Vamos Puts Events In Your Pocket

    When you and your friends are bored, how do you find out something to do? Maybe I’m just bad at knowing what websites or services to check, but if nothing is on Facebook I pick up one of those free magazines or newspapers found in the entrances of shops and restaurants, and flip through what’s happening there. But still, it’s 2012. There’s got to be a better solution considering the amount of processing power in everyone’s pockets.

    A team of Swedes in Berlin think they’ve created the answer with Vamos, a beautifully designed mobile app that crowdsources public events from people’s Facebook accounts. This is more than just a frontend for your Facebook events; with every new person that connects their Facebook account to Vamos, the event listing gets better as Vamos pulls in and shares the public events every user has been invited to.

    Vamos can be downloaded here.

    When you log into the app, you can find a list of events happening right now or the rest of the day through a list, or your can also search events happening right now through your current location. The team realizes that context is important when finding which events to go to, so in the list view, you can see what friends have RSVP’d to which events, and on the map view, the pins are coloured differently if different friends are attending. You can also see the public profiles of people who are attending, giving you some indication of the crowd that will be there.

    Vamos has succeeded in launching with the full package. You can find directions to events through the mapping part of the service, and if you’re curious what the event space looks like, you can find photos off of Instagram.

    If you find a good event and want to share it with your friends, they don’t need to have a smartphone or the Vamos app installed. Directions and details can be shared over SMS.

    CEO Luis-Daniel Alegria says that right now they are focusing on the iPhone version, and didn’t want to just release an Android or Windows Phone version just for the sake of it, although it’s in the roadmap.

    After starting the company with a team connected through Skype, Vamos is now based in Berlin. Alegria describes the company as getting the best of both worlds; they’ve got Swedish design and German engineering. The company is based around other startups in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood, and says that there is a good ecosystem there that feeds off each other.