Show HN: Wiwo – Find events happening around you. Google Maps, but for events.

[wiwoworld]

Hey everyone in the USA!

I'm developing a map-based event discovery platform that helps people find unique and exciting events in their city or area. I imagine that it could help young locals who are searching what is to be attended in their area & tourists who are visiting and want to find what to do in the area.

But before I unleash it on the world, I need your help!

One major pain point that I am trying to solve is information overload and difficulty in discovering relevant events nearby. Traditionally, people might rely on social media, local newspapers, or word-of-mouth to find events happening around them.

These methods can be:

Scattered: Information is spread across different sources, making it time-consuming to search. Unfiltered: Showing a large amount of events, not necessarily relevant to individual interests. Limited information: Often lacking key details like event descriptions, schedules, or ticket options.

So my MVP address these issues by:

Aggregating: Bringing together event information from multiple sources in one place. Personalization: Using filters and user preferences to recommend relevant events. Visualization: Displaying events on a map, allowing users to discover events based on location and proximity. Detailed information: Providing comprehensive descriptions and links to purchase tickets.

What other features I plan to build: Build-in resell marketplace, own event upload, live-streaming, PPV and more.

However I find it difficult to get any feedback on the platform. I've tried paid ads, posting to other Early Adopters websites, personally reaching out to people, who I think are target users, but do not get any meaningful feedback.

So I'm eager to hear your honest opinions:

What works well in the platform?

What needs improvement?

Are there any features you'd like to see added?

Your feedback will be invaluable in shaping the future of Wiwo!

P.S. For now only US users are needed, as other won't find events in their areas :)

[maelito]

> If you have problems seeing the map, please stop your AdBlocker...

Well, no.

[from-nibly]

Same. I was willing to click to give a friend some feedback but unless I can't find my way to the hospital because my arms been looped off I'm not turning off AdBlock. I can live without "finding events happening around you"

And look it's not this one product that makes me feel this way it's the fact that this is the 100th time I've been asked something like this in a week.

I'm not interested in being a product for someone else anymore.

[yreg]

Some feedback:

1. I would like to be able to get from the event to the map pin position. Both on the event screen (it could be even embedded there) and in search results. The site is showing me only events in Cyrillic - I don't know why. Perhaps the closest events to me are in Ukraine/Russia?

2. I dislike the decisions about where target="_blank" is used. Sometimes it is used when I don't expect it and sometimes it is not used when I do expect it.

3. I wouldn't do the transform: rotate; thing with text. It feels strange. Might even make it less accessible for some.

4. CAPITAL BLUE WORDS - some of them are links and some of them are emphasis. You need to distinguish those cases.

5. Why can't I access the map with uBlock Origin? Don't tell me it's required for the positioning, use Geolocation browser API.

6. On the landing page, you are for some reason putting all of the content into <h2 /> tags.

[wiwoworld]

1. Ahmm I assume you are using it on PC and you mean events on the front-page are in Cyrillic? You say - "I would like to be able to get from the event to the map pin position." - you mean from front-page to pin on the map or you mean from search to pin on the map?

What do you think about removing the landing page all together and using only the map page?

[yreg]

> you mean from front-page to pin on the map or you mean from search to pin on the map?

I mean from both.

The front page shows me this event: https://www.wiwo.world/event/location=cest-la-vie-club&categ...

I have no idea where it is. I don't know what's La Vie Club or even what country it is in.

---

When I open map and enter something into the search bar, I get a list of events. Again, I have no idea where they are happening. Clicking on them sends me on the event page.

---

>removing the landing page all together and using only the map page

Sounds like an improvement for the user. Can't comment on business/marketing impact.

[nameequalsmain]

Why do I need to turn off my adblocker to see the map?

[webstrand]

The app makes a 3rd-party request to determine your IP. I wonder why they didn't just grab it from HTTP headers?

[wiwoworld]

Hi,

this is in order to localize you roughly on the map. Instead of showing you completely different part of the map :)

[Krasnol]

Just offer a button to request this.

No reason to make it a default and running into those problems.

PS. no way I'm turning off my ublock for some unknown page asking for this.

[laweijfmvo]

Happy to localize myself thanks

[stevage]

Seems to be down now.

Obviously I can't see it, but from your description, I wonder if you want to be more precise about what you mean by "event". Do you primarily mean passive ticketed events like shows, or interactive things like workshops? Or community gatherings like Parkrun.

I have some hesitation about making all events more discoverable. Sometimes the friction of dincoverability is important to getting the right kind of people to come, who heard through the right channels, as opposed to some random who did the easiest thing by looking on a website.

Having tourists show up at a community building event for locals might sound great for the tourist, but not so great for the community.

[wiwoworld]

Hi,

rebooted the heroku dyno, now it is up again :) You can take a look. It is about concerts, theater, sports events ...

[stevage]

> If you have problems seeing the map, please stop your AdBlocker...

Absolutely not.

[hoppyhoppy2]

Interesting idea!

I didn't like being locked out until I disabled my adblocker, but maybe you have your reasons.

There are 6 or 7 events listed for the entire Burlington, Vermont metro area (over 200,000 people), which is way, way less than what's actually going on in the area.

