• Inside Facebook, Wednesday, August 24, 2011 12:15 PM

Betting big on word-of-mouth marketing, Ticketmaster this week is launching enhanced Facebook connectivity. The company hopes to "reduce the estimated 40% of live event tickets that go unsold," Fast Company reports. Using an interactive seat map, fans can now choose their exact seats instead of relying on Ticketmaster to determine the "best available" options. "Now you can have an even more customized ticket search," Fast Company explains.

"By connecting to Facebook while you browse for seats, you can see where your friends have purchased tickets. The friends who have tagged their seats, that is." Positioning itself as a "more innovative and fan-focused company," Fast Company says the initiative was driven by one statistic: "Each time a [Ticketmaster] ticket buyer shared with Facebook friends that he was attending an event ... that alert generated $5.30 in additional ticket revenue."
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Once users have connected to Facebook from Ticketmaster's site, a list of friends who are attending a particular venue appears on the left. The venue's seat map displays Facebook flags in the sections where friends are sitting.

Read the whole story at Inside Facebook »