Facebook sister site has ticket-selling network

A new Web site, facetix.com, is linked to the Facebook Web site.

By Jaryd Wilson

Published Sept. 19, 2006

Tickets to concerts and college sporting events are now sold through Facebook through a sister Web site called Facetix.com.

By logging on to Facetix, students can post extra tickets they have to events, as well as search for available tickets. In addition, students can also use the "swap tickets" feature to trade seats with another student.

Virginia Tech graduates David Gentzel and Nathan Jones founded the site and started it with events at Virginia Tech.

"The purpose of the site is to match people with tickets to people without tickets," Gentzel said. "It is through Facebook, so if you are looking for tickets, it will show all of your friends who have tickets to that event, as well as all others who have those tickets."

The Facebook Application Programming Interface is a new feature in which users can develop their own projects and applications and run them through Facebook. Facetix is one of those programs, using the network to show who has which tickets, for which games, at which price and from which school.

"With Facebook launching their API, it only took about a week for David and I to set it up and run it," Jones said.

Since the launch of Facebook in 2004, features such as global groups, notes, status, upcoming birthdays, expansion to include high school and work networks, events, advertisements and the news feed have been added.

Gentzel said the new addition of Facetix has been highly accepted.

"All the schools we've heard of are very receptive of it," Gentzel said. "It has had continued use, especially at Virginia Tech, the University of Texas and the University of Georgia."

The site has grown popular enough that eight tickets were available for the Sept. 9 football game between then No. 2 ranked Texas and top-ranked Ohio State University.

"It's great to see those kinds of tickets out there," Jones said. "We had a few dozen tickets for the Virginia Tech game last week, and it shows that students are receiving the site very well."

API is open to anyone for programming, but it accepts only the first 100,000 users every day.

"It's perfectly legal, and anyone can use it," Gentzel said. "It's an easy process that Facebook sets up for anyone to use."

As far as students using this site to scalp tickets, Gentzel said he isn't concerned.

"Students are selling to their friends, there is less of a chance that they are going to try to rip anybody off," Gentzel said. "We're trying to minimize it by discouraging prices being displayed and such."

Although anyone registered with Facebook can post tickets, no MU tickets have been posted for any events.