EventSpan Goes A-Crawling

I see on the EventSpan blog that they are ramping up a facility to automatically "crawl" the web looking for webinars and webcasts. These will be returned in search results along with the more detailed listings they get from people who add explicit event postings. That puts them into direct functionality competition with Finervista. It also should make them even more attractive as an acquisition target for a big search company. Being able to properly find and link to events that aren't obsolete is spectacularly useful as an automated task and helps to quickly build search content. This is tremendously important, as visitors quickly make up their minds about whether it is worth doing a search on a site based on the results they get on a test or two.

By the way, their blog article stated that "EventSpan stands on three legs: Search. Syndication. Social Networking." And the first thing that went through my mind was a fervent hope that they aren't programming in LISP!

I shouldn't make fun of them. EventSpan is nice enough to have my webinar in rotation as a featured event on their home page. As you can see from the widget below, it's counting down to showtime on Friday. There's still time for you to sign up... just click on the link.

I love this syndication link feature. It makes it SO easy to advertise my event!

Technorati Tags: EventSpan , Finervista , search engine , webinar , webcast

Comments

[Cece Salomon-Lee for ON24/Insight24]

Ken, you bring up some good points about the value these services provide. One point that we've addressed with our service, Insight24, is having global registration - register once, view repeatedly. Otherwise, you'll have to register for each event you want to view via Finervista or Eventspan.

[JR]

Apples and Oranges! With respect to Insight24's comment, we view their basic listings of their own recorded events as quite different from what EventSpan is doing in the market with our search, syndication, and social networking service in the world of online events.

Insight24 touts "global registration" - but its essentially for its own globe. EventSpan, as an independent publishing service - without any conflicts of interests - lists the universe of web events, not just those on planet ON24. And EventSpan lists live, upcoming events, not just recorded ones. Web publishing and search services are fundamentally different than being a technology service provider and listing your own powered events of the past.