View From My Seat: event photo sharing site launches Chrome extension for StubHub

Last year, Frank Panko found a way for sports fans to aggregate all the photos we take from the bleachers and launched A View from My Seat. At the time, he told Technically Philly he could envision his application being useful for making ticket purchases.

Now, about a year later, with the launch of a View From My Seat Chrome extension for StubHub, Panko’s vision is a reality.

The extension allows StubHub customers to to see photos taken from the seats they are thinking about purchasing on StubHub, the e-commerce marketplace for fans to buy and sell event tickets. On Panko’s end, A View From My Seat pushes photos uploaded to its database into StubHub, as well as any comments fans have made on the photo.

“Since people leave comments with us as well as photos, you occasionally get tips on whether the area you’re looking at is good or not,” Panko said. “Surprisingly, we’ve found that in a lot of ballparks fans recommend that it’s better to be in the third row than the first.”

While there is no revenue goal attached to the Chrome extension, Panko says the strategy behind could eventually help A View from My Seat make money on its service. He says the goals are twofold: first, to give VfMS users a convenient, new service that would keep them engaged, and second, to attract StubHub users to join VfMS.

“A lot of our members used us to find great seats, then shared their own photos after going to the event,” Panko said.

With the new Chrome extension out the door, A View from My Seatsis fast on its way to acquiring its 100,000th Android user, Panko says. He estimates they’ll hit the mark by June. As of publication, the service had 90,300 Android members, Panko told Technically Philly. An iOS app is also available.

Currently, it’s still just Panko and his wife, Missy Wedig, managing the service and database. Despite what seems like plenty of work, they have more plans for new features. First, they plan to build a baseball “fan perks” program intended to draw Major League Baseball fans to minor league games.

“The first team to work with us was the Lakewood BlueClaws,” Panko said. “Any Phillies fan that shares photos through A View From My Seat, can claim a set of four tickets to a BlueClaws game this season.”

Panko says they also want to expand the trophy system they use to motivate users to share photos.

“We’re working on expanding the trophies to award fans of college teams, minor league teams and fans of international sports like rugby and cricket. This has been one of our biggest requests over the last year,” Panko said. “Fans enjoy it, so we’re looking to grow it.”