Sharing and collaborating in World Wide Web (WWW) has wide impact to all kind of businesses, as it offers many new ways to communicate. The second- generation in Internet is more adept to communicate and share, so the companies are forced to develop new technological ways for marketing. In this essay, written for “Introduction and theoretical foundations to new media” course I will write about new possibilities, what Web 2.0 can offer selling ticket’s online.
Historically the ticket has been used already in Greek time, as they were used in theatres. The historical paper ticket is yet strongly in use, but it’s changing its place with digital or electronic ticket. As history continues the usage of ticket has expanded, as much as the way’s to sell them. It’s still used to buy ticket from cashier, but it’s widely replaced by automatic machines and Web. In airport’s self service, movies, bus stations you can easily buy ticket from a machine as well you can book the ticket over Internet. Technology has already changed the paradigm of buying tickets, there still remains yet to be covered the ways we already use in Internet with new Web 2.0 possibilities.
As a good child the new web has many names like Web 2.0, the living Web, the Hypernet, the active Web or the read/write Web (O’Reilly, 2005). Web 1.0 was meant to be for connecting computers then Web 2.0 is to change technology in the ways to unite the people. The major difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is their functionality and interactivity. There is no more used to search information from known sources, but the attention is directed to find new tools to aggregate and combine the content in innovative and useful ways. (MacManus, Porter, 2005). The Web what was so far offered by small editors is changing to Web where everybody can add information to. So called “The Read Web” is being replaced by “The Read-Write Web” changing the Web from medium to a platform, where additionally people can produce, combine and share the content. (Gillmore, 2004). The major leads in Web 2.0 are that personal homepages are being replaced by blogs which are changeing to the personal or group diary functions; the taxonomy is replaced by folksonomy or as well publishing information with taking part in interactive way replacing the websystems. A good example here is Wikipedia competing with Britannica Online encyclopedia, where Wikipedia have access to users to add, change and supplement information (O’Reilly, 2005).
Why Web 2.0 has so great impact? As the web tools are being developed, more and more people can be content creators: maintaining the blogs, sharing the photos, participating in communities etc. There are no authors and users – everybody has right to take part in creation process. The boundaries of professionals and amateurs are blurring. Everybody can be a professional and it’s decided by other people. We can talk about collective intelligence or public wisdom. One new output is the appearance of folksonomies, where simple users tag objects which is making easier to find it by others. In conclusion we can say that when Web 1.0 united computers then Web 2.0 unites people.
Online collaboration
Online collaboration has changed the economics and business models. Smart companies are reaching out to customers and lead users directly in their product development process. The process where customer can consume and produce is called prosuming. The person can easily shift from consumer to creator on contributor. (D.Tapscott, A.D. Williams, 2007, 143)
Prosumtion is becoming one of the most powerful engines of change that business world have ever seen. Co creating with costumers is becoming intellectual capital, which is a reservoir of talents, that are enthusiastic about creating products or services. Costumers want to have a genuine role in designing the products; they want to do it in their own terms, in their own networks and their own needs. (D.Tapscott, A.D. Williams, 2007, 149)
Most of the ticket websites have no Web 2.0 possibilities. It’s not widely known that people can participate in creating and sharing in such kind of websites. The power of sharing haven’t used yet and information is being produced in top-down method. The bottom up possibilities is not widely used except online commentating and forums. In online selling tickets business the main product is an event - event what is going to be taken place in sooner future. So how can one be more accessible and usable for user?
Mashups
Mashups are typically obtained by third party source via public interface or API. Many people are experimenting with Mashups using Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Google, Microsoft and YouTube. (Wikipedia, Mashups). Mashups can be easily used in online ticketing websites. For example an event has a YouTube video from an artist or picture gallery from Flickr. As well to combine Google maps into an event’s page to show the location of the event. People who are travelling and need for accommodation can easily use hotel booking Mashups to book a hotel near the event location. There are many open Mashups what can be easily used in ticketing websites, though ticketing website can be itself a Mashups using RSS and XML. These technologies are widely used for data forwarding. So any kind of website can integrate ticketing information to its blog or news section. It allows people to plug-in with their RSS reader and be informed with updates in daily basis.
