eVents launched by providing a ShareStream of Coders 4 Charities in late March.
Popping up at functions like Coders 4 Charities, The Forum at the Middle of the Map Fest and GO | The Future of Mobile Payments, eVents has wasted little time since its March launch in introducing itself to the Kansas City community.
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eVents, a Kansas City, Mo. startup founded by the father-daughter team of Tom Stock and Kaele Stock, is building a product that uses social media to connect people through specific events.
“We’re really trying to make a push to just get it out there, spread the word and share the service with people,” Kaele Stock said Tuesday in a phone interview, “and just get feedback about how it can be useful, how we can improve it.”
The Stocks, who have also worked together on projects that include Global Frontier Analytics and the Research Micro-Grants Association, hatched the idea for eVents based on their findings from an investigation into what drives people to share on social networks. “It kept coming back to a major event,” Kaele Stock (below) said. “Whether it’s positive or negative, people really want to communicate with each other and share perspective and understanding to get kind of a collective narrative of what happened at the event.”
eVents looks to provide that with its product, ShareStream. A ShareStream is created for a particular event and aggregates text and photos related to that event from a variety of sources: tweets and Instagram photos marked with specific hashtags; SMS and MMS messages sent to an eVents number; and other media submitted directly to the ShareStream’s web page. The goal is for that collection of photos and text to provide a record of the event as it happens and an artifact after it concludes.
eVents aims to foster community among event attendees, create a sense of connectedness for people unable to attend the event and increase general awareness of the event, which helps organizers.
The startup’s product is somewhat reminiscent of Storify in its event-centric focus, and it has other elements similar to Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck. But Kaele Stock said there’s no easy comparison to the complete package a ShareStream offers.
ShareStreams are free to set up and use, but eVents intends to eventually generate revenue through premium add-ons like the inclusion of streaming video and the off-line printing of memory books. The company also hopes to generate revenue through the sale of advertising.
For now though, revenue is secondary to improving the product and acquiring users. Kaele Stock sees opportunity everywhere — weddings, golf outings, even funerals — and eVents is expanding beyond Kansas City. The company recently launched in Phoenix — Jim Scott, eVents’ third team member, is based there — and Kaele Stock said San Francisco is next.
“Our priority is not to develop the revenue model right now as much as it is to just have as many people as possible access it,” she said, “and enjoy their feedback about how it can be the best possible version of itself.”
Credits: ShareSteam screenshot from lk2z.us. Kaele Stock photo courtesy of Stock.
