We've added the ability to say, "I'm going to this event!" on any event detail page. Just look for the "Who's Going" section on the page, and click the "Are you going?" link (you'll need to be signed in first) and the system will immediately add you to the list of folks who are going! If you need to remove your name from the list, just click "Not going?" and presto, the list will update automatically.
Also, on your user profile page, you can now see a list of all the events you've indicated you're going to. And other users can see as well (that is, which public events you've indicated your attending).
Some History on Who's Going, I'm Going
Some years back when I was originally thinking about what I wanted EVDB to be (including what is now Eventful), I explicitly did not want to do "Who's Going". And then when Andy Baio's project launched in Sept. 2003 I remember thinking: this is not what I want to do, in the sense that the whole center of the universe for Upcoming seemed to me to be the information about attendance. It was, after all, a social event calendar, so info on "who's going" was naturally extremely useful. As long as you knew who the people were.
I remember thinking, that's cool, but do I care? Do I as a user care if I see 9, 19, 99, or 999 people listed as attendees for an event? I figure I'll know very few of them. If a U2 concert comes to town and the attendee number is listed as 89,271, would that be useful to me? At what point would it actually be a deterrent? As in, Oh, it's too big, Let's not go do that. Let's do something dfferent. I can imagine someone thinking that. Particularly for small intimate events, say a book signing at your favorite dusty old bookshop that you know only sits 15 people comfortably. If you see that 925 people have indicated they're going to the book reading and signing by your favorite book author at the aforementioned dusty old bookshop, are you going to be a) excited or b) filled with dread, knowing there's room for only 15 seats?
And so over the course of several years now, I've resisted EVDB supporting what I feared would turn into "yet another social network" with event-attendance information that might actually discourage attendance after scaling to a certain point. Surely EVDB didn't need all that. And yet, people want to tell people what events they're going to. The act of such communication is in itself an aid to event discovery. And if EVDB's mission is to build the best enabling technology to help people discover events, then who am I to get in the way of someone possibly discovering a cool event because they noticed someone's name on the list of "Who's Going"?
So, it's long overdue, but I'm now a believer: Who's Going is now a part of Eventful. Let us know if you find it useful. And let me know if you find an event (and go!) because you originally noticed a friend's name, acquaintance's name, or simply someone's name you respected, was on the Who's Going list for some event. A few more "I told you so's" couldn't hurt. :-)
