(Founder Stories) Eventbrite's Julia Hartz: "Facebook Is The No. 1 Driver Of Traffic To Our Site" (TCTV)

Chris Dixon resumes his Founder Stories conversation with Eventbrite’s Kevin and Julia Hartz by asking questions about their strategy for attracting customers. Not surprisingly Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all factor in to the mix.

Julia Hartz says initially Eventbrite positioned itself to be “highly optimized for search engines and discovery.”  However, search eventually gave way to sharing in the form of Facebook, and now according to Julia, “Facebook is the number one driver of traffic to our site.” (It has been for a while). She notes “It’s extremely easy to get people to share what events they are going to because events are inherently social”  and continues by saying with the “ticket buyer sharing where they’re going” it drives “real traffic back to the site as well as ticket sales.”

Recognizing the importance of not being “reliant on a single source” Kevin tells Chris that Twitter is also a player in their digital strategy as is LinkedIn because “conferences/professional events is still the largest, single largest percentage of events on our system.”

In the below clip, Dixon asks about competition—specifically Ticketmaster.  Kevin responds by talking about the challenges of getting into the music market with some of the contracts that it requires and then lists events Ticketmaster does not necessarily service, such as “a small show, a club … attending a wine tasting event.” 

Julia notes “there’s always a little bit of friction when you’re trying to democratize an industry” and speaking to “traditional ways of doing ticketing … in music and live entertainment” Julia says it requires “exorbitant fees and that is just not what we stand for.”

Make sure to check it all out in these two videos—and in case you missed episode I with Kevin and Julia Hartz you can find it here.

Past episodes of Founder Stories are here.