If you were bored of spending Friday nights feeding your cats and wanted to hit the town instead, would you prepare for your night by first trudging through a 12000 word gig guide, in order to find a something to do? Word-Of-Mouth thinks you will, and they believe it so strongly that they'll take time out to compile the 19 page abomination and send it to you every month.

There are seemingly hundreds of online and electronic gig guides doing the rounds these days, and in order to make sense of it all it's worth comparing a few of the different approaches side-by-side to see how they rack up. So here it is: Durban's finest events, as seen on the Internet.

ZA @ Play

The oldest, most comprehensive guide I have found is the Mail & Guardian's “ZA @ Play” music listing, compiled by Alex Sudheim and updated weekly. It has all the top music events, and interestingly has them side-by-side with clubs that don't have anything special going on but may be worth checking out. Although the guide is very comprehensive and well formatted, it's still just static HTML and lacks any significant features that may put it ahead of the competition.

As a promoter however, it's worth keeping Alex up to date as your event may end up as a recommended feature in the print version of Mail & Guardian, publicity that you'd be a fool to pass up on.

Click here for ZA @ Play

Word Of Mouth KZN

The Word Of Mouth KZN is predominately a mailing list without much of a web presence, although their site does offer an archive of all previous guides. As mentioned before, the listing clocks in at a cool 12 000 words (19 pages), and is an absolute nightmare to negotiate.

Although I suspect that the events are organised in chronological order, it's completely non-obvious as the entire month's listing is just one long stream of text without any headings separating dates or style of event. The heading for the music section is “Out & About in KZN”, and everything is just dumped in there regardless of genre, and without consideration that some people are only looking for events that may appeal to them.

For instance, it would be quite expected to see “Christmas Carols at the Lake” plonked right underneath a death metal band performing at Burn. All good and well to try mix things up a bit, but with the sheer volume of events it's difficult for someone to find something that may interest their specific taste.

Click here for Word Of Mouth

Amplify

A relative newcomer to the scene is Amplify.co.za, a site that combines the concept of a monthly mailing list with a shiny looking website. Their listing includes movies, sport, theatre as well as reviews, interviews and photos of the events, and although there's a serious lack of content on the last few items, at least it presents a vague attempt to deliver the goods.

Disappointingly, it seems they're trying to cash in on the business, rather than create a unique perspective on the city's nightlife. The evidence of this is clear when you click on their “Clubs” section, only to find the first five club entries (Vacca Matta, The Lounge, Manna, Reform Club and Tilt) which are a paragraph each, have merely been copy-pasted off Alex Sudheim's “ZA @ Play” guide. Their “Gig guide” section also looks suspiciously similar to the listings found on the M&G site.

Lazy and borderline illegal, overall leaving me with a poor impression of Amplify and little reason to make a return visit.

Click here for Amplify

SAMO's Gig Guide

From the copy-cats to the downright ridiculous: I invite you to click on someone named “Samo's” guide, and feast your eyes on this absolutely shocking display of web design. Each event here is proudly broadcast in the brightest shade of the primary colours that your monitor is capable of displaying, as if Samo had designed the site with 3 crayons and a big black piece of wax paper.

I don't think I've seen scrolling text on a website since 1990, and I thought they removed that feature from the HTML specification years ago!

It's not like it's a serious contender to real gig guides, but perhaps worth noting just how bad things could be if we had left web design up to programmers instead of delegating that responsibility to artists all those years ago.

Click here for SAMO's

Who's listening?

One of the deepest questions on any gig guide compiler's tongue must surely be: “Does anybody actually give a fuck?”

As you may already know, Durban Scouts has had a mini guide running on the right side here for almost a year. From my web stats, I'll tell you that the results are pretty lukewarm for those who actively promote their events and downright shocking for those who just email them in without a follow-up comment or three to get members excited closer to the time.

From over 3500 unique visitors to Durban Scouts in March, events like “Burning The Roof”, “Napalma” and “Nibs Van Der Spuy” got a pathetic average of about 14 clicks for the entire month. Hardly worth the effort of putting them up in the first place.

Face The MusicHowever, there is a slightly better response to events that appeal to the community more, or have comments and discussion surrounding them. For example “Face The Music”, which managed 250 clicks for the whole month.

People are sheep, and personally I admit that I too find it far easier to go to places where the majority of my friends are (normally a comfort zone like the local pub); than push to try something different. I know very few people that attempt to explore the unknown, and I suspect that's a trend that will crop up repeatedly in most circles of friends.

One way for a promoter to beat this is by sending off a flyer on email, and hoping that it will get forwarded around as a personal recommendation from friends. After all, receiving a flyer from a trusted mate is far more effective at persuading you to attend the event than reading about it on a website. It's also a great reminder, especially because most people couldn't be bothered actively seeking special events, but would definitely open an email from a friend that arrived timeously on a Friday afternoon.

Social Networks

In recent times, the traditional gig guide's ultimate competition has come in the form of social networking communities like MySpace and Facebook. There is simply no method as effective as punting an event by allowing people to do the word-of-mouth distribution themselves.

As friends find out, so to do friends-of-friends, and the next thing you have half of Durban committed to the jol by joining the Facebook group or displaying the flyer on their MySpace pages. It works like a dream and could quite easily destroy the traditional model of listing events in one central repository.

iJol

There is of course still hope for those who may not find themselves as socially connected online as others. A new site has popped up that incorporates several of the best features into one, and it's been created by none other than “stump”, one of Durban Scouts' own members.

iJol.co.za is a social event calendar, where you get the standard gig guide with the bonus of being able to “sign-up” for a jol and leave comments and photos from the night. Your profile displays all the events you've attended, and the ones you're going to be attending so it becomes easier to gauge the popularity of an event.

It's not a unique idea, and follows firmly in the footsteps of the global website upcoming.org that has the same features. However, it's still unique in the South African landscape and because it's local, much more relevant to us “jollers”! It's also by far the best gig guide out of those that are listed here.

And time will certainly tell whether a service like this will fly, or whether Facebook is already too much of a beast to be stopped when it comes to collective planning of the weekend.

Click here for iJol

If there are any I've left out, feel free to add them below.