Marketing Pilgrim

Facebook and Eventbrite already have a relationship—Facebook tapped the event site to sell tickets to its f8 developer conference, as confirmed by TechCrunch last week. A TechCrunch reader then noticed that facebook.eventbrite.com was up and working:

So, TechCrunch speculates, might Eventbrite and Facebook be partnering to make Facebook (and Eventbrite, of course) money on the 3.5M events posted on the social site? When Facebook added the Events feature, plenty thought this would spell the death of dedicated event or invitation sites. However, most of these events (that I’ve seen, anyway) are personal-level things—with free admission. But I’m Eventbrite would be happy to help Facebook expand into event ticket sales for everything from fundraisers to concerts. (Eventbrite also coordinates free tickets, for free.)

Says TechCrunch:

Like the F8 event, this is set up on Eventbrite’s site, and it seems likely that Facebook will send users there that want to monetize events, have them log in via Facebook Connect, and finish the process.

It’s possible that this could just be Eventbrite’s implementation of Facebook Connect, apart from Facebook’s input (“partnering with Facebook” is being overused like that often). Facebook declined to comment on this effort.

What do you think? Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Or is Eventbrite striking out on its own?