Slashdot Mirror


Ticketmaster Lets You Sit With Facebook Friends

An anonymous reader writes "Ticketmaster has added Facebook integration to its interactive seat maps. The new feature allows you to share your live event plans by tagging yourself into your seat, and thus allowing your Facebook friends to see where you are sitting. If you have already purchased tickets for an event, you can also tag yourself at a later date."

40 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Grossly overpriced tickets for my FRIENDS too! by elrous0 · · Score: 2

    Now all my Facebook friends can get raped WITH me! Thanks, Ticketmaster!

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  2. I despise TicketMaster, but by John+Bresnahan · · Score: 3, Funny
    this seems like a clever idea.

    Too bad I will never take advantage of it, because I despise TicketMaster. Also, I don't have any Facebook friends.

    1. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by flaming+error · · Score: 1, Interesting

      > I despise TicketMaster
      Monopolies rarely engender good will. But unlike, say, taxes, at least you get a service you really want and nobody puts a gun to your head.

    2. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Monopolies rarely engender good will. But unlike, say, taxes, at least you get a service you really want and nobody puts a gun to your head.

      I expect that's supposed to be a joke of some sort but for the avoidance of doubt - I get services I want from my taxes. Like roads. And policing. And defense. And (where I live) health care. Street lighting. Pavements. Libraries. Health standards for food production, distribution and preparation. In fact, you might want to live in some free for all capitalist utopia where everything goes by ability to pay but what I get from my taxes, most of all, is a relatively pleasant society to live in. And while I don't doubt it would be possible for them to be far more efficient and provide an even better deal, it's actually still an amazing bargain.

    3. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      at least you get a service you really want and nobody puts a gun to your head

      Ticketmaster reserves that treatment for bands. Except of course, the few that are powerful enough that they don't need Ticketmaster.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by flaming+error · · Score: 1, Interesting

      > I get services I want from my taxes
      Good point. But I also get services I don't want. Like warrantless surveillance, elective wars, debt, and wall street bailouts. And if one looks at the distribution of taxes, one can see that the things I don't want are where the bulk of the taxes go.

      > it's actually still an amazing bargain.
      Where do you live?

      > you might want to live in some free for all
      > capitalist utopia
      Then again, I might not. I'd settle for a place where the gov't obeys the law and the people can change the law. You know of a place like that, do let me know.

    5. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by Asic+Eng · · Score: 1

      Also, I don't have any Facebook friends.

      The very same technology could come in useful to avoid your Facebook enemies.

    6. Re:I despise TicketMaster, but by alex67500 · · Score: 1

      I'd settle for a place where the gov't obeys the law and the people can change the law. You know of a place like that, do let me know.

      I don't live there, but that's the image that Sweden gives me...

  3. Woooo! More fees!!! by Conrthomas · · Score: 1

    For only an additional 13.95, you can sit with your friends that we pull from your facebook, along with ALL your personal data! (Disclaimer: this is an assumption)

  4. Can I sit in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    An area without Facebook users?

    1. Re:Can I sit in... by piripiri · · Score: 1

      You're so old school!

    2. Re:Can I sit in... by Americano · · Score: 1

      I bet he rides a fixie to all the indie shows he goes to. And I bet he'd love to tell us all about those bands, but it would be pointless - we've never heard of any of them, and probably wouldn't get their clever references to David Foster Wallace and Nick Hornby at all.

    3. Re:Can I sit in... by hedwards · · Score: 2

      Pssh, I was hating Facebook before it became popular to hate Facebook. Poseurs.

    4. Re:Can I sit in... by LordSnooty · · Score: 1

      Good idea. I expect the correlation between Facebook users and idiots who film the entire concert on their crappy mobile phones to be strong.

  5. assassinate by Locq · · Score: 1, Interesting

    way to broadcast exactly where you will be. is everyone on facebook so starved out for attention they have to do this??

    1. Re:assassinate by Americano · · Score: 1

      Yeah, because my overriding concern when I go to a concert is "will somebody attempt to assassinate me tonight?"

      Unless your name is Abraham Lincoln, your odds of being "assassinated" at a concert are pretty much dead even with your odds of being struck by a meteorite while you stand there.

