Yahoo and Upcoming, Sitting In A Tree
Two years ago, I launched Upcoming.org and announced it to the world. Today, along with my partners Gordon Luk and Leonard Lin, I'm unbelievably proud to announce that Upcoming.org is now a member of the Yahoo! family. — I've always had a warm and fuzzy feeling about Yahoo.
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo’s purchase of Upcoming.org follows its acquisition of Flickr days earlier and sits alongside its broader push into online media and content services. The deal brings an independent event-listing service and its founding team into Yahoo’s portfolio.
Syndicated coverage from Yahoo’s search blog framed the acquisition around Yahoo Local, indicating that event discovery is relevant to Yahoo’s local-information products rather than a standalone financial transaction.
First-order effects
- Upcoming.org, founded by Gordon Luk and Leonard Lin, becomes part of Yahoo, giving Yahoo control of the service and bringing its team inside the company.
- Yahoo gains an event-discovery asset that can complement its local-information offerings.
Second-order effects
- Yahoo’s local products can compete more directly for users seeking what to do nearby by combining event listings with the company’s existing local reach.
- Independent web services building community-generated directories face a clearer trade-off between remaining standalone and becoming features within larger portal networks.
Third-order effects
- Together with Yahoo’s Flickr acquisition, the purchase points to a portal strategy built on acquiring focused web communities and integrating them into broader consumer services.
- If that acquisition pattern continues, control over discovery shifts toward companies that can connect specialized community data—such as events or photos—to large distribution channels.
The trend: Yahoo is broadening from a portal into a network of specialized consumer web services, using acquisitions to add community data and local discovery.