This week, JetBlue ran a very successful campaign in New York City. How do we know it was successful? No one was hurt, no one is really complaining, and it got some press. While many in the social media world would use other metrics, I think these are pretty darn good.

So what did they do? They gave away 1000 round trip tickets in three locations that required people to follow their "guidance" on Twitter to know where to go and what to show up with. This is where the "no one got hurt" part makes sense, huh?

CNET reported:

It was apparently one step short of a cattle stampede when low-cost airline JetBlue used its Twitter account to announce that, as part of its 10th anniversary celebration, it would be giving out about a thousand free round-trip tickets at three undisclosed locations in Manhattan on Wednesday.

"One of the things we knew was that people were just going to follow us," JetBlue public relations representative Morgan Johnston told CNET, relating anecdotes about one woman who claimed she sprinted in heels from midtown to the Financial District (one of the giveaway spots), people chasing the JetBlue team in taxis as they left one location to head to the next, entire offices clearing out when they heard that one of the ticket giveaways was nearby, and a cab driver who left his passenger behind in order to get out and claim a ticket. "It was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin."

Once again I reiterate: no one got hurt. I have to admit that if I was responsible for this kind of promotion that caused mini-panics in offices and a run on taxi cab fares in NYC, I would have some concerns. Fortunately for JetBlue, this one worked well, and I tip my cap to them.

So, would you have the confidence to give something like this a shot? Of course, it would be best if your business lends itself to this kind of reaction. If you are selling pipe fittings in Peoria, you will need to tweak the concept considerably.

This is the fun of social media, though. There is a chance to do things that have never been done before. As people begin to experiment more and more, it is likely that those with jangly nerves need not apply.

What do you think about JetBlue’s "event?" What could you do that would cause a stir and make the cash register ring?

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In 2007, plenty of interest among music fans manifested itself in numerous blogs. Billboard Magazine, once one of those outlets that owned music news, blogged about problems getting in the show.

However, music publication NME came through with the set list from the two hour concert. In a way this showed how far media coverage has come with the Internet, and how far it has to go.

Though NME followed up with a solid review, there was no stream to follow of the show. No audio, no video, no chance for some horrid, clever person to (horrors!) record this performance.

A once in a lifetime reunion should have had a greater reach than its audience. If the much-expected DVD of the concert does emerge, that would make up for this for a lot of fans. We shouldn’t have to wait for a DVD, not when modern multimedia streaming and content distribution networks could have made the show a lot more immediate to what would have been a grateful online audience.

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Going users can see who else on the site has plans to attend various events such as parties or concerts and they can decide if they want to attend the same event.

The site is geared toward 20-somethings in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It plans to expand to Miami and Atlanta and 10 other cities early next year.

Unlike Ticketmaster, Going hopes to sell tickets to events that are not available through the usual outlets. Thursday’s Moby concert in New York is its first event as a ticket seller.

"Ticketing was the last-mile solution for the 300,000 local monthly RSVPs that occur on our site," Going.com CEO and founder Evan Schumacher said. "Our goal was to connect the long tail of promoters with event-seeking audiences."

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) will offer tickets through a lottery system. Ticket applications will be accepted from December10 until December 30. There is no word on many tickets each person can purchase or when the lottery will take place.

A lottery was held in June for the first round of 1.6 million tickets. The sale of those tickets went smoothly. China plans to sell seven million tickets for the games over three phases with three-quarters of the tickets reserved for local residents.

Last week when the Olympic tickets were for sale online the system received more than eight million hits in the first hour causing the site to crash. The site could only handle one million hits and 150,000 sales in an hour. Just 9,000 tickets out of the 1.85 million that went on sale were sold.

Organizers said they are using the lottery system, "In the interest of fairness and for everyone’s convenience." People living outside of China will get a chance to buy tickets in April 2008.

The Web site received 8 million hits in the first hour it was open and the ticketing telephone line had 3. 8 million calls, according to the Olympic organizing committee. Organizers said they had not anticipated the demand and will announce plans for sales on November 5. Only 9,000 tickets out of the 1.85 million that went on sale were sold.

"We sincerely apologize to the general public,” Beijing officials said. “Because of the overwhelming volume of page visits, the technical system was unable to perform the tasks well enough, and many applicants were unable to successfully submit their applications.”

A lottery in June for the first round of 1.6 million tickets went well. China plans to sell seven million tickets for the games over three phases with three-quarters of the tickets going to local residents.

"Tuesday morning’s turnout for the ticket sale fully reflected the Chinese people’s longing and support for the Olympic Games," China’s Olympic organizers said.

The team and their fans are experiencing a sports nightmare: a World Series that starts in Denver on Saturday with 20,000 tickets up for grabs, and no way to purchase them. TheDenverChannel.com reported on the frustrations of numerous fans who have been shut out of the high-tech ticket process.

Blame for the problem has been laid at the feet of unnamed malicious attackers, who caused the servers managed by Paciolan to shut down as thousands of fans hit the system. They and Major League Baseball have addressed the problem, according to a statement from the Rockies, and plan to try selling tickets again, online, starting at 2 pm EDT.

“Our partners at MLB.com and Paciolan have fully assessed the situation and assured us that tomorrow’s online sale will go as originally planned,” a Rockies spokesperson said.

Fark.com owner Drew Curtis told TheDenverChannel he was one of the many people shut off from the process, as he tried to buy tickets for his father, a Colorado resident.

“These idiots always have these consultants that tell them, ‘Sure, the server can handle the traffic,’” said Curtis. “In reality, that only works over the course of a day. If a zillion people hit the damn thing all at once, it goes boom. Think CNN on 9/11.”

Only about 500 tickets had been sold before the attacks took the system offline.

