In the highly competitive world of online ticketing, it’s often the little things that set a company apart.

This is no news to Chris Stanchak, CEO of the rapidly growing Philly-based ticketer TicketLeap.

When he founded TicketLeap in 2003 as a student project, Stanchak had a vision of providing professional-grade ticketing for events too small to attract the attention of ticketing giants such as Ticketmaster.

Since then, the company has saved bicycling in Philadelphia, raised capital and has completed a drastic redesign of the company’s homepage and changed its business philosophy.

“Before [the redesign] we were focused on being a destination site for people trying to find tickets to events near them,” says Stanchak. “But with everything happening in social media, the idea of a destination event website is kind of going away.”

The homepage was previously designed with a Geolocation-based search engine to help buyers find events close to home, but with TicketLeap ranked as the No. 2 Google result for the term: “sell tickets online,” Stanchak decided it was time to change gears.

“The homepage was really designed at the time for people trying to buy tickets, so it was kind of mismatched,” Stanchak says. “We decided to make the homepage more focused on the event organizer, with event searches for the buyer on another part of the site.”

The TicketLeap homepage now features a “Quick Setup in 5 minutes” for event organizers with tickets to sell.

And the tech is going far, with the redesign including added features for ticket buyers, such as “like” buttons (a la Facebook) that allow buyers to share TicketLeap events with friends.

This recent redesign is a small change, Stanchak says, compared to what’s to come. The staff at TicketLeap is currently working on a completely new platform called TicketLeap Express, which Stanchak promises “will change the whole industry.”

Included in the new design is a gray box sporting one of the company’s favorite sayings: “get real support from real people.” The link on the company’s homepage places the new TicketLeap Team page – which includes a headshot and bio of every employee – front and center.

“If someone works with TicketLeap, they get a call from an account representative that will help them plan their event,” says Stanchak. “Now you can pull up the TicketLeap team page and actually see who it is that you’re talking to.”

“It makes the experience a lot more personal, and that is something that we’re going to continue to maintain no matter where we go with our tech.”

The new site isn’t set to launch until later this summer, but Stanchak gave Technically Philly a sneak peak.

After purchasing a ticket from TicketLeap Express, buyers can communicate and post messages to an event wall. Wall posts are then directly posted to Facebook and Twitter.

“The best way for people to find out about events is when their friends tell them,” Stanchak says. “So what we want to do is help make it easier for people to share our events.”

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Philly Startup Leader Founder Blake Jennelle writes long-form about Washington D.C.’s “startup soul,” after taking in the scene there earlier this month. There’s a lot for Philly to learn from it’s neighbor to the south, Jennelle says, and we’ve got much in common. Like Philly, growth comes from the grassroots, but D.C. lacks a central community of entrepreneurs. And our brethren know Philadelphia. “The reputation of [Philly's] creative communities is strong,” he writes.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Mobile payment platform XIPWIRE is helping support the open source community by seeking donations for several nonprofit organizations, according to a blog post. Users can donate to the Apache Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, GNOME foundation and others. The company is also working with Cupcakes4Haiti, a charitable bake drive led by Temple University student Seth Heirzenrater.

Pittsburgh entrepreneur and self-described city cheerleader Michael Langley writes about his business reasons for wanting to stay in the Iron City. “Out next renaissance is rooted in research and development in advanced materials, life sciences, information technologies and energy … and business-services sector.”

GIVE A GLANCE

DreamIt-backed location-based mobile game platform SCVNGR, which graduated the incubator in 2008, has grown to over 350 corporate customers and $1 million in revenues in 2009. We wanna know why this group moved to Boston (aside from that Harvard partnership).

TicketLeap has redesigned its Web site, implementing a cleaner interface, multiple event categories, and advanced search functionality.

ProtoSphere is showing off features in its upcoming 1.4 release, which will allow live presentations for 250 virtual attendees, and which will bring Windows 7, IE8 and Firefox 3 support.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Wilmington, Del.-based Web marketing and design firm the Archer Group is using new-age computer-user tracking systems to see what you’re looking at. That’s the same Delaware company that recently helped Wawa brand its products on Facebook.

