America Online's Digital City detailed plans for four new virtual cities in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Los Angeles. While Digital City San Francisco launched Thursday, versions in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Philadelphia are set to launch by the end of September.

Northwest

Ticketmaster's site, which has about 93,000 unique visitors weekly, has begun handling transactions for general admission events in the Seattle and Portland, Oregon, markets.

The site has been developing technology to handle events with reserved seating, which would likely let users view virtual maps of a theater or arena to choose their seats, for over a year.

Ticketmaster will roll those capabilities onto the site a few markets at a time throughout the next 12 months, according to Ticketmaster Senior VP-New Media Alan Citron. Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen said he thinks that when the site goes fully transactional it will get between 50,000 and 100,000 unique visitors daily.

In other news, Ticketmaster and MasterCard are also in discussions about a co-branded affinity card, according to Mr. Rosen. MasterCard is the Ticketmaster site's preferred credit card and a major sponsor.

trends

With far less fanfare than their first survey got, CommerceNet and Nielsen Media Research issued the latest round of data from their Internet demographic study. Instead of reporting the total number of people on the Internet, a figure criticized by other researchers, the partners instead point out trends: 22% to 24% of the 2,800 respondents 16 or older in the U.S. and Canada have access to the Internet, double the figure a year ago. In addition, 15% to 17% have used the Internet in the past six months, but only 5% to 6% in the past 24 hours.

Copyright August 1996 Crain Communications Inc.