event app and after the laborious task of filtering by location, interest, date and time, he finally finds an event that seems interesting. He wants to find out what the event is like, however, he doesn't know anybody attending. He really doesn't want to risk going to a boring event, so he instead stays home and watches Netflix.
What if John could have a live chat with someone at the event? What if he could interact with other Event Attendee's?
Now consider the other side. An environmental club at UofT decides to hold a small meeting to discuss the state of the environment with regards to climate change. It is unlikely that a Facebook Event will be made, considering time is pressing and Facebook events take time to reach an audience (what would be the point?). The club instead posts a status update on Facebook which subsequently only reaches some of the event organizer's mutual friends. They really should have planned the event more in advance.
What if the UofT club could post the event on an event discovery network, immediately reaching all those who are interested? Reaching all those "subscribed" to the "UofT" + "Environment" communities?
Our product provides the solution to the problems facing "spur of the moment" events, from reaching the right demographic to quickly making and managing events and gatherings. We provide the social component, which makes discovering events, and inquiring about events fast and easy.
The core of our app is our communities. Communities can be exclusive to a group of friends, or open to everyone. Communities are centered around a common interest, activity, locale, or organization. Users join communities they find interesting so that future events can be catered to their interests.
No existing service has this concept targeted towards events. Meetup.com,
an app with a similar spur of the moment functionality, allows users to form
and join Meetup Groups, which are run as online organizations, whose sole purpose
it to create and facilitate common interest events. Rather than have users join
specific "organizations" (or Meetup Groups), we give users the freedom to specify
their interests, through communities of similar tastes. This enables our
application to serve targeted content, instead of relying on the well maintenance
of individual "groups".
In addition, rather than targeting "recurring" meetups, our focus is to provide a platform for the one time event (although nothing stops a user from creating two consecutive events with the same community tags).
There is no service out on the market now which allows the same flexibility that our app will provide, with the same level of social comfort, the same level of customization (communities), and with the same level of ease. And yet, we have all encountered situations where we wish we had some way to quickly announce the presence of an event we made (as an Event Organizer) or to discover what's happening in the city on a Saturday night.
Our product is solely a mobile application, as the nature of our application (social, community based, quick & easy, "the moment") works well with the mobile platform. From a purely practical standpoint, especially for this course, we will be limiting our scope, goals, and will keep our vision realistic and focused.