Event App Market Set To Explode
Cvent's mobile division,CrowdCompass (acquired last summer), is ready for big business.Sales director Matthew Donegan-Ryan saysthemarket for event planning mobile apps is growing rapidly thanks to smartphone adoption. (Smartphones continue to outsell PCs, and mobile apps are expected to hit$25B by 2015.) Events apps used to be a nice-to-have but now they're amust-have just like having an event website was eight years ago. Cvent customers include Eloqua, DECA, and Honeywell.
CrowdCompass made Cvent a bi-coastal company, with 50 of CrowdCompass' 100-person team in Portland, Ore., (above). To get its market share early, the company recently made major changes to its event app. Matthew says the product--which allows event planners to provide agendas and social media tools for attendees--has been rebuilt from the ground up. Some of the biggest changes include letting organizers use the same app for multiple events instead of having a new app built for each event. Attendees are also getting more social options like posting to all social networks at the same time and sharing event photos with other attendees.