As the Web has matured and its users have too, the group’s “Eye-tracking Usability Lab” is meant to give its designers insight into how computer users, with years of Internet-browsing behind them, are digesting the Web today, as Delaware Online reported. [Full Disclosure: Sean Blanda loves Delaware].

It’s what you’ve heard before: freaky pinpoint infrared sensors that follow eye movements as they bounce from whatever the tester spots. Get the deets and what Archer is doing with the work at the full story.

After the jump, Bussiness Week reports that one of one of our own seed-stage investment firms is saving venture capital, the city’s emergency radio system with Motorola isn’t “reliable” and seven other tech stories you need to read — including our best read story of the week.

In order of importance for your ease:

• BussinessWeek reports on seed-stage investors that are helping entrepreneurs at a time when large venture capital firms are pulling back. Reporter Spencer Ante uses FirstRound Capital, a West Conshohocken-based example, as his lede, even if only the firm’s West Coast offices are mentioned. Burned.
• PhillyTechNews reports that three companies in our region were named to the Red Herring 100 North America. Not a one of ‘em is from Philly proper though.
• As tweeted:
  that BFTP of Northeastern Pa. also announce their investment of nearly $600,000 in nine companies in the Lehigh Valley.
• The Inquirer reports that the Nutter administration is pushing for an upgrade of the city’s emergency radio system. The $35 million bolstering of the city’s fire and police network would be operational by 2011 and would retain Motorola as the vendor but would add — and we’re not kidding about this — “reliability.” Which seems like a strange upgrade because you’d think “reliability” would be a standard for an emergency radio system, but, you know, this is Philly, boys and girls.
• John George of the Philadelphia Business Journal writes a fine profile of Geoff Meyerson, who co-founded West Conshohocken-based Locust Walk Partner, which “provides advisory services to life sciences companies in areas such as product licensing, financing and pipeline prioritization.”
• PBJ also reports that Andrew Altman, the Philly-bred city commerce director who Michael Nutter courted from a government job in D.C., has bolted for a gig leading London’s development for the 2012 Olympics. No successor has been named or what will happen to his $170K salary.
• Knowledge@Wharton is celebrating 10 years of doling out information by showing off its best read stories. Some interesting ones to peep.
• Wired’s Epicenter blog reports that IT employment has shrunk nationally for the fifth consecutive month, though recruiters remain hopeful an end is in sight.

• Our Most Trafficked Story of the Week: South Philly�s Stoya: adult film it girl on DOS, social media and leaving Philadelphia

Every Friday morning we make sure you didn�t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

TicketLeap saved bicycle racing in Philadelphia.

Or at least the Center City-based event-planning ticketing service provider was one of many partners that helped make sure the 25th annual Philadelphia Cycling Championship was possible, even after a city budget hole left the international race short $500,000.

The company doubled their ticketing of VIP seating with merchandising and donation soliciting to help bring cash to the June 7th race, famed for its chase of the “Manayunk Wall”

While they were saving racing, TicketLeap was also introducing Anywhere, which just might be the first product allowing users to create a virtual box office out of an Internet-enabled computer.

The product is aimed at event organizers of any size, helping them handle online ticket sales on the phone, at a venue door or otherwise.

Watch a demo below

The cloud-based software includes bar code scanning, priority seating and other venue customization. The company, whose services are used by more than 8,000 venues and organizers nationwide, charges a fee for each ticket sold. No software, hardware or contracts are required, and setup is free and available online.

“It’s only a matter of time before every ticket you buy comes from web-based ticketing software like this,” TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak said in a press release. “There’s really no comparison when it comes to cost, convenience and flexibility.”

And who wouldn’t use a ticketing service that supports athelticism and your right to scream at competitive bicyclists with a beer in your hand at nine a.m.?

TicketLeap has other regional users, including the city’s annual video game expo and the Philadelphia Force — yes, that’s right, your hometown professional women’s softball team, says company spokesman Blake Jennelle.

Get your tickets while you can.