SeatGeek Launches Columbus Event Discovery Engine

SeatGeek, makers of an online service that aggregates event tickets in a fashion similar to Kayak, is expanding beyond its humble origins with the beta launch of Columbus, an event discovery engine that uses social data to predict events SeatGeek users might like.

"SeatGeek is best-in-class when you know what event you want to attend, but prior to Columbus, wasn't great at surfacing new events for the user who wants to find entertainment," SeatGeek co-founder Russell D'Souza said in an exclusive interview with Mashable.

Columbus is a predictive calendar of upcoming sporting events and concerts tailored around the user's expressed and implicit interests. Columbus considers the SeatGeek user's favorite bands and teams, factors in the user's onsite event browsing activities and extracts interests from the user's Facebook profile. The startup also uses Last.fm APIs to marry the user's musical interests against an open database of listening tastes to determine what other events the user might like.

Altogether, the Columbus experience is designed to stimulate repeat business and broaden the scope of SeatGeek's appeal. "We launched with a focus on search," D'Souza says. "Now we want to be a gateway to America's entertainment."

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