The social event calendar site Upcoming.org has been purchased by Yahoo and will be incorporated into Yahoo Local.
The Yahoo Search Blog features a post from Paul Levine, general manager for Yahoo Local, about the company’s acquisition of Upcoming. The Upcoming web site allows users to enter and update forthcoming events. As calendars are created, they can be shared with others; they can be syndicated via RSS feed to another web site as well.
In the post, Yahoo extols the purchase of Upcoming and its plans to make it part of Yahoo Local:
In just a few years, most of it spent on nights and weekends, the Upcoming team has built an excellent site with a loyal and growing following. Now that they’ve joined Yahoo!, together we’ll build a social events platform that will integrate with our existing events offering and other areas of Y!, and will continue to support all web users in an open, participatory way.
Once Upcoming finds its way into Yahoo, the portal company will make it available via PCs and mobile devices, with a focus on local search. Augmenting local search has been a priority for the search engines, as that area promises the greatest growth and profitability for them.
Users of the new Yahoo site will be subject to Yahoo’s Privacy Policy, as Upcoming notes on its home page. That policy was a point of contention for a few Flickr users, who found out that they would have to create Yahoo accounts to keep using the service. Those users consider the registration process a grab for personal information and complained about it.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
