I've never been to WWDC so I don't know how the ticket process works. Given that the demand is so high for this event, what prevents folks from buying a few tickets and flipping them on eBay etc.?
There's nothing to prevent them doing this, another reason for creating the site. In 2011, when you purchase the tickets, you can buy 4 and you're buying 4 unique codes which can be redeemed for tickets. So someone can buy 4 and sell all 4, they don't have to even go.
There's a problem though: to guarantee that the redemption code is valid, seller must meet with the buyer and activate on site. This is how people were selling unused tickets last year. It doesn't look very efficient because both seller and buyer should end up in the same country and city well before the conference for exchange. Plus, the ticket is quite expensive from the beginning. All of this makes the whole deal not very interesting for scalpers.
Prediction: those who want a notification won't upvote this link. Those who don't care about WWDC, but care about idealistic "equal opportunity", might upvote.
That's an interesting observation and a piece of game theory that's played out in my head quite often when choosing whether to recommend things or not. One has to wonder if there's an entire cross-discipline of marketing and game theory to be analyzed there.. :-)
Hello, I created the site. Yes I've had people say to me they're unsure they should help promote it. Lots of offers of booze should they get preference etc. as the commenter mentions above, I'd rather developers get their hand on the tickets before the scalpers do.
Out of curiosity, what SMS gateway did you use to send messages?