UPDATED 13:11 EDT / AUGUST 25 2011

NEWS

Ticketmaster and Facebook Bring Concert Seating into the Social Era

Social networking has re-defined how we make friends, meet people, and hang out. The world has already seen the transformation of inviting friends to birthdays, weddings, and other occasions via virtual invites through Facebook. Today, Ticketmaster tries their luck in social and will launch interactive seats in Facebook. With the integration of interactive seat maps to Facebook, fans will be granted the ability to choose who they want to share their plans with, they can choose to open up to everyone, with just their friends, or they can opt to not share—the same concept behind restricting Facebook status or shout-outs.

 

Elated with this development, David Fisch of Facebook says, “Ticketmaster is taking an important step toward making every stage of the live event experience as social online as it is in real life. Ticketmaster’s interactive seat map shows the promise of using social technologies to improve the event experience.”

 

Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard noted the integration of their services to social networks.

 

He said, “Live events are inherently social and leveraging social media to enhance them allows the passion to exist in the digital space before, during and after live events. Our team is fanatical about leading the industry forward and we will continue to innovate the live experience.”

 

The idea of crossing social boundaries will allow people to enjoy live entertainment and reverberate the experience outside the walls of the venue. But what good will this do for Ticketmaster? From a social standpoint, making it known to your friends that you are going to this particular concert might just be the stronger ad campaign that the company can get: word of mouth. Ticketmaster capitalizes on the general truth that people hate to go to concerts alone. So, the moment they see a friend in Facebook reserved seats for this particular event, a recent no could turn to a resounding yes.

 

At this day and age, almost everything that Facebook touches turns to gold. Remember how businesses like daily deals, Zynga, Fusion-io, Groupon and tons more gained solid following? The over 750 million members of Zuck’s well of wealth is already a testament of high probability of success. This clearly tells us of the huge impact that social networking can bring to eCommerce. With Ticketmaster betting on social influence, we’ll see how tagging virtually will convert to tagging in real world attract more sales?



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