Disney launches social media payment system
Purchaser can invite friends to follow suit and buy tickets
Disney has launched a service on Facebook that enables people to buy tickets for its new Toy Story 3 movie without leaving the social networking site.
When someone buys a ticket through the Disney Tickets Together application, it alerts their Facebook friends and prompts the user to invite them to buy tickets of their own.
The system is an interesting example of how the popularity of social media sites can be combined with a payments function. Disney says it will be used to promote other movies if it proves successful.
The service launched on May 26 on the official Toy Story 3 Facebook page, which has over 732,000 followers. In total Facebook has nearly 500 million users around the world.
Cinemas have not yet made tickets available through conventional channels for the film, which comes out on June 18. A Disney spokesman told the New York Times that groups of up to 80 people have been getting tickets via the Tickets Together service.
The system works with ticket websites such as Fandango.com and covers the majority of cinemas in North America. Facebook does not get any income from ticket sales but benefits from increased traffic on its website.
To use the Disney Tickets Together application Facebook users click on the “go to application” button and give the service access to personal details in their profiles. A page then generates ticket times at the closest based on their profile location settings.