Comments on: Ticketmaster Crowdsources their Astroturf

By: Finding Humanity on Twitter

Finding Humanity on Twitter — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:46:06 +0000

[...] Motrin, Wal-mart, Target, Hasbro, Ticketmaster or any other brand make a mistake in social media, credibility is lost. Consumers lose trust and [...]

By: radical trust: Best Practices for Facebook Pages: Lessons from The Top Ten

radical trust: Best Practices for Facebook Pages: Lessons from The Top Ten — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:20:45 +0000

[...] and although has grown, has since dropped to position 21. Seemingly, the questionable tactics of Ticketmaster United States resulted in their drop from number six straight out of the top 100 with nearly 90,000 people [...]

By: radical trust: Top 10 Facebook “Pages”

radical trust: Top 10 Facebook “Pages” — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:50:12 +0000

[...] in at #3, and Ticketmaster United States cashes in at #6. There are some indications however, that Ticketmaster may have rocked the vote to claim this [...]

By: collin

collin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:52:27 +0000

I’m with you JD. I wonder however, why hasn’t Facebook pulled all of those fake profiles?

By: Jonathan Dunn

Jonathan Dunn — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:25:38 +0000

Interesting issue at the root of all this – are FB fans and friends the same thing? Short answer no, but there’s more to discuss about that.

Alarm bells should have gone off earlier what with all the odd names, no profile pictures & users with no friends…and in that, I’ll agree the TM needed to be more attentive to the fan page activity. They were either naïve or negligent (with some ‘see no evil’ possibly thrown in).

But I’m sure TM was just thrilled to see that many fans – legit or not – at least until they started to realize the costs they were incurring.

It was certainly clumsy but this is what brands do – they offer incentives to win customers..bigger, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, exclusivity, etc, etc…these are all incentives..some are tangible, some are functional, some are aspirational but they all offer the consumer something in exchange for buying/using the service, product.

It may not gel with the spirit of social media, but there’s at least equal blame to be assigned to the users who created the fake profiles. In fact, that may even be a more grievous abuse of the ideas of transparency, honesty, etc….