Show HN: Selfie Ticket | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Selfie Ticket

ticketleap.com

131 pointstimae66 comments

It's probably just me, but it took me so long after visiting the site to figure out what they actually DO. Wording like, "BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER TO Share Your Passion" and "IT STARTS WITH AN IDEA" is vague and gives me no idea of what the product or service was.

I saw something about selfie tickets but had no idea what that meant. Do you take a selfie on your phone and then it's part of an e-ticket? Do they print tickets with your face on it? Is there a web backend? What does the mobile app do, specifically? I feel like there's not enough to-the-point descriptive copy.

I navigated back to the homepage and kind of got a better idea of what was going on:

"Create an event page and start selling tickets in minutes."

Okay, makes sense.

"Run event-day like a pro with a full mobile box office"

What's a mobile box office? Is it an app that lets me scan tickets with QR codes? Is there communication between mobile devices to validate tickets using NFC or something?

Please take this as constructive criticism. Good luck with your product! :)

The intro video is equally useless and you have to watch 3/4 of the video before they even mention what its doing. The first 45 seconds of the minute long video is all "we think people are nice, look at all these random smiling people, blablabla".

The front page and the intro video make it sound like it's yet another photo sharing app for taking selfies.

Very constructive, thanks!

How does this prevent ticket forgery? I see a moving logo and the bar at the bottom, but what keeps me from creating a GIF overlay with that info for any pic?

Couple things help this. Clock ticking, colors aren't known until late, it's part of the app (you could tap "back"). But honestly, many of these events we work with weren't scanning barcodes. They were just collecting the paper tickets (which obviously can be printed over and over again) because scanning felt overkill. It's not right for every event, but, think about a 50 person smoked-BBQ event at your local brewery -- they're having the event to build their community and scanning barcodes seems weird for them.

Yes! I have many customers who run events with anything from 50-1000 people and nobody wants to be bothered with scanning, even with the obvious advantages it provides.

I'm tim at ticketleap if you want to talk about them using Ticketleap/Selfie Ticket.

Love this idea, lots of fun and a lot friendly than most event ticket experiences. Does it fallback gracefully to a non-selfie/non-phone ticket if someone doesn't wish to, or isn't able to participate?

Thanks! Yes, fallback is the traditional barcode ticket.

Or, if an event doesn't want to use barcodes at all, they can check in anyone without a Selfie Ticket by name

This is cool in terms of self-expression and making the ticket more personal, and props for trying something new and building this in the first place, but does it actually solve a problem? I agree that the hassle / un-naturalness of scanning everyone in for smaller, more casual events is a problem, but I'm not sure if this solves that problem.

Unless an organizer makes this mandatory for all attendees, it's more than likely that only a minority of attendees will actually take a selfie of themselves for their ticket. And if say, 20% of attendees took a selfie and 80% did not, how does this solve the "scanning problem" for organizers?

You're right that this won't be adopted by 100% of attendees overnight, but we try to nudge them in that direction in the UI (make it default over the barcode ticket, etc.). Even still, If 20% of your line gets through extra fast, it still makes a difference. And in a few months if that goes to 30%, 50%, then that's something.

But a key part of this is many of our events don't scan the tickets (doesn't feel right for them), so this allows them to do something better than collecting paper tickets or finding a name on a list, and it's fun for the attendees who chose to use it.

I disagree very strongly with the principle that services should be purchased with a photo. I will share a personal experience.

Traveling from Luxembourg to Brussels by train I made an arrangement for a room via AirBnB. It being the first time, they asked me for ID, and Credit Card information. I provided that. By the time I got off the train I received a response from AirBnB that my reservation had been canceled due to the fact that I hadn't provided a photo of myself for AirBnb. I believe the reason was because they wanted to know that I was a "real person", but the exact phrasing escapes me. This was not the case since I provided a photo of my driver's license as my ID. As a result I had to scramble to find a room in one of the most expensive cities in the world for this at the last moment (which was expensive).

I strongly disagree with the idea that "your face" should be integrated with a purchase. I strongly agree that your identity which includes but should not be limited to a subset of "your face" should.

If you are proceeding down this path I recommend having a user select a photo, rather than taking a self portrait.

Good Luck.

Been in the same position with AirBnB but the photo request came after I'd already booked through them for other hosts previously. Very frustrating. I had booking history and a credit card with them already!

I'm honestly not sure about this concept, but props to Ticketleap for innovating and trying something new. Good work!

My first thought was this was an underhanded way to get more demographic data. I also don't like the potential privacy ramifications. What unintended places will those images end up? I don't use a public profile pic and I don't take selfies.

How this much different than the clubs that attempt to scan driver's licenses?

At least there is a fall back to a pure barcode.

Hmmm... I guess since you don't use a public profile pic or take selfies this is a bad product idea. Or maybe, just maybe most people don't really care.

