The competition for control of your event's shared experience is heating up. Twitter, Gather and BuzzMob offer to help you participate, monetize, and in some causes, control your event's experience.
With so many companies and apps trying to profit from your event's experience, the hard working venue owner should ask: "Am I making the most from my event or am I giving it away for free?" To help answer that question, we look at the latest trends in monetizing your event's shared experience.
The ticketing industry took note when it was announced that former StubHub CTO Shawn Kernes had been hired by BuzzMob. Kernes left StubHub after it was acquired by ebay in 2007. Since that time Kernes has been associated with the online shopping club Beyond The Rack and Cash4Gold, neither ventures are related to ticketing. BuzzMob, however, is directly involved with venues and event ticketing.
From the about page on the BuzzMob website, the company describes how they connect patrons with events by creating a closed loop of social connections inside a geo-fence.
BuzzMob is the only mobile events platform that lets franchises and brands deliver exclusive location-based content directly to their fans via their mobile devices. BuzzMob’s revolutionary mobile technology is designed to give fans and attendees the ultimate event experience by delivering targeted content at meaningful moments. From the second your fans enter the building, they’ll be immersed in a rich world of branded digital content. Using GPS technology, BuzzMob lets you provide on-site ticketholders exclusive insights.
Mr. Kernes describes BuzzMob as "an incredibly innovative platform that aims to change how event attendees experience live entertainment.”
Geo-fencing, for content distribution or as a coarse way to bind near-by people together, has been in use for several years, Flickr being first in 2006 and Apple's iPhone being the most recent. BuzzMob's version of geo-fencing gives control of who is in the temporary social network to the patron, then lets the venue owner send messages to the group.
New Twitter sign out screen
Of exceptional interest to all venue owners and event organizers is the tagline used by BuzzMob:
"It’s your event, not Twitter’s, so take control of the conversation."
That tag line succinctly conveys just how deeply ingrained the act of social sharing at concerts and sporting events has become. MailChimp's Gather also encourages venue owners to take control of communications with their patrons. But wrestling control of social sharing away from Twitter is not going to be easy. BuzzMob will have to overcome the mind-share Twitter has garnered over the past six years. Even more daunting is that all Android and Apple phones have Twitter sharing functionality baked in.
To get an idea of how much monetizing the shared experience is worth, one need only to look at the Twitter sign out screen. The image shows a concertgoer photographing the stage using a mobile phone. Imagine the careful deliberation that went into choosing the image shown to Twitter's 400,000,000 users after they sign out of their accounts. Did Twitter choose a family gathering? A picture of a cat? Nope. They chose an event (your event?).
The ticketing software you choose is part of the shared experience from beginning to end. ThunderTix offers you the ability to sell tickets directly on your Facebook page, where your customers already are. Then we help your ticket buyer share their excitement using the social sharing buttons in the custom email confirmation. Finally, after your event is over, you can use the ThunderTix patron management features.
