Big Ideas, but not Big Brother

By Joe Choti, CTO, Tickets.com & MLB Advanced Media (with help from Dave Brooks)

At Tickets.com, the focus for us right now is to make sure that ProVenue provides scalability, stabilization, reliability and speed. Those are big ones. We spent 2010 making sure we were stable in a myriad of different ways. Coming into our 2011 on-sale season, we have sufficiently rearchitectured the ticketing applications and the infrastructure so it stood on its own. Now we’re working on improving speed.

With ProVenue we’re able to plug into any partner’s API, whether that be StubHub, Qque, Digonex or Givex. It works for everybody. What we’re talking about is a state-of-the-art system that has the full capability to work with whatever anyone’s needs are.

If you take two ticketing clients who use the same platform in the same industry, they still won’t run their business exactly the same. The ticketing solution has to be a product that has a core offering that can manifest itself in different ways and different factions.

Transactional time is more important than ever. One of the things I emphasize to all my engineers is that they can sit there and tell me it only takes three seconds for the screen to ping, but so what. Moving it from a three-second ping to a one-second ping will make a huge difference.

As technologists our jobs are never done. It’s a book and it’s time to move on to the next chapter after you’re done with the current chapter.

Wireless devices give us new and exciting ways to sell tickets to events. I may have spare inventory to an event and I may know an individual is in proximity to that event and I may want to push them a campaign and remind them that Bon Jovi is in concert. Since their phone shows me they are local, I can send a simple one-click link to buy tickets and then they use their wireless device to gain entry.

It’s all about Push Notifications, GPS and CRM. These capabilities allow people to opt in and provide information about what types of fans they are. It’s important not to push too much and allow it to become wallpaper and noise and get ignored.

Technology is not big brother. People think that, but it’s not true. We’re taking advantage of technology that lets us know who the true fans are and make things easier for them. And it’s not done with the ‘Like’ button.


Source: October 2011 Venues Today

Planning Your Mobile Image

By Ed Gow, VP Sales & Marketing, Tickets.com


According to the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, at the end of 2010 there were 302.9M wireless subscriber connections in the U.S. Considering that the population of the U.S. at that time was 308.7M, the market penetration for wireless devices is simply staggering. Add to that the fact that the percentage of wireless-only U.S. households is climbing at 26.6% and most importantly, the revelation that the sale of smartphones has now eclipsed the sale of PCs.

What does all of this mean for the ticketing industry? Well, simply put, venues, arts organizations, attractions and teams must consider their mobile image when developing marketing plans and sales strategies. Organizations can no longer be satisfied with how their websites look, they must now take into account how the experience translates to a mobile user. Print at home is great, but mobile delivery must be an option …nothing short of an end to end mobile ticketing experience will do the trick.

So do you develop an app or a mobile site? That’s really up to you, but with the number of available apps growing on a daily basis, users are becoming much more selective about what they choose to download.

My two cents? Build a mobile site that can be integrated into an app.

Americans Flocking To Internet With Wireless Devices

Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project finds a 73% increase in Americans accessing the Web via their handheld devices since late 2007.

W. David Gardner
InformationWeek

The Pew report author attributes the escalation to Americans' desire to connect with others, satisfy information inquiries, and share content with friends -- wherever, whenever. A demographic study reveals that African Americans are 70% more likely than Caucasians to access the mobile Web on an average day.

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