Trying to get past bouncers on a Saturday night to check if your friends are on the guest list is normally a nightmare for the majority of diehard clubbers in the country.
But in a bold hi-tech attempt to make life easier, top clubs such as the Ministry of Sound are selling electronic tickets which are delivered directly to your mobile. By going to ClubConnexion, the UK's online dance community site, clubbers can buy discounted guest list tickets. Once you've submitted your details to the site, including your mobile phone number, ticket numbers and a booking confirmation are sent directly to your phone as a text message.
At the door, instead of waiting for ages while staff wade through mountains of paperwork to see if you are on the club's guest list, you just show them your mobile with your mTicket number and you go straight in.
"It's working really well," says Sarah Thain, head of promotions for the Ministry of Sound. "It's so much easier to search for their names. And it is added security for clubbers to know they are on the guest list."
This new service is the brainchild of the technology start-up, mTicket ( www. mticket.co.uk ) which is hoping to extend the service to cinemas and travel companies in a bid to revolutionise our ticket-buying habits.
At the moment clubbers have to return to the ClubConnexion site each time they want to place fresh orders for electronic tickets. But plans are underway to make the club ticketing service completely SMS-driven. Soon, after opening an online mTicket account, clubbers will be able to text message the Ministry of Sound and other UK clubs for listings information and then buy and have their tickets delivered to their mobiles.
"The biggest benefit is being able to buy a ticket from your mobile phone at any time and anywhere," explains Tony Coyle, mTicket's chief executive.
When you arrive at the Ministry of Sound and skip to the front of the queue with your mTicket number on your mobile, bouncers use Compaq iPaq handhelds that log directly into mTicket's database to check if your electronic tickets are legitimate.
Diehard clubbers might also be tempted to use their mobiles to take part in a new SMS-driven auction service which is going to offer oppor tunities to bid for hi-tech goodies such as MP3 and DVD players.
The wireless portal, MyAlert is partnering the online auction site ebid.co.uk to offer SMS-based auctions in the next few weeks. Bargain hunters will be invited to register online for product categories they are interested in and then get SMS alerts if an auction for their desired item is starting. Buyers can submit bids using text messages and will get messages back letting them know if they have been outbid.
MyAlert has already run pioneering SMS auctions in Spain, where cases of wine and books went under the text message hammer. In the UK, it has 350,000 users and the head of operations, Manuel Cerqueiro, is confident that Brits will respond as enthusiastically as the Spanish to the new SMS service. "It's like a game. It's very interactive and you can do it anywhere you want."
Cerqueiro believes it will relieve the frustration of bargain hunters who are participating in an online auction but cannot always gain access to a computer to see whether or not they are still ahead in the bidding.
