I’ve been incredibly frustrated over the past week. I’m trying to develop a new events service. Not a typical “post your kid’s birthday” events service, this is geared toward filmmakers and musicians and artists looking to promote their gigs and shows online.

Unfortunately it’s making me feel like crap because as I’m slowly designing the layout and developing features I’m realizing that I’m encountering the cardinal sin of Web 2.0 - I’m developing features, not products.

This is not a good feeling. Having what you think is a killer idea and then realizing “oh gee, someone else basically got their first.” I speak, of course, of Upcoming and Eventful, the original databases for events. I write down features (for example: pictures for artists/venues. I don’t want to host, why not tie it into flickr or zooomr? oh wait, upcoming does that.) and I realize that, gee, they’ve gotten their first.

I know that the mission behind my concept is different: promote arts and culture, whereas Upcoming/Eventful are just their to help you organize your social calendar. But the mission doesn’t matter when you have nearly identical featuresets. And sure, I come up with the occasional neat feature (oh gee whiz, let’s allow people to review events!) and then twenty minutes later realize “wait, no one would actually do/use that.”

So now I’m at a point where I need to develop a web app. Livelocity failed. This appears to be on the brink of failure (unless I get out of this slump and/or get a big idea fast). I have interest on the dev side, a neat design and a cool name…. now I just need the product.

And for whatever reason, I just can’t get the idea juice flowing.

And it gets me incredibly frustrated.