VentureBeat

It might not seem like there’s much room for cool ideas when it comes to selling tickets, but the executives of a startup called Amiando disagree. They’re rolling out some smart new features that should make it easier to promote events.

Like competitors Eventbrite and RegOnline, Amiando (which is a sponsor for our MobileBeat 2008 event on July 24) allows you to create a page where users can register and buy tickets for your events. Amiando has a strong package already — among other things, it sold tickets for the Crunchies Awards that we co-hosted in January — and just launched a completely redesigned site.

Co-founder and chief executive Felix Haas tells me there are two new features in particular that stand out, and which are unique to Amiando. First, the company has enabled “viral” ticket sales — namely, when someone buys a ticket to your event, you can give them a special code that they pass on to their friends. If one of those friends buys a ticket, both the original and new ticket buyers get a discount, so people have more incentive to hype your event to their friends.

Second, event pages can now be designed through a modular interface that Haas calls “NetVibes for events.” Like customizable news aggregation site NetVibes, Amiando’s event pages are now built from modules, so that you can quickly add elements like directions, a comment wall and YouTube videos, then move them around and resize them through a drag-and-drop interface. The modules aren’t limited to the events page, either — you can include them as IFrames on any Web page.

The Munich, Germany startup has focused most of its marketing efforts in Europe — so far, at least. Amiando raised an undisclosed first round from Wellington Partners and Adinvest last month.

The online event-planning market is mature. Various event web sites have gotten bought, gone out of business, or gone nowhere in the last several years.

However, two companies, Amiando and EventBrite, allow you to sell tickets to events online, and they’ve emerged with a business model: They take a cut of the ticket sale. This differs them from the slew of other sites that helped you organize events, but never made money.

Notably, the two companies have just announced new rounds of venture funding.

The two companies fill the middle ground between the enormous task of building your own ticket-selling software (not very practical, obviously), and using a large-scale ticket-seller like Ticketmaster. In addition, they help you set up websites to promote those events.

Today, Amiando, a Munich, Germany-based service that says it has the “first mover” advantage in Europe, is announcing its first round of financing, from Wellington Partners and Adinvest.

Eventbrite, the San Francisco-based company that’s likely better known to our United States-based readers, announced its first, and undisclosed, round earlier this week from the European Founders Fund. Eventbrite’s chief executive is Kevin Hartz, an early advisor to Paypal and a repeat entrepreneur who is also the co-founder of angel investing outfit Youniversity.

Both services should be familiar to VentureBeat readers. We’re using EventBrite to sell tickets for our MobileBeat conference in July. Amiando, meanwhile, was the online ticket seller for the Crunchies awards that we co-hosted last January.

Amiando, which also offers a widget that lets you sell tickets on your own site, has been focusing on international expansion. Besides English, it already provides the service in German (of course), as well as Spanish and French. It recently announced a distribution partnership for the East Asian market with Web2Asia, a company that provides business development services for foreign companies looking to expand into Asia. The East Asian region, particularly China, has unsurprisingly shown impressive growth potential for events and related services that go along with general economic expansion. China’s event industry for example is growing 20 percent per year, with the second highest number of trade show visitors and exhibitors in the world, according to a 2007 report by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

Anthony Ha contributed to this article.