Facebook Tests “Buy Tickets” Button In Israel And The Netherlands

Facebook is testing a “Buy Tickets” button beside events in the events tab, as well as on some event pages on Dutch and Israeli servers.

The button was first noticed by Israeli social media company Blink on the page of an upcoming event in Tel Aviv-Yafo. According to AllFacebook, who reported Blink’s discoveries, “the actual transactions take place off the social network, as clicking on the buttons take users to third-party websites.”

A short time after the discovery was made, The Next Web reported that the button had also been discovered on a Dutch event page. 


Before the update, event organisers could put a link to a site where tickets could be bought as a bitly.com link on the event page. Now, Facebook has told InsideFacebook that “it is trying more prominent buttons that direct users to wherever event tickets are being sold”.

Facebook is testing “Buy Ticket” buttons on the events page itself, in the upcoming events tab and in News Feed stories about the event.

The “Buy Ticket” button is very useful for companies, brands and performers marketing events on Facebook, as they can track their conversion rates more easily: if people click on “Buy Tickets” it equals profit. Also, with the “Buy Ticket” button on News Feed stories, users can click through straight to the event website.

If the “Buy Tickets” button proves successful, Facebook may be able to earn revenue providing a ticket selling service online instead on linking to third party sites.

Would you like to see the “Buy Tickets” button become a permanent fixture on Facebook?

Twitter App Update Makes Finding Tweets Easier

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Twitter updated its iOS and Android apps Wednesday, as well as mobile.twitter.com, making it easier to find information.

Previously broken up by type, now all of the content from the Discover tab appears as a single stream in both the iPhone and Android apps, so you can see tweets, activity, trends, and suggestions of accounts to follow as a single content stream, rather than having to scroll past one group of content to get to another. Activity and Trend information can be launched by tapping on tiles at the top of the Discover page, both of which display a snapshot of that information. For instance, the Activity tile shows four people you follow who have recent activity on the service, while the Trend tile shows a few of the current trends.

Search results are also now displayed in a single stream, surfacing the “most relevant mix of tweets, photos, and accounts all in one stream.” Twitter also added a search button in the iPhone app, allowing you to perform searches from anywhere in the app, a feature already available in the iPad and Android versions.
Clicking a link within a tweet now takes you directly to that website, rather than expanding the tweet and then taking you the website. Definitely a useful feature for people who use Twitter as a news feed and want the ability to get to content a little quicker.

While Twitter officially announced the update on its website, neither the Android or iOS apps appear to be live in the store just yet.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, arakonyunus