Maybe your point was that you won't use this particular product? Are you the person who also posts negative reviews on Yelp for restaurants you've never been to because you don't like that style of food?

Strawman ad-hominem? I hardly use yelp, your comment makes no sense.

What prevents me from creating a app that looks like yours and displays my selfie without buying a ticket?

I don't know exactly how it works, but the page shows animations over the ticket information, these could be customizable or rotated during the event by the event organizer making them very difficult to fake.

Yeah. Just dreaming, but it would be cool if the event organizer could use their phone's camera aimed at the guest to face recognize them and match them to the db of guest snapped pics. Would be too difficult to get required accuracy right now, but maybe in future.

You bring up a valid point. Presenting a picture as the only means for authentication removes the benefit of digitized confirmation. Pics on the app store link appear to show a clock of some sort over the picture, but even that could be easily recreated.

You could add a visual icon as a sort of two-factor authentication. Set the icon to change every few minutes and do a push notification with the current icon to the people at the door.

There are indeed a couple security features. Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277671

Neat idea. One potential downside: people like me, who are incredibly non-photogenic.

You should sell an app that puts your worst photos next to the subject in their own photographs.

I cannot take a decent photo in most cases, but I had the opportunity to have a photo session with someone who normally works with models and celebrities and it made a huge difference. What I took away from the experience was that wearing makeup, standing in painful positions, and having someone yelling "hot!" "Ooh" "saucy!" and "yeah, like that, again!" makes for better photos, not just a fun Saturday night.

I don't want to be this guy, but how come this can a good idea in post-snowden world?

Obviously you don't want your face associated with a political events or ideology events. But also and more surprisingly to tech events, specially crypto, physics and nuclear stuff. Some people get denied US tourist visa based only on that.

Aren't most tickets already associated with your name and credit card number anyway? Is adding your face tot he mix a serious problem?

I would say so.

You are adding biometric data to this so you can't say it's not me or type fake information. It's a similar issue with the Iphone Fingerprint ID. If you are making illegal calls, you can't say it's not me because 20 secondes before the call you unlock your cell with your own finger.

This feels gimmicky. How does this help solve real issues with admission control? The idea of admitting based on a face vs. a barcode for a reserved show won't work. Assuming this is for GA only? Why not just allow users to import photos from instagram, FB or similar? Are you going to make these photos available in bulk fashion to event organizers? I can see how this might be interesting for attendees to stalk who else was there but what is the value prop for event organizers? Would the event organizer get other info from the user such as email address? Why is this going to make me choose TicketLeap vs. TicketFly vs. TicketMob vs. Brown Paper vs. Eventbrite vs. anyone else in this insanely crowded industry? And for what its worth, the video is unnecessarily emotional. If I were you I would just cut to the chase on how this adds value to the ticketing ecosystem.

Look, you created Immunity Project. That's pretty cool and coming from that perspective, I can see why you think Selfie Ticket doesn't need emotion its positioning. However, we think we're onto something with this and it's not meant to be a gimmick.

If you're simply trying to sell tickets online (i.e. process a credit card and hand out a barcode) there are plenty of solutions for that, as you suggest. Ticketing platforms are built around the transaction and they do a good job of it (we were in this group too). However, there is a much larger population of people out there (whether they are creating events yet or not) that are trying to build and grow a community around something they're doing. The best way to build connections with someone? In person.

That's the type of event we're building for. One that's used to grow a community. And for that purpose, scanning barcodes sucks. It's un-human at the worst time, when you're trying to build human connections.

Hope that gives some background for our thought process behind telling the story the way we have.

Apologies if my post felt unnecessarily snarky. Yes I am cofounder @ Immunity Project, but I previously helped create Redbox Tickets so I have that hat on for this thread. My opinion on the video aside, when you have a line of people in front of you trying to get into an event, how does this help build community? You have such little time with each person because your #1 focus is getting them in the building. Even if its a small event you want people spending more time in the event not chatting with the ticket taker. What is the roadmap like for this feature? Perhaps that will help me better understand the value prop.

You're right! The feature doesn't end by simply getting into the event. Stay tuned.

We need this for hackathons. Why do they need to take a selfie rather than just using their facebook profile picture?

Most of the folks on my Facebook feed have a picture of their kid, somewhere they've gone, a comedian, etc. Probably 40% have a reasonably good quality image of themselves.

Hackathons, yes. The selfie aspect makes it a fun/ceremonial part of the experience of the event. 1 day before, you get the email, you take your pic, and you get excited for the event the next day.

It would be interesting to have a post-event-page that has a gallery of all the selfie tickets after the event so that attendees could go there to see all who attended if they wanted a reminder of who they met and who to reach out to. Use my selfie ticket as proof i attended and as a request for the contact info of another attendee; "I was at the event as well, and wanted to get your contact info; here's my selfie ticket as proof I was there!"