The locations of all the events that are there are off: UVM Patrick Gym isn't at the administration building where the pin is (but at least the pin is on campus). The others make no sense, though: the Flynn Center is on Main Street downtown, not way out on North Ave, and Higher Ground Music is located on Williston Rd, not across town at the South Burlington indoor skating rink. I don't know where it's getting its location info.

The Flynn and Higher Ground Music have dozens of events on their websites that aren't listed on the map. I'm not sure how it pulled a random handful; must've been from an incomplete data set, though.

It's an idea that has promise but I don't find it useful right now.

[thenberlin]

Really cool idea and generally solid execution -- I would totally use this.

That said, a couple bits: 1. I can't seem to click the events on the map in Safari on Mac. 2. The map doesn't load at all in Brave (I even dropped the tracker blocking on the site and reloaded and it still didn't load).

[robcohen]

This is very cool. I had a similar idea recently but I had no idea how to correctly parse various sources of event information other than writing custom beautiful soup or similar code for every single source.

Actually, I was thinking that event information could maybe be correctly pulled using AI tools. Admittedly, I'm no AI expert, so I am unsure what open source tools would be best for this.

Anyone know of models that could be given a url, and parse any website and scrape the event data and return it in json with a very high degree of accuracy?

What would be cool is to just give the app a list of bookmarks and get a map like this or even automatically have it parsed into ical format.

[ctrlw]

I always wanted something similar for my city and started with the local cinema program but then never added any other sources. It was still useful for the 10 or so years it was online, and I still think about getting back to it.

That said, while the idea seems promising, it‘s difficult to maintain, especially since sources (APIs / websites) tend to change frequently. If I remember correctly, pg even mentions this idea in one of his essays as a typical “bad idea“ that founders want to build but nobody figures it out as a business.

[sourabh03agr]

Nice idea! From the perspective of someone who is in need of such a solution, I have explored similar apps before, and one of the biggest issues was that I don't look for events regularly (frequency is once a week or two). As a result, I tend to forget the name of the platform when I actually need it.

I don't have a lot of suggestions on how to solve this but if your platform can be consistently visible to your users, that would help you a lot with adoption.

[wiwoworld]

Wow ... I must admit I am thrilled about all the feedback!

There are lots of things to be fixed and improved for sure and all those comments were just the thing I needed!

Maybe one other question ... what do you thing about the ideas that I have for other features:

-Build-in resell marketplace - Option to sell a ticket that you already own if you cannot attend the event.

-Adding own events.

-Live-streaming and PPV.

-Build-in navigation to the event.

-Email notifications about similar events to the one you attended.

-Create groups of people with whom to go to given event.

P.S.

I will try to answer all of the comments! :)

[from-nibly]

"build in resell marketplace" you mean scalping? It should be legal but I think it isn't most of the time?

"Live stream" or pirating? Idk if that's actually the word for this.

"Built in navigation" I'd rather just have a link that takes me to my own navigation app thanks.

"Email notifications about similar events" do you read emails from random websites constantly trying to get you to come back to their platform? Like are you the guy that connects with every suggested connection that linked in throws at you so you go there one more time?

I can see "adding your own events" and "create groups of people" being useful.

Sorry if that feels harsh, and maybe I'm just not your target market, but I would focus way more on getting more, and more accurate data. It's not really useful at all unless it's THE place to go to look for events near you.

[pimlottc]

Your map page doesn't explain itself at all. Every page on your site needs at least a tagline to help people understand what they're looking at.

[geocrasher]

I managed to get to use it before it was hugged to death, and found some great nearby concerts and events to go to. Immediate feedback:

  - ESC closes the current window you just clicked to open
  - Different color icons for music/events
  - Filter by music/events
  - Filter by upcoming date (next 30,90,6mo etc)

I forgot to add- I love it! Great concept. I hope it takes off for you.

[wiwoworld]

Yeah ... I am currently up-scaling the infrastructure because of all the users :D

[wiwoworld]

Thank you for the suggestions!

[NKosmatos]

Nice one! I had/have a similar idea, tried to build something, but you know how side projects go… you have a good idea, you register the domain, you get new project fever and try to prepare an MVP but unfortunately something happens and you stop.

You really need to put effort into it in order to create something. As others have said, everyone has ideas, it’s the execution that matters ;-)

[karmakaze]

Please post again when it's available for the .world (or at least other parts of it).

[smartbit]

I’m getting ’Failed to fetch results. Please check network’ for non US locations. Strange way of reporting it is US only.

[wiwoworld]

Hi,

Based on all the feedback we will try to find a solution where we can show the correct map position also with adblocker on.

The other problem with this however is that in this early stage the only monetization that we have in mind are google ads.

[rungabajje]

There are three main buttons. The big red button with a globe I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, it does nothing when I tap it. The home button doesn’t seem to do anything either. Then I lost interest.

[Kailhus]

Same here. On mobile. No comprendo what this all does, I think it’s still down.

[wiwoworld]

I hear you! The bottom app bar is something that I need to rework for sure!

[spiffytech]

If you're only targeting US users, I'd suggest displaying dates and times in the US format (MDY am/pm).

[willmorrison]

I'm getting a Heroku application error.

[wiwoworld]

Hi,

Now it should be up again :)

[neduma]

same

[wiwoworld]

I've up-scaled the ifra ... for now it is up again :)