VentureBeat

Going.com, a Boston-based networking site centered around urban events, has grown rapidly since it launched in June of last year.

The site, which tomorrow changes its name to Going (away from HeyLetsGo.com), says it has 220,000 unique monthly visitors to the site. The numbers, while not mind-blowing by any stretch, are enough to look around and ask why other sites haven’t sewn up this events area. Going lists events in three cities; it launched in Boston six months ago, and more recently New York and San Francisco. It tries to mobilize a community around each event. We tinkered with it today, before the relaunch tomorrow, and it is intuitive.

One factor keeping this and other similar sites from explosive viral growth is the number of old-economy competitors, from publications like the Boston Globe, to the New York Times and the Village Voice — and as events go, old-fashioned event-planning over the phone.

Also, Going’s chief executive Evan Schumacher says no other Web site has done the hard work of engaging with event promoters in local communities. Going, which focuses on answering the question “What should I do tonight?,” has targeted top event organizers in each city and encouraged them to invite their contacts to events using Going. You’ll see some events, like this one for Klaxons, with more than a thousand people responding to the invites and registering. If respondents express interest in going to an event, their photos show at the bottom of the event page, with links to their profile.

As for competition, you’ve got JudysBook, which has yet to have real traction, and Yahoo’s Upcoming.org, which is still larger than Going, but limited to the techie crowd. You’ve got Yelp for information about restaurants and bars, and you’ve got MingleNow, a site that revolves around tequila-filled night clubs, and Down2Night, which is mainly texting event information to your cell phone. You’ve got Zvents for an agenda of events in your region, but much less oriented around people (update: forgot to mention Eventful.com, which is similar). And you’ve got various invite services, but these tend to be more for personal parties or occasions. Facebook’s community is still centered around colleges, even if it has branched out.

Going has hired editors to pick and profile specific events for each city, and then tries to encourage user participation. Any event can be featured, from Playboy parties to art gallery openings and charity events. The targeted community is the out-of-school crowd, broadly the 20- and 30-somethings.

The company is backed with $3.5 million in venture capital from General Catalyst Ventures and Highland Capital. George Bell, of GCV, was co-founder of Excite, and Bob Davis, of Highland was co-founder of Lycos.

JetBlue has partnered with Going.com promote alternative rock tours (The Teddy Bears in San Francisco and NY, for example), and JetBlue’s new air service to San Francisco.

After talking with Schumacher, it’s clear he wants Going to be the Facebook for city events — replicating Facebook’s success of matching online interests with those that exist offline. If it executes, this site could go somewhere, but we’re still not certain how viral such a site can be. After all, the point is not to hang out at a site about events, but to actually go to the events. Screenshots of an event, and a profile, below.

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The latest action:

Grouper sends “cease & desist” letter to Searchles, but it may backfire — Grouper, the online video sharing site now owned by Sony, sends a C&D letter to Searchles to demand it stop taking Grouper videos and placing them in Searchles’ own player skin. Grouper says the practice removes things like copyright protection technology, as well as buttons such as “flag as inappropriate.” The controversy is recorded at Searchles’ blog, which, incidentally, provides a witty defense. The ruckus only serves to give more publicity to Searchles’ new TV feature Grouper is so protesting. Indeed, we found ourselves reading up on Searchles, checking out its TV feature (see video), and being impressed. It lets users run multiple back-to-back videos on one player, allowing them to import the videos from anywhere, including MySpace, YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv or Grouper. Users can then post those players to their own blog or elsewhere. There are other companies doing similar things (stripping video from other sites, and then putting their own players around it), but much of this has been untested in the courts. Speaking of video controversy, turns out Viacom, which is suing Google for copyright violation, has its own video-pirate subsidiary, iFilm.

Determining a video’s relevance — These legal fights will intensify when there’s actual advertising running alongside and inside of the videos. Now there’s a company, Visible Measures, that says it has technology to analyze a video’s various characteristics, to help publishers and advertisers know when and how users are likely to engage with a video. The company looks at which users are forwarding the video, where they are embedding it, and whether they are rewinding to a specific part. This gives publishers and advertisers a way to rate a video’s worth, and to target specific individuals. The Cambridge, Mass. Visible Measures has just raised $5 million in a first round of financing from General Catalyst Partners, according to VentureWire (sub required). Now, this technology may not yet be the video equivalent of Page Rank — which, as you’ll recall, is the technology (based on incoming links and other factors) that Google uses to rank Web pages in its results. Google is still looking for a way to rank videos, though this technology may bring it closer. Indeed, Visible Measures says it has received an “endorsement” from YouTube.

Lycos releases Jubii in the U.S. — The NYT has the details. But the NYT apparently didn’t try out the service. We did, and didn’t like it.

Obama’s California campaign being run of Kleiner’s office — Former Democratic controller Steve Westly, as reported, has taken an office at the respected Silicon Valley venture firm, Kleiner Perkins. Now we learn he is co-chair for Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential run. Also, Westly’s new venture fund has already invested in a local solar company.

Tello, launches and crashes within a year — Tello emerged with great acclaim last year with a service that allowed companies to detect the “presence” of employees, such as whether they are best available on landline, cellphones or IM. We wrote about them here. The company has just gone belly up. It raised $10 million in July.

Ouch, Scoble says Microsoft’s web initiatives “suck” — Former lead Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, has turned on his former employer: “Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that’s in it to win then I don’t get it.”

More confirmation of Google phone — This time, the Google executive in Spain and Portugal spills the beans, and the Google PR folks are somewhat more forthcoming than when we asked them about it earlier this month.

FeedYes throwing in towel — FeedYes, the company that created RSS feeds for sites that don’t have any, which we first wrote about here, is now up for auction. It has many competitors, including Feed43.com and Nooked.com