That video is trying to convert me to a religion, or change my life philosophy, or something. It's telling me what life is about, what happiness is, and frankly I resent that. Not to be a grouch, but you are a company making a ticketing system that uses people's photos. You aren't the Buddha, or Jesus, or Socrates.

Since you brought up the subject, though, happiness is equanimity. It is the freedom from distress that agitation and unmet desire and unwanted pain causes. And that has absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with your product.

Build stuff, get excited about it, try to sell it. That's good and right when you're in business. But don't overstep your bounds and start preaching.

FWIW, the biggest problem in ticketing is Ticketmaster's de facto monopoly - if you want to get people excited about ticketing, tell them that you have a plan to compete with Ticketmaster and won't be charging $15/ticket "service fees". (I mean, come on, $15/ticket? That might be acceptable if the tickets were calligraphy on parchment.)

Props on the innovation. Devil's Advocate: Barcodes were put in place to speed up mass quantity entry. This might cause a lineup as the ticket-taker is now a 'bouncer' and has to verify each persons physical identity. Have you tested this model at any fairly large events?

Again, not solving an problem..

I clicked the link because I thought it was an app that would give someone a ticket every time they took a selfie. Like a parking ticket. Selfie ticket.

Great idea! Turns out selfies do have uses :)

They should have some closed caps on that video for deaf people. Also it sounds like the narrator is talking down to me.

I disliked the narrator, too. They should get Jeff Bridges. He made me fall in love with batteries.

What about selling these tickets on StubHub? Can they be resold, since I now have my face on it?

You may have discovered an obvious feature of this approach.

You don't take the Selfie until 24 hours before (at most -- you can wait if you think you might sell it). Until then, there's a simple flow to email the ticket to someone else.

I'm imagining a user who's very busy and puts off taking the selfie until the last minute... when they're in line.

Then the show the photo they just took to the bouncer to get in?

I think the reaction from people at these events will be 'this app is dumb' after seeing someone take a photo then show it to the bouncer when the look exactly the same in real life!

I mean, wouldn't you feel silly if you had bought and paid for a ticket to an event then had to take a photo of yourself standing in line in order to get in?

[Edit: my constructive criticism here is what are you going to do about the users who will take the photo at the last second?]

Ha, my first thought was a service that let's you give warning tickets to people who post 'selfies' on Facebook. Sign up today to join the "Selfie Police".

Here is a selfie of the scalper I got the ticket from!

Definitely a fun concept.

How does the organizer/door attendant mark the patron as attended? Is this done on the user's personal cell phone, or is there another device at the door?

Reporting in the app tells them how many have activated their Selfie Ticket. You can only activate it in the window 24 hours before the event, so it's a pretty good indication they came.

Start with a problem people actually have. I dont think this solves too many problems... How different is this really? Incorporating an image into what you show?

Completely agree. People don't have a problem selling tickets -- that's been solved. People do have a problem growing their community. That's the problem we're solving. Events are a great way to do that and if THATs your goal, scanning a barcode is pretty robotic/off-putting. Selfie Ticket doesn't add an image into what you already show, it replaces the barcode with something a lot more friendly/welcoming.

So you're replacing a barcode with an image? Visited the site... very confused.

How does this handle the people who refuse to take a selfie

Look into Kairos.io they have an API now. Could speed check-in, we use QR codes and eventbrite app to do check-ins at RefreshMiami.

There are two types of people in the world. Those who hate QR codes, and those who don't know what they are.

Or rather, people who grossly misuse them, and people who realize there is a time and place.

In their original use case (inventory management at Toyota in the early 1990s) they made sense, for ticketing they are hit or miss. I personally dislike them even though we use them a lot. I thought they were overhyped about 4-5 years ago.

Great idea. Thanks for sharing.

I suppose it saves small events from needing to have a scanner.

How? A scanner proves the ticket is valid and unused. After all, that's the purpose of a ticket. How does the selfie ticket achieve this? Who cares whether or not you match the person in the photo? It doesn't verify anything.

This is as secure as a printed piece of paper that simply says, You're welcome to John's BBQ. Confirmation number A2M1.

Anyone could print off that paper, or make up a random confirmation number, and they can do the same with the selfie ticket. Unless it's scanned, there's no security. It's fine for your $5 bake sale event, or backyard party for your neighbors. It's just a way to customize your ticket with a personal photo. The person checking the ticket isn't going to care if you match this photo, they'll just glance at the screen to see if it has the event name and looks somewhat official.

Who cares how friendly an event ticket is? Is that really a concern anyone has.

OT: The style of that presentation video seems pretty typical for technological gadgets and apps. Does it have a name?

Some have used the phrase "explainer video" but I don't think that's quite right in this case. I can tell you (I'm the CEO of Ticketleap) it was the brain child of our super talented @bobhoranjr

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