From the
Wired music blog: "It appears that the company [Ticketmaster] hired someone or something to create fake Facebook friends in order to look more popular to other Facebook users."
I can understand why Ticketmaster would need to create fake friends. I recently bought tickets to see The Cure. After paying $35 for each ticket, I found out I also had to pay a $20 "convenience charge" to Ticketmaster, which didn't make me feel very friendly toward them.
Comments
And you know, I don't see why it should be illegal anywhere. It seems to me that scalping is the purest form of free enterprise: You buy a commodity (tickets in this case), you sell that commodity for whatever the market will bear, and sometimes you make money, sometimes you lose money. In the case of Ticketmaster, they are charging extra (quite a bit extra) to save the buyer inconvenience, and goodness knows it does save quite a bit of inconvenience, and that sounds like free enterprise to me, too. Again, you sell that service for whatever the market will bear.
I know people get all het up about ticket prices, but it's not as though there is some inalienable right to see ___(whoever)___ in concert. If I don't want to pay X amount for a ticket, or I don't want to pay X amount for a service charge, and I can't find a less expensive way to go, I just don't go to the event. I mean, jeez, it's a concert -- it's not insulin. There is no such thing as a concert that anybody just HAS to go to.
Several years ago, you could just go to a box office and buy a ticket for the face price. Then Ticketmaster somehow sewed up a monopoy and started charging an arm and a leg for the "convenience" or "service" of not being able to get tickets from anyone else. I don't know if Ticketmaster is actually separate from the Mafia, but it has the same business ethic.
The only way way Ticketmaster could have friends would be if it fabricated or bought them.