We’ve had one heck of the week on the east coast between earthquakes and hurricanes, but we survived it and hope you all made it through as well. In case you missed some of the best earthquake tweets take a look at these and check out Hurricane Irene’s own Twitter handle. For news this week, we’ve got Ticketmaster and Facebook teaming up to make your ticket purchases more social, Tweetsport for iPhone, Facebook photo filters and the New York Giants broadcasting tweets live on television this preseason. Here’s to a safe and natural disaster free week!
Ticketmaster and Facebook Make Your Ticket Purchases More Social
As of last week, Ticketmaster is allowing ticket seekers to see which of their friends are attending an event and where those friends are exactly sitting. The new Facebook integration rolled out to Ticketmaster customers last week with the hopes that it will help alleviate the issue of the estimated 40% of live event tickets that go unsold.
The feature is available for the 300+ venues that use the interactive seat map to allow customers to choose the best available seats. When you sign in through Facebook, a list on the left of the screen populates with friends attending the event and the seating map generates Facebook flags in the sections where they are sitting. When the section is clicked and you roll over a seat with a Facebook icon, a window pops open showing you who is sitting there so you can decide to sit by them or avoid them at all costs by finding a seat on the other side of the venue.
After purchasing your tickets, you have the ability to tag friends for the seats you bought, much like tagging a picture, to send them an alert asking if they want to attend. The feature allows you to share your seat tag, producing a “Check out my seats” post on your Facebook wall with the usual “like” and “comment” buttons. However, the feature enhance social commerce with the additional “buy tickets” button on the Facebook post. Ticketmaster CEO, Nathan Hubbard, is hoping with these new features tickets will represent more than entry into an event.
This isn’t just about social. It’s about the fan experience.
Take a look at this video to see the new feature in play.
Tweetsport for iPhone
A new application has been released for the iPhone called Tweetsport which automatically aggregates loads of information, including the latest in sports news, views, results, headlines and more, straight to your screen. It is constantly updated with a list of personalities, teams and pundits that it follows on twitter to provide with you all the possible sports news you could want in one place. Obviously you could do all this yourself and individually follow all of the people that they choose, but given that Tweetsport is a free app there’s no reason not too.
Tweetsport was developed by a British company so currently updates will focus solely on sports like Football (soccer), Motorsport, Tennis, Golf, Rugby, Olympics, Cricket, Athletics, Cycling, Horse Racing and Swimming. You’re not getting the updates on sports like American football, baseball and hockey but we’d be surprised if there weren’t more apps like this in the near future with American sports. And frankly we’d be surprised if there weren’t more apps like this for a myriad of genres.
With Tweetsport, four filters sit along the bottom of the screen, allowing you to view tweets specifically from the sporting media, players, or all. There’s also a filter for just headlines, which only shows tweets which feature breaking news. The app also features a level of Twitter integration so you can sign into Twitter and do things like retweet straight from the app. There’s a premium version as well which costs a minimal amount of dough and gets rid of the advertisements and allows you to sort by sport.
Facebook Photo Filters
As you may have noticed, Facebook has been making more changes lately, especially in the photo department. Pictures are now available in a larger viewing format and Facebook is soon to add photo filters to its mobile apps. With the explosion of apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and PicPlz, it’s no wonder that Facebook wants to get its foot in the space.
According to two anonymous Facebook engineers, the photo filters have been ready to go for some time, but Zuckerberg wants more creative filters before the feature is rolled out to the public. Just as the other apps, Facebook’s will have almost a dozen filters in common, but is also currently working on new designs to stand out from the competitors.
Facebook’s response in this crowded marketplace may have come after the failed attempt to purchase Instagram this summer. We’re interested to see what Facebook will come up with and how it will integrate in the mobile app.
New York Giants Take Twitter from the Turf to TV
The New York Giants will be the first team to broadcast fan tweets live during televised games this preseason. The effort comes from the organization wanting to move forward in the social media space and connect with fans. The tweets from fans will appear in the lower third of the screen after big plays on NBC 4 in New York. Although the franchise is only showing tweets during preseason broadcasts, the team will continue its Twitter integration throughout the season at MetLife Stadium on the stadium’s video boards and other channels.
In addition to the screening of fan tweets, a voting system will be set up to allow fans to choose the player of the game by tweeting hashtags. The results will be tallied in real time and featured on a dedicated microsite. The merchandise for the player with the most votes will be discounted at the Giants’ online store. The team is also planning to have a player host a Twitter chat with fans every home game. Giants Chief Marketing Officer Mike Stevens wants to make the game experience the best he can for fans.
With over 6.4M fans in the tri-state area and one of the largest national fan bases in the NFL, our social media strategy is designed entirely around giving them the best way to share their passion – and the Giants experience – with each other.
