by wiwoworld on 2/21/24, 8:58 PM with 36 comments
I'm developing a map-based event discovery platform that helps people find unique and exciting events in their city or area. I imagine that it could help young locals who are searching what is to be attended in their area & tourists who are visiting and want to find what to do in the area.
But before I unleash it on the world, I need your help!
One major pain point that I am trying to solve is information overload and difficulty in discovering relevant events nearby. Traditionally, people might rely on social media, local newspapers, or word-of-mouth to find events happening around them.
These methods can be:
Scattered: Information is spread across different sources, making it time-consuming to search. Unfiltered: Showing a large amount of events, not necessarily relevant to individual interests. Limited information: Often lacking key details like event descriptions, schedules, or ticket options.
So my MVP address these issues by:
Aggregating: Bringing together event information from multiple sources in one place. Personalization: Using filters and user preferences to recommend relevant events. Visualization: Displaying events on a map, allowing users to discover events based on location and proximity. Detailed information: Providing comprehensive descriptions and links to purchase tickets.
What other features I plan to build: Build-in resell marketplace, own event upload, live-streaming, PPV and more.
However I find it difficult to get any feedback on the platform. I've tried paid ads, posting to other Early Adopters websites, personally reaching out to people, who I think are target users, but do not get any meaningful feedback.
So I'm eager to hear your honest opinions:
What works well in the platform?
What needs improvement?
Are there any features you'd like to see added?
Your feedback will be invaluable in shaping the future of Wiwo!
P.S. For now only US users are needed, as other won't find events in their areas :)
by maelito on 2/21/24, 10:49 PM
Well, no.
by yreg on 2/21/24, 10:09 PM
1. I would like to be able to get from the event to the map pin position. Both on the event screen (it could be even embedded there) and in search results. The site is showing me only events in Cyrillic - I don't know why. Perhaps the closest events to me are in Ukraine/Russia?
2. I dislike the decisions about where target="_blank" is used. Sometimes it is used when I don't expect it and sometimes it is not used when I do expect it.
3. I wouldn't do the transform: rotate; thing with text. It feels strange. Might even make it less accessible for some.
4. CAPITAL BLUE WORDS - some of them are links and some of them are emphasis. You need to distinguish those cases.
5. Why can't I access the map with uBlock Origin? Don't tell me it's required for the positioning, use Geolocation browser API.
6. On the landing page, you are for some reason putting all of the content into <h2 /> tags.
by nameequalsmain on 2/21/24, 9:31 PM
by stevage on 2/21/24, 9:37 PM
Obviously I can't see it, but from your description, I wonder if you want to be more precise about what you mean by "event". Do you primarily mean passive ticketed events like shows, or interactive things like workshops? Or community gatherings like Parkrun.
I have some hesitation about making all events more discoverable. Sometimes the friction of dincoverability is important to getting the right kind of people to come, who heard through the right channels, as opposed to some random who did the easiest thing by looking on a website.
Having tourists show up at a community building event for locals might sound great for the tourist, but not so great for the community.
by hoppyhoppy2 on 2/21/24, 11:08 PM
I didn't like being locked out until I disabled my adblocker, but maybe you have your reasons.
There are 6 or 7 events listed for the entire Burlington, Vermont metro area (over 200,000 people), which is way, way less than what's actually going on in the area.
The locations of all the events that are there are off: UVM Patrick Gym isn't at the administration building where the pin is (but at least the pin is on campus). The others make no sense, though: the Flynn Center is on Main Street downtown, not way out on North Ave, and Higher Ground Music is located on Williston Rd, not across town at the South Burlington indoor skating rink. I don't know where it's getting its location info.
The Flynn and Higher Ground Music have dozens of events on their websites that aren't listed on the map. I'm not sure how it pulled a random handful; must've been from an incomplete data set, though.
It's an idea that has promise but I don't find it useful right now.
by thenberlin on 2/21/24, 10:50 PM
That said, a couple bits: 1. I can't seem to click the events on the map in Safari on Mac. 2. The map doesn't load at all in Brave (I even dropped the tracker blocking on the site and reloaded and it still didn't load).
by robcohen on 2/21/24, 10:12 PM
Actually, I was thinking that event information could maybe be correctly pulled using AI tools. Admittedly, I'm no AI expert, so I am unsure what open source tools would be best for this.
Anyone know of models that could be given a url, and parse any website and scrape the event data and return it in json with a very high degree of accuracy?
What would be cool is to just give the app a list of bookmarks and get a map like this or even automatically have it parsed into ical format.
by ctrlw on 2/21/24, 11:58 PM
That said, while the idea seems promising, it‘s difficult to maintain, especially since sources (APIs / websites) tend to change frequently. If I remember correctly, pg even mentions this idea in one of his essays as a typical “bad idea“ that founders want to build but nobody figures it out as a business.
by sourabh03agr on 2/21/24, 11:42 PM
I don't have a lot of suggestions on how to solve this but if your platform can be consistently visible to your users, that would help you a lot with adoption.
by wiwoworld on 2/22/24, 12:01 AM
There are lots of things to be fixed and improved for sure and all those comments were just the thing I needed!
Maybe one other question ... what do you thing about the ideas that I have for other features:
-Build-in resell marketplace - Option to sell a ticket that you already own if you cannot attend the event.
-Adding own events.
-Live-streaming and PPV.
-Build-in navigation to the event.
-Email notifications about similar events to the one you attended.
-Create groups of people with whom to go to given event.
P.S.
I will try to answer all of the comments! :)
by pimlottc on 2/21/24, 10:30 PM
by geocrasher on 2/21/24, 9:59 PM
- ESC closes the current window you just clicked to open
- Different color icons for music/events
- Filter by music/events
- Filter by upcoming date (next 30,90,6mo etc)
by NKosmatos on 2/21/24, 11:26 PM
You really need to put effort into it in order to create something. As others have said, everyone has ideas, it’s the execution that matters ;-)
by karmakaze on 2/22/24, 2:30 AM
by wiwoworld on 2/22/24, 9:27 AM
Based on all the feedback we will try to find a solution where we can show the correct map position also with adblocker on.
The other problem with this however is that in this early stage the only monetization that we have in mind are google ads.
by rungabajje on 2/21/24, 9:58 PM
by spiffytech on 2/22/24, 2:00 PM
by willmorrison on 2/21/24, 9:39 PM