Ticketmaster’s New Face...

Of all the new Open Graph apps launched tonight, Ticketmaster’s new Facebook experience is the most impressive. Sure it can share that you’ve “bought” tickets, but lots of apps have similar publishing functionality. What makes Ticketmaster’s app cool is that it pulls your Facebook profile’s music app activity from services such as Spotify or Rdio, and recommends nearby concerts of artists you actually listen to, not just those you say you Like. Ticketmaster has come a long way in the two years since Nathan Hubbard became CEO following its merger with LiveNation . It now shows you its service fees up front rather than tacking them on as you checkout. This pissed off artists and venues who thought it would scare away sales, but Ticketmaster did it in the name of transparency. Executive VP of ecommerce Kip Levin tells me that for a long time the company was scapegoat for all of the live event industry’s problems. Now it’s pushing back and putting the customers first — something people might not expect just because it charges those pesky service fees. In August Ticketmaster began allowing you to tag the seats your purchase with your Facebook profile . That way friends who are deciding what seats to buy can see where yours are select ones close to you. People are a lot more willing to buy a single ticket to an assigned seat show if they can sit next to their friends. This is one example of how optimizing for the customer experience can also benefit the company’s bottom line. Ticketmaster’s new canvas app brings the entire event discovery and ticket purchase flow within Facebook. You’re shown a feed of concerts your friends have RSVP’d to or shared that they’ve bought tickets to, followed by personal recommendations. Thanks to Facebook data permissions, it can suggest nearby events based on your Likes and listening activity without having to ask your preferences. Several competitors launched Facebook Open Graph ticketing  apps including Ticketfly , but none provide listening-based recommendations or interactive seat maps. Many web services that release Facebook apps primarily use the social network as a distribution and marketing channel. The best ones, like Ticketmaster, request your personal data and responsibly apply it make their products better. It’s already working. I was just suggested an upcoming show by one of my favorite bands Neon Indian , who I listen to a lot but never got around to Liking.

Facebook Launches Sugge...

We’re creatures of habit. We go where we’ve already gone. That’s why Facebook’s new Suggested Events feature I just discovered is so powerful — it knows where we’ve been thanks to our checkins. Replacing the old Friends’ Events sub-tab of the home page’s Events bookmark, Suggested Events helps you discover things to do that take place at venues you’ve checked in to, that friends are RSVP’d to, that are hosted by Pages you Like, or a combination. The feature could reduce the need third-party event discovery apps, and get more people out of their houses to attend concerts, club nights, and conferences. By promoting offline interaction, Suggested Events should quiet critics who say Facebook weakens real human relationships and leads people to sit at home. It has huge potential to generate good will for Facebook and make the service seem even more indispensable. If you go to a great show, have a fun night out with friends, or meet someone new at a suggested venue, your perception of Facebook’s value to your life will undoubtedly improve. Sure, you should branch out and find new places to go, but new events at your favorite places are still unique experiences. The feature exposes you to events that are relevant and that you might drag friends to, even if you weren’t invited to them and don’t have friends already RSVP’d. “What should I do tonight?” is a very prevalent question lots of startups are trying to answer. Just this month we covered the launch of UpOut for real-time discovery, and SeatGeek’s Columbus that’s a “Pandora for live events”. Established players include Plancast and EventBrite , the latter of which closed a huge $50 million funding round and also suggests events your Facebook friends are going to. But the problem with these services is that they can’t produce as relevant suggestions because they don’t automatically know where you spend your time, which is a proxy for what type of events you go to. Facebook’s Suggested Events adapts to your preferences. I go to lots of concerts, and Facebook effectively knows this because I check in to the venues or the events themselves thanks to a  mobile feature added last year (possibly to collect data for this). Now, Suggested Events recommends me concerts taking place at my favorite venues. The music industry stands to gain a lot from the feature, since concerts are thrown frequently, and occur at Places people commonly check in to. If you’re in college, Suggested Events might recommend parties at campus dorms, whereas professionals might get clued in to meetups or conferences at local convention halls they visit. The feature also alerts you to Events hosted by Pages you Like, which could encourage more venues, performers, or production companies to officially host the events they throw. One day the feature might be able to show events where a band I Like was mentioned in the description. With third-party apps you enter your preferences or upload them via Facebook Connect, but then also have to remember to visit. Facebook’s new native event discovery feature makes finding fun things to do a seamless part of every day browsing. That means more outings, more moments, more memories. And you know where you can display the photos, checkins, and status updates about those memories? Timeline .

