Citi Courts Facebook Friends with Music Recommendations

A new Facebook app from Citi tells consumers which concerts they may like, if they allow the company to access their public profiles.

The app, called Citi Private Pass Match-Up App, offers consumers three main features. It recommends concerts to people based on their Facebook profile data. It suggests which concerts a user and a friend would enjoy based on their common interests (the user chooses the friend to get concert recommendations for). And it offers a music trivia game that is designed to see who knows more about music: users or their Facebook friends.

When accessing the app, a person is prompted with this message: "Citi Private Pass Match-Up would like to access your public profile, friend list, email address, hometown, interests, current city, likes and your friends' hometowns, interests, current cities and likes."

The Facebook app is an extension of the Citi Private Pass program, which allows Citi credit and debit cardholders to purchase tickets to events.

The new app marks yet another example of a financial services company experimenting with ways to combine banking activity with social media. American Express Co. launched a Facebook app in 2011 that allows the company to track the profile of its cardholders on the social networking site. The app, called Link, Like, Love, offers customized deals to cardholders based on their profile data.

Citi launched a Facebook app that allows people to share reward points in January 2012.

Separately, Citi asked consumers through its Facebook and Twitter channels in July 2012 whether they would do banking on Facebook.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Bank technology Disruptors
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER