UpTo Launches Event Streams With U.K. Shopping Center Partnership
DETROIT -- UpTo, the Detroit-bred social application for your phone's calendar, Thursday announced added capabilities that enable users to follow third-party event streams.
UpTo's first major partner for streams is Westfield U.K., a shopping center group in the United Kingdom. UpTo's new functionality will feature London Olympic Games events as well as events at the shopping centers, allowing users to follow specific event categories, to see where and when the events are taking place.
"Until now, UpTo has been all about seeing and sharing calendar events with friends, families and co-workers," said UpTo founder and CEO Greg Schwartz. "The latest version of UpTo adds support for third-party event streams, which could be anything from Games events or TV programs, to a local school or community calendar."
Beyond simply notifying attendees of upcoming events, UpTo adds an interactive, social layer to the experience. When a user taps "Join" to indicate that they're going to an event, that event is added to the user's calendar and simultaneously shared with friends via UpTo, Facebook or Twitter. Users can then have conversations around upcoming events and "Like" events within the app. UpTo gives users total control over which events they see and share.
UpTo will feature events happening at Westfield Stratford City and Westfield London during the Games, as well as promote the free Wi-Fi and free mobile charging within these centres. The UpTo application will be promoted to Westfield's visitors on digital screens located throughout these centers as well as across Westfield web properties.
"We are very excited to be working with UpTo, who are taking social media into the next evolution through their social calendar application," said Myf Ryan, General Manager, Marketing, Westfield. "This exciting development will help our customers discover, share and plan to attend our entertaining events with their friends and family."
UpTo integrates with your phone's existing calendar and allows users to share and comment on meetings, appointments and events with a network of friends. With your existing calendar, you can only see your own events and invite people to "attend" your events. With UpTo, you not only see your own events, but you can also see your UpTo friends' upcoming events, share events with relevant groups, share events to Facebook and Twitter, and comment on friends' events – all before the event happens.
The latest release of UpTo enables users to discover new third-party event streams based on their likes and interests, and then "Follow" these streams with a single tap. Once following a stream -- such as "TV programs" -- users can then view the upcoming events for that stream in their main UpTo feed and simply tap "Join" to add and share that event on UpTo. The new UpTo features an enhanced interface that lets users control which streams appear in their main feed at any given time. The latest version also includes support for Facebook Events, as well as a new "Add Event" screen with Foursquare venue lookup, making it easy to automatically add locations and addresses for any event.
UpTo is currently available for free in the App Store for iPhone users. For additional information, please visit upto.com.
The Westfield Group (ASX Code: WDC) is an internally managed, vertically integrated, shopping centre group undertaking ownership, development, design, construction, funds/asset management, property management, leasing and marketing activities and employing approximately 4,000 staff worldwide. The Westfield Group has interests in and operates one of the world's largest shopping centre portfolios with investment interests in 110 shopping centres across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Brazil, encompassing approximately 23,500 retail outlets and total assets under management of $60 billion Australian.