    2. Re:assassinate by soundguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The odds of your house being burglarized while the entire world knows you are not at home, however, are considerably higher.

      --
      Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
    3. Re:assassinate by itchythebear · · Score: 1

      And if you are Abe Lincoln, just don't friend anyone named John Wilkes Booth.

      --
      If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
    4. Re:assassinate by Americano · · Score: 1

      1) If somebody is specifically targeting you - finding you on facebook, tracking your movements - they can easily & trivially know whether you're in or out by simply watching your house. When they see you leave, they know you're no longer at your house.

      2) If the burglary is one of random opportunity, they're not monitoring your facebook account to see if you're home. They're looking for a house with lights off, no evident activity.

      3) Your location info need not be shared with anybody else, unless you're a moron and don't know how to restrict access.

      4) There has been, what, one verifiable incident of people "targeting" homes by using Facebook's checkin feature? And even that, dubious cause & effect?

      Given all that, I'd say your odds of being assassinated are just about even with your likelihood of being struck by a meteorite, OR having your home burglarized *by someone tracking you on Facebook* while you're out.

      Relax. You're not that important, and random burglaries are random.

    5. Re:assassinate by Americano · · Score: 1

      True - Facebook doesn't allow fake names.

  6. Cool! by netdigger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...But I'm going to book my tickets with the friends I want to sit with. I could just imagine that one awkward person on your friends list coming and sitting next to you.

  7. Why did it take Facebook for them to do this? by LordKronos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I absolutely can not believe that it took some stupid facebook integration bs to actually get this done. It's ridiculous that ticketmaster hasn't allowed you to choose seats all along. Every time I get tickets, you get to choose from 1 of 3 broad regions (main floor, lower bowl, and upper bowl). That's it. You can't even choose a specific section, much less a row or seat. A few months ago, a friend wanted tickets for a specific section of the arena, and we actually had to wait 4 days before enough tickets had sold that it began selling in the section he wanted. That's absolutely ridiculous.

    1. Re:Why did it take Facebook for them to do this? by Aerynvala · · Score: 1

      What's always vexed me is the whole "best seat" thing that ticketmaster does. Their definition of a best seat and mine tend to differ quite a lot.

      --
      http://transformativeworks.org/
    2. Re:Why did it take Facebook for them to do this? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Since I've shopped for ticketing solutions my response is I have no fucking idea either. About half of them don't even have this feature, as if it were hard or something. The other half will take your custom floor plan and then they manually build an electronic floor plan that the system can utilize. I evaluated ticketmaster as well as a variety of solutions in and out of house and it was shocking how bad most of them are.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  8. finally, something bleeping useful by craftycoder · · Score: 1

    Finally Facebook integration leads to something useful. Now, I'm not about to give those delta-bravos access to my Facebook data, but still it's pretty cool for people who don't care about their friends or their own privacy.

  9. assassinations by Aryden · · Score: 1

    Man that will be so much easier when you don't have to search a crowd for someone.

  10. Ticketmaster is biased by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

    What if I want to sit with my Google+ friends?

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    1. Re:Ticketmaster is biased by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      Tell them all to sign up for Facebook and use that to book the seats. You can start by setting your Google+ profile picture to a graphic that says "I've moved to Facebook".

  11. Nice by Mordermi · · Score: 1

    Now it will be much easier to stalk that cute girl... I mean, conveniently end up in the seat next to her.

  12. Stalkers rejoice by Steven_M_Campbell · · Score: 1

    So glad we're doing more to aid the stalkers and other folks you don't really want to be around. I'm sure this will be handled with all of the responsibility and good judgment we see exercised by companies handling personal information.

  13. won't ever work by Nyder · · Score: 1

    In my experience, if you want seats next to people you know, you have to buy up a whole bunch at the same time, and even then, it's usually hard to get more then 2 seats together, if that. Mainly if what you are going to is popular, or like a one night show.

    --
    Be seeing you...
  14. Great now if ticketmaster can... by brim4brim · · Score: 1

    make the fucking website usable, I might be able to buy tickets. I've only tried to buy from it once and it was like getting kicked in the face a few times and I got about as much out of it.

