Once seen as the latest marketing tool for promoting events, social networking sites are now being used as the convergence of all aspects of concert promotion—including ticket sales. No longer content to simply use sites like MySpace and Facebook as promotional tools, some sites are leveraging the Web 2.0 world to generate revenue.

The social networking website Going.com has just launched a new ticketing component to its website so that users may buy event tickets from the site. The venture capital-funded site has brought on former Ticketmaster CEO John Pleasant to serve on the company's board of directors. Hoping to cash in on the emerging growth of clubs and lounges hosting events, the Boston-based company has premiered its ticketing platform with a Moby concert held in mid-November at the Hiro Ballroom in New York.

CEO Evan Shumacher plans to focus ticketing efforts on art openings, charity events and after-parties including a recent series of post-concert events for Daft Punk following last year's U.S. tour. Going.com has held parties for URB magazine at the Roxy in Hollywood, Calif.; special events for celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton and a Grammy after-party at the Crash Mansion in Los Angeles.

Going.com, which has regional websites in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, attracts users by offering free listings of local concerts and nightlife events. Unlike an event listing service in a newspaper, Going.com lets users register to attend certain events and publicizes the names of individuals who plan on attending. The site reports it gets a million visitors per month with New York as its largest market, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.

The Going.com ticketing platform is a new initiative for the site to generate revenue, charging buyers a service charge on tickets to each event. Going.com staff developed the front-end software in-house, and power its e-commerce transactions through Paypal. Promoters and event organizers access the software through a web-application and can retrieve e-mail addresses and purchasing information for each transaction. Tickets are typically delivered through e-mail and print-at-home technology, although a few venues opt to use a barcode scan system. Most venues print out a list of attendees and simply require patrons to show I.D.—and sometimes a credit card—before gaining access to the building.

"Our big belief is there's a big untapped market" with ticket sales, Shumacher said. Therefore, adding the ticket component "has been a logical extension of what we were doing," he said. Going.com's ticketing component is more practical for people throwing smaller and one-off style events with general admission seating—they’re currently not working with many venues that use a fixed seating chart.

So far, no arenas or stadiums have moved any large-event ticketing over to a social networking site. Besides exclusive contracts that restrict how tickets can be sold, most social networking sites don't necessarily have the technological capabilities to handle large on-sales, said Ticket.com's Chief Operating Officer Derek Palmer.

"Ultimately, they're the natural progression of fan clubs and it makes sense that they would go online and bring people together in new ways, but there are limitations on their capabilities when it comes to handling any type of merchandise sales," Palmer said.

In terms of large concerts and sporting events, Palmer said it's still best for social networking sites to facilitate interactions, but then link users on to larger sites like Tickets.com or Ticketmaster, which have the back-end infrastructure to handle a large volume.

With most Going.com ticketed events selling 500 to 1,500 tickets, volume hasn't been an issue, said Roy Rodenstein, co-founder of Going.com. The site markets its ability to tap into niche tastes by giving promoters tools to track fans and post online fliers, YouTube videos, music MP3s and more. And Going.com allows fans to post photos and comments before events to generate buzz. Rodenstein said the site learns from users' interests and recommends events and venues to match their taste. As more users click on an event, it rises in popularity, heading higher and higher in the Going.com charts and drawing more attention.

Going.com also offers more options for promotion, from banner and rich media ads to e-mail newsletter promotion and sponsored listings, to give event promoters the ability to make their events stand out. Going.com can also help event organizers attract corporate sponsors for events and has relationships with liquor companies for promotional opportunities.

On the heels of Going.com is a new Ticketmaster initiative to create a software application that can be placed on individual MySpace or private websites to alert visitors of upcoming events, said spokesperson Bonnie Poindexter. Known as a "widget," the software application won't allow visitors to purchase tickets directly from the site, but instead redirects them to Ticketmaster.com. Resale giant StubHub.com is also developing its own application to integrate into Facebook, said spokesperson Sean Pate, who said the company hadn't yet released any details of the project.

For now, Schumacher said Going.com won't chase after large events, but "who knows down the road?" he said. And Rodenstein said that the company is definitely up for working with larger venues and is starting to do so—in 2006 the company hosted an event at Fenway Park in Boston for the Red Sox's charity foundation.