November 23, 2005

New Feature: Eventful Groups

We're rolling out Eventful Groups today - a new feature for people to form groups of similar interests, hobbies, etc., or groups for organizations, teams, companies, families, etc. With groups, numbers of people can collaborate on adding events to calendars.

Some major features of Eventful Groups:

• Adding Groups: You can create any number of your own groups by simply going to the Add Group form and creating a new group. Groups have a name, an optional image, a description, tags, privacy settings (public, private, or limited to friends/family/contacts), and the ability to specify "What" and "Where" keywords for the group. With the latter, the system will automatically search for events that match those "What" and "Where" criteria, and populate any results into the grop's list of events.
• Group Search: When you click on the Groups tab, you can search for groups right at the top just like with other tabs.
• Browse All Groups: There's also a Browse All Groups button which lets you see all the groups that users on Eventful have created, along with the number of events in that group and the number of members.
• My Groups: If you've created or joined any groups, you'll see a box on the left-half of the Groups tab page that lists these particular groups that are of interest to you. If you happen to be the owner of the group, you'll see a little gray word "Admin" next to those group names.
• Recently Added Groups: On the main Groups tab page, you'll also see a box (on the right-hand side of the page) listing groups that have been recently added to the system. This is a dynamic list that gets updated every few minutes.
• Group Info page: Each group has an Info tab with information about the group, including description, tags, links, privacy, and a list of comments members have posted.
• Group Events: Essentially the calendar of events for a group. Right now any group member can add events to a group's list of events.
• Members list: Every group has a list of members.

• Group Invite: Every member of a group can send invites to other Eventful users (friends, family, contacts, or other users) as well as send email to non-Eventful users, inviting them all to join the group.
• Group Edit: If you're the owner of a group, you can edit its attributes by clicking on the Edit link.
• Joining or Leaving Groups: Fast and easy. Find a group you'd like to join? Just click on the "Join this group" button. Want to leave a group you're already a member of? Just click on the "Leave this group" button.
• Converting Calendars to Groups: If you already own a calendar or SmartCalendar, you're going to notice a new button on your calendar info page: you can now "Convert" a calendar to be a group! If you do it, there's no way to revert back, so only convert if you really want to. The advantages are, people can join your new group and anyone in your group can contribute events to the group's list of events, so it becomes a collaborative effort.

We hope you'll try out the new Eventful Groups feature and let us know what you think.

Is this a way to weed out certain events? My site usually only shows five or six events a month, and now Barnes and Nobles is spamming the events log. It has made the event log useless. I don't want their spam "events" to show up on my blogmap.
Can I block them out with this?