The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Event marketers and promoters typically desire to have event information reach a large number of people to increase the popularity and attendance of the event. Thus, traditional media such as print, radio and television are conventionally used to communicate event information to a large amount of the population. The larger the audience the event information reaches, the more likely the attendance of the event will increase.
Through the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web (“Web”), communication of such events may be instant and widespread to an even larger portion of the population. Further, publishing event information over the Internet incurs minimal cost in relation to traditional media. For example, the event information need not be replicated on physical paper, and the cost of digital replication is minimal when compared to using traditional media. In order to communicate such event information to Internet users, marketers and promoters create web content which may be accessed through an event application associated with a web address. Internet users may view the event information by using a web browser to send a request to the web address. In response to the request, the event application sends to the browser a web page that includes event information.
Unfortunately, event information that one event application makes available to browser users is not easily accessed and used by third-party applications. For example, some developers may desire to create third-party applications to allow end-users to access a customized subset of the information that is made available to end-users by another event application (the “first-party” application). However, developing such third-party applications is difficult because event information is usually stored in a proprietary format, and is usually only directly accessible to the first-party application.
In order for third-party applications to gain access to event information contained in the event repository used by the first-party application, much time and effort is needed to design the third-party application to integrate with the proprietary formats of the event data. Further, the event repository itself is often not directly accessible by third parties.
Another drawback of existing presentations of event information is the lack of control end-users have over the event information itself. Although event marketers wish to provide event information to many end-users, event marketers may also wish to limit access to event information. Also, event viewers are not given control over the manner in which events are classified or organized.
Therefore, what is desired is an improved mechanism for creating, accessing and viewing event information.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds