After Yahoo disaster, Upcoming.org resurrects itself

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Andy Baio is resurrecting his first hit internet project after Yahoo nuked it in 2013

 

 

Upcoming.org – the artsy-fartsy, Apple-loving community Yahoo tried to kill – has pulled itself out of the cold clutches of death with its own Kickstarter project.

And it only took 90 minutes.

After being acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Upcoming.org went from being the web’s hippest place to find events and meet like-minded people to a nuclear wasteland of rotting webpages before Yahoo killed it completely during Marissa Mayer’s Great Product Purge of 2013.

Yahoo approached Baio last month to buy the name back, but rather than throw his energies into a new project people might not want, he tossed it up on Kickstarter – which he helped launch in 2009 – to gauge interest. 5,400 seconds later he had enough backers to jumpstart the $30,000 project.

Upcoming.org aims to be an open and collaborative resource where anyone can add the music/sports/arts/film/drama events they’re going to, or find who’s going to other events.

In its prime, the site had a knack for uncovering weird events that flew under the radar as well as finding what your friends were interested in. Apple-types, developers and other creatives congregated around the calendar boards, but now that Facebook, Twitter and other social giants have entered the field, Baio says he’ll use new tools to rekindle the the original community aspect of Upcoming.org.

Backers of the project will get early access to the upcoming beta and a t-shirt if you kick in enough money. The funding period ends on May 30th and has already passed $45,000.

Source: Kickstarter

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