Nothing is more important than that great photo you took at the concert you went to last night, but the thing that’s almost as important is the data that goes with it. Sure, apps let you attach a general location to your photos, but to fully chronicle your experience at a live event, you can’t pin a photo to a specific spot at the venue.
A new iOS app called Picket lets you tag event photos with the exact seat you sat in when you snapped the shot. Maybe this seems like over-sharing to some, but as you decide to buy tickets in the future you want to know what the view will look like from specific seats.
The Picket app calls itself “the world’s first Social Ticketing Network.” While that is a pretty big statement, I will say that the nuance of tagging photos with seats definitely makes this the first such photo sharing app to tie itself closely to ticket sales.
What does it look like from row 9 seat 7?
The Picket app is powered by ticket purchasing platform SeatGeek, so it’s safe to say that all major upcoming events will be available in the Picket app.
You could purchase tickets to a baseball game through the app and when you take a photo you’ll be able to fill in your exact spot. That data will be tied to both the venue it took place as well as the actual event day and time:
Once people have started to fill up Picket with their photos, when you go to buy tickets you can see exactly what they saw at a previous event. Up until now, you’ve had to rely on 3D flash models of a venue, especially at baseball parks, and make a really good guess at whether the view is a good one.
Additionally, you can chat within the app with people who are at an event in real-time. You could ask them questions about how it was, or how the seats are. All of this interaction makes the ticket-buying process much more interactive and transparent. I could totally see myself buying tickets through Picket after checking out a few photos:
As location-based services get more granular, we’ll be able to make more educated decisions on where we choose to go with our free time. For example, I’d love to see a service that let people rate the actual seating at popular restaurants. Is sitting by the window during the day too sunny and warm? This is the kind of thing that interests me.
Picket is definitely on to something with its app, especially for people who go to a lot of concerts. It might be worth spending a few extra bucks on that better seat if you like what you see in photos.
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