Local Recommendations A...

Amid talks of a Groupon acquisition , the smart local recommendations app Alfred has arrived on Android . Alfred serves up personalized suggestions for nearby restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightclubs using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to develop personal “taste graphs” for its users. Previously an iOS-only app, the big news for Alfred’s second platform launch is not just the expanded reach, but also how the team at Clever Sense has approached the Android port. Instead of simply reproducing the familiar Alfred interface using different code, Clever Sense created a second native app specifically designed to take advantage of features and interactions found on the Android platform. On Android, Alfred looks totally different. Immediately after the app’s installation and launch, a screen asks you if you want to save the app to your homescreen. Having used Android for over a year myself, I’m surprised more Android apps don’t do this. (Android apps are hidden away by default in most cases, allowing users to customize multiple homescreens with their own selection of apps and widgets.) After launching Alfred, the app walks you through the “getting to know you” quiz which asks you to teach it about some of your preferences. You can opt out of the quiz, but that wouldn’t be a great idea. Alfred’s algorithms get better the more you train them, so it’s worthwhile to give the app’s smarts a kickstart via the quiz. When you arrive on Alfred’s main screen, this is where you’ll see the most startling departure from the iOS user interface. Instead of thumbnail photos you tap (e.g., lunch, dinner, etc.) to swipe through place recommendations, there are colored circles for “Ideas,” “Profile” and “Teach.” The Ideas circle, when tapped, take you through a list you scroll through up and down to choose the category. And when you’re in a category (e.g. “coffee and tea”), there’s a toolbar at the bottom that lets you view the recommendations as cards like on iOS, on a map or as a list. It allows you to apply filters to the recommendations. The end result is a bit more of a geeky take on Alfred, which, frankly, is perfect for the Android user base. Android users are often interested in things like tweaks, customizations, and heavy personalization, thanks to the platform’s openness. There’s an enjoyment of apps, in many cases, as tools that help you get the job done, instead of “experiences” like on iOS. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, but it’s different. To date, Alfred has served up 21 million recommendations to users, up from 7 million in October. And users have liked 4.6 million places, up from 2 million. But the company won’t disclose the actual user base numbers at this time. Clever Sense had previously said that restaurants and the like was just the first step for the use of Alfred’s technology. It was looking into delivering personalized deal recommendations from sites like Groupon and LivingSocial in its next phase. That would explain Groupon’s interest in the matter . But while that would be likely be a nice exit for the company, it would be a shame for Alfred’s happy users to lose this app, especially now that it came to Android. Alfred is live on the Android Market here .

Men Are More Engaged in...

Performics recently released its "Social Shopping Study: Participant Behaviors & Preferences on Social, Shopping and Deal Sites.: Contrary to popular belief, the study found that men more frequently take part in shopping activities via social networks, shopping sites and deal sites than women do. However...

Study: Online Denizens ...

A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that even with all of our Facebooks, Twitters, and Wi-Fi dongles, 25% of us “have no one to discuss important matters with.” What’s more, those lonely people prefer minority-endorsed products over majority-endorsed (Mr. Pibb v. Pepsi, Android v. iOS). The researchers Jing Wang, Rui Zhu, and Baba Shiv began their study, called “Social isolation: Are lonely consumers actually loners or conformers?,” in 2004 and asked self-described and quantitatively lonely and non-lonely people to assess their preferences for items that included popularity percentages. Folks who hang out online initially expressed preferences for the less popular items and then changed their story when they had to express their preferences in public. “Lonely people’s preference for the minority-endorsed products was only found when their preferences were kept private,” the authors write. “They switched to majority-endorsed products once their preferences became public.” Helpfully, the researchers note that most marketing may be ineffectual on older folks because, as many are lonely and alone, their actual preferences cannot be initially swayed by suggestions of popularity and “might be less likely to respond positively to rave reviews from a majority of customers.” In short, to paraphrase the old New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet everyone loves the underdog. In real life? In front of the family? The popular choice seems to be much more “rational” but in front of the keyboard we support the little guy. It’s also interesting to note that 25% percent of us Internerds are lonely, which I suspect may be a lowball figure. This may explain some forms of Internet trolling and fanboism, which makes this study even more important than it appears on the surface. In general, maybe we need to get out more? Guys? [Image: Yuri Arcurs / Shutterstock ]