Facebook’s long-term fortunes may be the subject of continuous speculation, but in the meantime there seems to be no end in sight to the services catering for users of the popular social network. Case in point: Sports and entertainment giant AEG’s new AXS Invite service, which lets ticket buyers save seats next to their own in case Facebook friends want to buy them.
“We want you to invite friends without the risk of having to pay up front,” the company explains. Accordingly, once users buy their own tickets to a sporting, music or other participating event, they can reserve the seats next to them – or general-admission tickets, if the event has no assigned seating – and invite their friends to purchase them via Facebook or email using the service’s Social Reservation Manager. Those friends then have 48 hours to buy them. If they do, the service notifies the original user who sent the invitation; if not, the tickets simply return to the pool of unsold tickets.
Similar in many ways to Malaysia Airlines’s Facebook-based MHbuddy service targeting the booking of flights, AXS Invite is one more testament to the fact that there’s a social element to be tapped in countless products and services. How could you involve online friends for the benefit of your own company or brand?