    Log in at 9 for tickets going on sale at 9, website fails to load, website eventually loads, tickets sold out. Its not even 5 past 9. Why not just use a bloody email sign up lottery system? Enter email, you can sign up and enter your friends emails to ensure you get seats together because the system can process it that way once all entered on same form. If your submission number gets picked in lottery then you all get the seats unless there is not enough seats left for your group in which case it picks a new number until it finds a match.

    Why can't such a system just be put in place over the current everybody rush for the doors and see if you all fit through mechanism? Isn't this the sort of moronic real world problem that the Internet allows us to solve? Why replicate the real world problem onto the Internet?

    1. Re:Great now if ticketmaster can... by sexconker · · Score: 1

      make the fucking website usable, I might be able to buy tickets. I've only tried to buy from it once and it was like getting kicked in the face a few times and I got about as much out of it.

      Log in at 9 for tickets going on sale at 9, website fails to load, website eventually loads, tickets sold out. Its not even 5 past 9. Why not just use a bloody email sign up lottery system? Enter email, you can sign up and enter your friends emails to ensure you get seats together because the system can process it that way once all entered on same form. If your submission number gets picked in lottery then you all get the seats unless there is not enough seats left for your group in which case it picks a new number until it finds a match.

      Why can't such a system just be put in place over the current everybody rush for the doors and see if you all fit through mechanism? Isn't this the sort of moronic real world problem that the Internet allows us to solve? Why replicate the real world problem onto the Internet?

      TicketMaster instantly sells out because behind the scenes they're shuffling off 99% of the tickets to TicketsNow.com .
      TicketsNow.com is, of course, complete owned by TicketMaster. It's basically scalper.com - tickets are listed and sold by people (TicketMaster bots), and the site takes a percentage of each sale.
      Now if a show/event doesn't do too well, the tickets that were moved from TicketNaster to TicketsNow magically go back to TicketMaster, with all listing fees forgiven, and TicketMaster advertises the fact that they have more tickets to sell, only to repeat the process.

      They do this so they can say they're selling the tickets at the advertised price, while actually selling the bulk of them for much more on TicketsNow.com .

      Any event / venue that uses TicketMaster is retarded.

  15. This ability was built in to their system... by Anyd · · Score: 1

    This ability (choosing specific seats, not Facebook integration) was built into their POS systems at least since '99. Back then I worked in a record store with a Ticketmaster terminal, and you could definitely look for specific seats. You needed a detailed floor plan of the venue, since the terminal was ASCII, but you could do it.

    1. Re:This ability was built in to their system... by kent_eh · · Score: 2

      It still is.
      As you said, all you need to do is physically go to a ticketmaster retailer (or *gasp* even the venue's box office), and you can select any exact seat you want if it's not already sold.

      --

      ---
      "I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
  16. So what's the convenience charge for this? by Dracos · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing it'll be somewhere around $11.95 per ticket.

  17. Usefuleness? by TheABomb · · Score: 1

    Every time I've used TM, the best you could do is choose a price level and I automatically got assigned the "best" seats in the corresponding section. Will they actually hold seats around the ones bought long enough for one's friends to notice and buy them, or is this one of those "Just because you can do something clearly means you should" cases?

    --
    MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
    1. Re:Usefuleness? by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      Maybe people will click on seats that are further back, so the seats beside them will be available. Or maybe this won't work and it's just a way to get more people to sign up for Facebook.

  18. Circle of evil by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

    How about, since there's no way (AFAIK) to "enemy" someone on Facebook, if I set up a "circle of evil" on Google+ and could use that to AVOID people who I don't want to socialise?

    Whilst it sounds dumb -- why would I have any relationship with such people? -- I might just wish to avoid bumping into people from work when I'm with my friends.

    IMHO this is would be *VASTLY* more useful than being able to sit with friends... if they're real friends, I prolly would've arranged something with them anyway.

  19. Ticketmaster makes me hate tickets by rastoboy29 · · Score: 1

    The cable companies make me hate cable, which by all rights I should love.

    Ticketmaster makes me feel like a tool when I buy tickets, with their exhorbitant fees.  So I hate buying tickets, which by all rights I should love.

    Nice job.  Ripe for competition, I think.