Yahoo!’s interest in beefing up local news and location-based content should lead it to consider buying Zvents. Yes, Yahoo! owns events destination Upcoming. However Zvents has more data and an ad/distribution network that includes many of Yahoo!’s newspaper partners.
Zvents is really a platform and media play that Yahoo! could develop further in many interesting ways. It could also exploit Zvents’ data in mobile.
If I were Yahoo! I would buy the site and also put CEO Ethan Stock in charge of local for Yahoo!
Zvents has raised just over $30 million to date and so the acquisition price would likely be comparable to or slightly more than what Yahoo! just paid for Associated Content.
I have no financial interest or stake in this outcome; I just think it makes sense for Yahoo!
Screenwerk 
June 1, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I’ve never used Zvents but it seems like a Googly strategy to buy up what is perhaps the #1 competitor of Upcoming. eVite and Eventbrite might be possibilities as well.
With regards to Local, I’d like to see SOMEONE in charge at Yahoo…it seems like under Bartz Local has really withered on the vine for them…seemingly from lack of focus or lack of commitment from the top.
June 1, 2010 at 9:56 pm
David – The way in which Eventbrite is integrated into Facebook will prove to be very interesting for this space.
June 1, 2010 at 3:05 pm
They continue to speak about local but don’t seem to have an obvious, overall strategy there.
June 1, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Fully agree Yahoo needs to supercharge Upcoming, but ‘not sure they need to acquire Zvents (or Eventful, which tends to have even more events) to get this done. Seems to me that event data is somewhat of a commodity, no?
Acquisitions are tough on shareholders b/c most don’t prove their value. (I’m even more bearish w/current mangement.) Yahoo s/b able to go get this data themselves, & in the interim – if they must – they should consider licensing the data from Zvents, Eventful, or elsewhere.
June 1, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Yes they might be able to license the data . . . As AOL does with When.com. But it’s not just about the data in my mind it’s also about the network and the talent.
August 11, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Yahoo does need a local strategy but Zvents doesn’t look like the answer. People need a compelling reason to use any service and Zvents doesn’t provide one. Using Zvents I encountered a mash of jumbled aggregated data and random advertisers. People want to know three things on a site like Zvents: 1)What local events am I missing and should know about; 2)What are other people saying about the events I’m interested in; and 3)What deals are available.
Zvents poorly attempts to answer the first question and doesn’t cover the other two.
So what is the answer then? Editors versus automatic aggregation. Editors can be employed by the company or crowdsourced. Yahoo can hire their own editors and then some with the $15-$30 mil that they might pay for Zvents.
August 15, 2010 at 5:50 am
I agree with localuser: compilations of random entries are now easily acquired and are more cost-efficient by/for the larger companies using employees, independent contractors or fishers. The time to “buy” internet startups that have the same info, in different format, is pretty well over and does not provide positive financial security to the shareholders. The format of companies that are “search engine” oriented are antiquated and not even “technology.” Unless the Yahoo’s and Google’s are buying search copy companies just to take them down so they are not a competitor (which none are anyway), the buys are not productive.
August 27, 2012 at 6:53 pm
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