In the suit against StubHub, which is owned by Ebay the Patriots maintain that the site allows fans to break state law and violate team policies. Team rules prohibit reselling game tickets for a profit.

StubHub began contacting the 13,000 customers yesterday to tell them that their personal information had been turned over to the Patriots after a ruling by Superior Court Judge Allan van Gestel.

"We take the privacy of our customers very seriously, so we made every effort to appeal this ruling. Unfortunately, our appeals were not successful," StubHub said in an e-mail to the customers according to the Boston Globe.

In the ruling Judge van Gestel wrote, "The Patriots have said that they intend to use the identities of the purchasers and sellers not only for this case, but also for its own other allegedly legitimate uses, such as canceling season tickets of ‘violators’ or reporting to authorities those customers that they deem to be in violation of the Massachusetts antiscalping law."

Tickets for some Patriots games are selling on StubHub far above face value. Tickets that the team originally sold for $125 are now selling for $650 on StubHub. Standing room tickets, which were $49, are for sale for $120 to $150.

A lawyer for the Patriots would not say what the team would do with the 13,000 names that StubHub turned over according to the AP. The Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group, said the court ruling infringes on the rights of Patriots fans.

The purchase will cost eBay approximately $310 million, and will allow the auction site to increase its presence in the realm of online ticketing, while giving StubHub access to eBay’s technology and resources.

Officials at eBay had denied rumors of a StubHub acquisition as recently as October, but reversed course today by going public with its purchase of the ticket reseller.

“StubHub has been extremely successful in the online tickets segment, and it’s a perfect complement to eBay’s tickets business,” said Bill Cobb, president, eBay North America Marketplaces. “Together we can strengthen both businesses and provide fans with more choice and better service.”

“StubHub’s business model is an excellent fit with eBay, a company we’ve admired for a long time,” said Jeff Fluhr, founder and CEO of StubHub. “StubHub exists to serve passionate fans – and we feel great knowing our customers will benefit from the power of eBay and its community of users.”

It’s a strategic move, to be sure, as StubHub had been quietly infringing upon the online ticket market which eBay highly covets.

Ticket brokering is dangerous territory, with states beginning to crack down on scalpers.

So far, eBay has managed to keep its head out of the noose, as the company never actually has possession of the tickets.

Michael Arrington gives great insight into how the secondary ticket market actually works:

So, eBay has that stigma to overcome in this whole venture. Nonetheless, the deal should proper eBay to the forefront of the secondary market.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

But is this really news? Last week, job searches were showing up in the regular search results, served via Google Base, and the auto and real estate results are built off the same model.

In fact, the Google Base homepage lists twenty seperate types of specialized search Base offers, including blog search, podcasts, recipes, tickets and content for mobile phones. Some are more featured than others: the recipe search has criteria for main ingredients and ethnic cooking, while clinical trials search has types of diseases, trial stages, and testing centers.

Now, we all made fun of Google Base when it was introduced as being too vague. “Upload anything”, they said, and many were just confused. Now, Google is looking brilliant, as usual. Google is builting specialty search engines, simply by having users and companies do all the work for them, loading the info into the Google dataBase, and building a simple search engine front-end around it. As soon as they have a critical mass of data, they add the search as a OneBox result in regular Google search, and thus, they’ve added a brand new targeted search engine, with a minimum of effort.

F-ing brilliant.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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Well, since I use Blogger and Typepad, that seems like a cop-out. You can set it so you get comments sent to you when posted – and then delete the comments if you believe or feel that they are SPAM.

Today, BL Ochman posted about the potential for bad PR for American Airlines. I read the article about American the other day in the WSJ – contest winner declines tickets – and smiled. I didn’t think it was going to be a huge issue, because the guidelines were pretty explicit in the contest rules. It’s an unfortunate event, but the IRS is the IRS.

I wanted to post a comment. I had a valid point that it’s not bad PR, but crappy rules. But, apprently I’m no longer allowed to comment on BL’s blog … click the photo for her nice little statement.

Oh, this was my comment:

Is it a PR problem, or the inability to read and understand the fine print, and the lack of knowledge of tax laws?

American Airlines has to declare the tickets at full value. Do they ever sell the tickets at full value? Probably 1 percent of the time – but per tax laws, that’s what they have to do.

I feel bad for the guy – well, actually, I think it’s pretty funny. But, is this really deserved bad press for American Airlines? Even if they gave him vouchers, they and he have to technically declare the value to the IRS.

I guess this means that I no longer will be reading BL’s blog (unless someone IM’s me something for a laugh … which is usually what happens). Which is fine, since I noticed that she doesn’t post things so she can usually have the last word.

Why did this come about? Likely because I posted a comment on this post, asking why she felt she had to attack Constantin Basturea. I like Constantin. I’ve meet Constantin. And, no offence to Constantin but attacking him is like kicking a puppy. The man has done nothing but good for PR and the blogosphere: New PR Wiki, Global PR Blog Week, Blogdigger Headlines, plus much more.

So, why moderate comments? Steve Rubel just went to the same policy (although no explanation), which would make me think that if he moderates, he would respond more to comments, but alas that is not happening either.

To me, comment moderation is good for corporate blogs. In a corporate blog, you do have people that are trying to attack the company on unfair grounds. I have posted comments on the GM Fastlane blog – something usually along the lines of move out of Detroit, to save the company – but those get moderated. And, at the IABC Conference, GM noted that their agency does help moderate comments.

But, individual blogs? Blogs written by people in an industry that pounds its chest about open communications and how blogs are equalizing the world, and how these are great venues for a two-way dialogue? Well, that two-way dialogue ends when comments are moderated. Then it’s just lip service.

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.