Web widgets
Web widget is a web application you can insert to your webpage, blog, social profile that quickly and easily provide you visitors with , user specific information, extra functionality. Widgets can be built by JavaScript or Flash, widget’s can use XML data to show it on screen. There is a snippet-code which is allowing showing the widget. People can easily take the snippet-code and copy-paste it to their blog’s and the widget appears. Widget’s can be programmed to be customizable for showing different information. There can be event information in widget and possibilities to buy ticket straight from the widget. Widget can show ticket’s price and availability and it’s shown in real time basis.
Social ways to integrate
People of similar interests are tending to group together. In real life activities we take part of different clubs and share ideas. Nowadays WWW provides many websites to be socially interactive, there are numerous social websites where people socialize and share their knowledge. Facebook and Orkut are kind of social websites, where people can personalize their profiles and describe their hobbies and choose to be in theme-groups. First of all there cannot be social site without user participation. In functional ways there has to be possibility to log in and fill your profile.
User based approach
Since ticketing website is not a social networking portal, there’s no need to have a lot of features that some might have. The main goal is entertainment and promoting sales of tickets for the events. Everything what will have on the profile will go around it. Personalization is the key of making online ticketing service social. There must be ways to describe your favorite categories and subjects. Costumers will have a chance to log into the main webpage, and have access to more functions around entertainments and tickets for events on sale. Functions are mainly developed for sharing the information between users. Users can share their interests using various functions. On the homepage of the user profile there will be opportunity to see replay’s to posts on forum to their topics.
Calendar
Users can log on and see interactive calendar. In the calendar they see their events, events match their preference and events where their friends attending. Calendar also is having the groupware functionality. It has ways to set up reminders and show’s upcoming events. Users can see their friend’s calendars and propose group invitations. Updates of your friends will be displayed on your home page – what events they will be attending – incase user will want to join them. It also has possibilities to users share their own events as birthdays and anniversaries in their calendar and possibilities to see progress reports from attendees.
Dating possibilities
Making more social is not only built up for sharing information but to interact with other users as well. Giving users possibilities to invite persons to events is making it more social.
Users can invite each other to events and pay for the invitee’s tickets if they want to.
Merchant’s account
Amazon and eBay are offering user’s to create their own web commerce. Online ticketing service should provide mini-site’s for merchants. Users can upgrade their account to a merchant account to provide their own events. The merchant’s account has possibility to create your event on the website, set up the time, description, videos and ticket price. Users can use video and audio Mashups and use ways to advertise it inside the website.
Content targeting
User based website offers the way to target content. News will be distributed according to the user preferences. For example if you like rock music and not interested so much in disco – news only for this type of events will be shown.
Commentating
Video can be added to the profile from YouTube – to show you concert-show experience or just to share their favorite bands that will be performing later on, for whom you will have tickets for sale.
Web 2.0 is offering wide area of possibilities to make people more social and collaborating. The new ERA of sharing and collaborating is changing the economics and thinking, to be more innovative and technologically adaptive.
References:
Tapscott, Don & Williams, D. Anthony. 2008
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Gillmore, Dan. 2004
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
Shanahan, Francis. 2007
Amazon.com Mashups
O’Reilly, Tim. 2005. What is Web 2.0
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
MacManus, Richard & Porter, Joshua. 2005. Web 2.0 Design: Bootstrapping the Social Web
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers/
Busch, A. Joseph. 2008. Tagging, User Interfaces, Taxonomies and the Semantic Web
http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/presentations/2008/UNCTaggingTalk.pdf
Pink, H. Daniel. 2005. Folksonomy
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-21.html?_r=1
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/facebook
Orkut
http://www.orkut.com/
Britannica online
http://www.britannica.com/
Musser, John. 2007. eBay new APIs.
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2007/06/12/ebays-new-apis/
Google mashups
http://code.google.com/gme/
Microsoft mashups
http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/capabilities/collaboration/mashups.mspx
