SCHEDit wants to answer the question "what is going on tonight?" in the same way that Twitter answers the question "what is happening?" -- with a customizable, interest-based platform that transcends personal preference.
The company launched with its first partner, Boston.com, on Thursday.
Here's how it works: Users log into a new events site on Boston.com with their Facebook accounts. They set up a profile and choose specific venues and people who they want to follow. Their newsfeeds are then populated with events that those venues are hosting and that those people have said they'll attend.
Theoretically, they can stop bopping from venue site to venue site or browsing multiple publications when they want to find out what is going on. Instead, they simply log into their customized events feed.
Because SCHEDit asks users to create profiles and publicly RSVP to events, the system can also provide a snapshot of what the crowd at each event will look like: the profiles of the people who have RSVPed and their gender ratio.
Another startup, Hotlist, has taken a similar crowd-forecasting approach to its planning app. SCHEDit is different in that it focuses on events rather than venues in general. It's also hoping to hijack the event planning crowd from publications such as Boston.com rather than build its own from scratch.
But what's in it for Boston.com? The short answer is advertising revenue. Venues can pay to be promoted either on a trending widget or on event pages that attract relevant crowd members. SHEDit shares revenue from that advertising.
There's also potential for the app to attract readers to the site.
"It adds a layer of involvement for Boston.com that we haven't tapped into yet," explains Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty. "We cover a small number of events [editorially], but there's a lot that happens in-between."'
SCHEDit founder Omar Tellez imagines the app could link event planning on a variety of publication websites, with users using the same profile on each one. The limiting factor at this point is venue participation. SHEDit and Boston.com have created 200 profiles using public data, but they hope that the venues themselves will claim and manage them.
So far there are about ten venues, including Harvard University and the New England Acquarium, that have done so. Before SCHEDit can scale, many more venues will need to hit the "claim venue" buttons on their profiles.
Image courtesy of istockphoto, hidesy
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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