Collegiate Times

Many Virginia Tech students have become familiar with the disappointment of missing out on attending football games because of bad luck in the lottery. Now students can make use of a new resource for obtaining tickets to the most popular sports events on campus.

Facetix.com, a free service created by Virginia Tech alumni Nathan Jones and David Gentzel, allows students to contact their friends, through facebook, to find or exchange tickets. Students can access the service by logging into the website through facebook.

Students have the option of posting requests for tickets or posting their tickets to exchange or sell. Posts may only be made to friends, however, but students can see all posts of other people in need of tickets to choose whether you want to post saying you have tickets or if you need them.

Although posts cannot be made directly to friends, a message can be sent through facebook stating what one may be in need of. In addition to giving and receiving tickets, students may also swap tickets with others if they received tickets in a section that you didn?t want. Gentzel said this service is ?an easy way for friends to help each other when it comes to sports event tickets.?

Facetix was created shortly after the lottery for the Northeastern game closed. The creators understood the frustrations students go through when they are not chosen for the lottery and wanted to do something on a large scale to help them. Jones and Gentzel said they hope this service will serve as a means of reducing the large amount of unused tickets so that more and more people can attend the games.

While football is currently the sport in demand, Facetix also reaches out toward other events as well such as basketball games, or concerts.

On the site, students are not allowed to sell student tickets because it is against the policies of Virginia Tech. In addition, the site is set up through facebook?s new Application Programming Interface, which links commercial websites to facebook to connect friends to friends.

It is essentially an addition to facebook, only on a different site, therefore ensuring safety. Having said that, non-student tickets and guest tickets may be sold over the site. Because students can get rid of their tickets in this easy manner, the amount of scalping and illegal sale of tickets will decrease.

Currently, Facetix is catching on through word of mouth because it has only been advertised in a few places. Nevertheless, its popularity is rising as new features are being added to the site. There were 70 listings by people who needed tickets for last weekend?s Northeastern game, and only seven made by those who have tickets. Rakan Omar, a freshman architecture student here at Virginia Tech, who was listed on the site for the Northeastern game, believes that the site is, ?a good system that gives people who do not get a ticket a chance to attend an event that they want to see.?

Facetix is not the only ticket service out there that offers a chance to find tickets. An older website called www.techsideline.com also offers ticket exchange services. Here, users have three different message boards to choose from to exchange tickets. On the first two, which were created six years ago, users may buy and sell guest and regular season tickets. However, on the third message board, which was just newly added following the launch of Facetix, users may only exchange or give away student tickets.

Site founder Will Stewart said, these ticket exchange services were created when users began ?posting messages on the message board wanting to sell tickets.? Like Facetix, users must adhere to a set of guidelines when writing posts on these boards. Tickets that may be sold cannot be sold above face value prices, and student tickets may not be sold at all. Sites such as Facetix and Tech Sideline are being looked upon as a way to solve the lottery problem. Many students are consistently disgruntled by not receiving tickets from the lottery. This may change though with the existence of these amenities.

?They give people a more positive attitude toward the lottery because they know there are other methods of getting a ticket,? Omar said.