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There's certainly a profitable startup idea somewhere that targets improving ticket sales and purchases for hot items. Google itself is absolutely miserable in
by cryptoz 14y ago
There's certainly a profitable startup idea somewhere that targets improving ticket sales and purchases for hot items. Google itself is absolutely miserable in this area, and I think most other large sites are as well.
- untog 14y agoI'm not sure this problem is solvable. The capitalistic response to Google I/O tickets selling out is to increase the price until they don't. But that would be a PR distaster for Google and likely be contrary to what they actually want for their event. A lottery, maybe?
- cryptoz 14y agoWell, there are a number of areas for potential improvement. I know that the absolute number of tickets sold isn't really going to change, and the price isn't something a startup could fix. I was more thinking about qualities like server load, customer fairness, etc. Google Play went down when the Nexus 4 launched, gave incorrect information to customers, spat out ridiculous errors, etc. And it seems there is no end to the complaints about the lack of notification or timing for very qualified and excited people to purchase tickets to I/O. A method of holding tickets until the purchaser demonstration of value, for example. Or something. I don't know.
- grimlck 14y agoOne way to solve it is to make people pass a quick programming test before they can buy a ticket
- xxpor 14y agoCAPTCHA: FizzBuzz edition.
- ben1040 14y agoThey were threatening to do that for last year's meeting, and then backed out on it. There was no test. http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-io-2012-extended-to-three-days.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-io-2012-extend... In the meantime, be sure to brush up on your coding skills. They’ll come in handy when the new application process opens in February. That’s all we can tell you for now, but we’d advise against making travel arrangements until then.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- smackfu 14y agoApple has the same problems. * Increase ticket prices and then corporate people push out indie developers. * Increase venue size and then each attendee gets less value out of it, and there's an upper limit to venues anyways. * Add a lottery and now your most loyal customers may not be able to go. It honestly seems like the best solution is to just throw open the floodgates at an announced time, and assume the people who really want a ticket will be the ones most committed to getting one.
- cbr 14y agoThrowing open the floodgates at a random time might be an even better commitment filter.
- bradleyjg 14y agoThe current system is a lottery. If the page loads in the first couple of minutes your in, otherwise your not.
- Vermeulen 14y agoI don't understand why they wouldn't do an auction - their entire business relies on auctions for ads, and they even did their IPO as an auction. Seems like it would be a unique solution to the problem of charging for events like this let people bid for tickets, they see the current lowest bid that got in so they can increase their bid, then charge everyone the lowest bid that got in