Upcoming

Upcoming (formerly Upcoming.org) is a social event calendar website that launched in 2003, founded by Andy Baio.On October 4, 2005, Upcoming.org was acquired by Yahoo!.

Features

Upcoming combines features of an event calendar and a social networking site. Primarily, the site is a searchable, browsable repository of upcoming events, such as music concerts, art exhibits, business conferences, and so on. Event information can be contributed by the user community, although an increasing percentage of event data now comes from commercial sources. Users can indicate their plans by marking that they are "going" to or "interested" in an event. Users may also establish "friend" relationships with each other and receive notifications about what their friends are planning. Upcoming also offers users reminders via email or SMS when a particular event is about to occur.

The site switched to the Yahoo! user accounts system in early 2007, and changed its domain name to upcoming.yahoo.com. At the same time, the site formally changed its name from "Upcoming.org" to simply "Upcoming". Despite this, many users of the site still link to and refer to the site as "Upcoming.org".

Upcoming uses iCalendar, RSS, and GeoRSS for content syndication and supports an open API for searching or submitting event data. It also uses hCalendar microformats, so that events can be downloaded directly into calendar applications. Finally, users can also post badges on their own websites, powered by Javascript, which list all their Upcoming events.

Community

As of 2008, the overwhelming majority of users and events are located in North America, particularly among fans of independent music, web technologists, or the San Francisco Bay Area generally. However, Upcoming users can be found almost anywhere on the globe,, often submitting event data in their local language. Upcoming is fully capable of storing and searching multilingual content, although the site supports only a US-English interface.

Competitors and Influence

Many competitors have emerged since Upcoming was launched in 2003, including Zvents, Eventful, and Going.com. Music sites later branched out into this space, such as last.fm and iLike, building on their knowledge of their users' tastes. Facebook's event system is very much like a simplified version of Upcoming's, although it is more typically used for informal or private get-togethers.

External links

Upcoming

Java client library for Yahoo Upcoming