Dec
15

A Cool Idea, Born out of Social Media

by Feedback

Here in Richmond, the social community is all a-Twitter (see what we did there?) with buzz about the new Richmond Type Map. Local graphic designer Carrie Fleck spent more than 100 hours creating a map of our great city using nothing but letters.

A map of Richmond, made entirely from type.

She may have never done it, though, were it not for the online community: A Richmond Twitter user found a link to a typographic map of Chicago made by a company called Axis Maps, then shared it with the Richmond Twittersphere. Then the gauntlet was laid down: “Can someone make this for Richmond?”

Fleck saw the tweets and desire for Richmonders to have their own version. “I thought I’d give it a shot,” she said. The project has since received immense support from the local online community and regional advertising industry insiders.

The maps (which contain 533 layers of type for you design nerds) went on sale this week at www.RichmondTypeMap.com. They’re $40, with $5 going to local nonprofit group Art 180 for each print sold before Christmas. They are going fast.

“It was a huge undertaking and the attention to detail was enough to drive me insane,” Fleck said. “But I am super proud of how this turned out, and hope Richmonders feel the same way.”

At Feedback, we definitely do. We’ve already ordered a half dozen.

-Jeff (@jephkelley)

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Dec
05

The New Facebook Profile: Updated Look & Some New Friends

by Feedback

Tonight Facebook will debut an entirely new Facebook Profile during an interview on 60 Minutes (which explains why Facebook was weirdly encouraging all Facebook users to watch the show late in the week).

The update itself is a welcome overhaul of the look of the basic profile, drawing the viewer into a more image-related experience (such as your favorite authors rendered as their Page icons rather than words – thankfully you can edit the priority of the images shown now, not just a random sample of “Liked” elements as before).

It also brings a few new tricks – or at least tricks new to Facebook that might remind you of a few other social sites. One such feature: “Highlighting” your top connections. As they say themselves:

Relationships with close friends can be just as important as family. Now you can highlight family members and the other key people in your life, like your best friends or coworkers — all right on your profile.

Sounds an awful lot like MySpace’s Top 8, eh? I can imagine the arguments already as we shuffle our best friends, kids, spouses and drinking buddies in a furious drive to avoid conflicts…

This “highlighting” comes from a tweak to the Friends List feature, allowing you to share your Friend Lists more like Twitter Lists. This makes your curated personal lists to potentially become a way for you to find similar interests, people, etc. (The new Facebook List features are well profiled at the blog Stayi N’ Alive.) Of course, you can never share your Lists and there’s a bevy of privacy controls to go with the new options.

There are lost of other smaller changes. My particular favorite is the “Projects” you can add under your employers – drawing attention to what you’ve worked on and who with, giving an interesting kind of due and credit to a particular idea or execution.

To see the new features and immediately update your own profile, visit: http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/

See the Facebook video on the changes here:

And to see the 60 Minutes Interview, see the two parts embedded here at Business Insider with some comentary on how Zuck came across.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

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Dec
03

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (12/03/10)

by Feedback

Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools and trends? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the internets for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:


Gowalla 3.Whoa!

Check-in at one of the biggest location based services, check-in at them all? The newest version of Gowalla’s iPhone app was released on Thursday, and had some pretty big updates. Gowalla has unified check-ins, allowing users to check-in to Facebook Places, Tumblr, Twitter, and competitor Foursquare when they check-in to Gowalla. Download Gowalla 3.0 here.

Rumor Alert: Google to Buy Groupon?

Rumor has it that Google may buy Groupon for a whopping $6 billion dollars. Groupon is rapidly growing in popularity, and is set to exceed $500 million dollars in revenue this year. Sources say that Google wants to make this purchase to extend their online dominance through local advertising dollars, and to fend off competition like Facebook, who recently announced their own deal service.

One Hangover (Badge), Coming Right Up:

Badges! Foursquare announced new badges this week, including Dog’s Best Friend (“for frequenting dog parks”), Great Outdoors (“for getting out to parks to breathe in some fresh air”), Swimmies (“for the aquatic minded”), 9 to 5 (“for those of us in the weekly grind”), Hangover (“we’re not encouraging hangovers, but are happy to salute people who keep on trucking!”), and Ski Bum (“to commemorate your trips up the mountain”).

Social Networking for Social Good:

This week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes officially launched Jumo, a social activism social network. You can connect with Jumo via Facebook connect, and then select to follow any of the 3,500 charity organizations (in 200 issue areas) you support.

Netflix To Offer More Streaming Options:

Recently, Netflix began offering a streaming-only subscription, and beginning in 2011, we may have more instant options. This week, Netflix announced a deal with FilmDistrict that will allow first run movies to be streamed. The New York Post also reported that Netflix is in talks with production studios, possibly paying upwards of $100,000 per episode for first-run TV content.

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Nov
19

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (11/19/10)

by Feedback

Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:

Log in to MySpace with Facebook:

MySpace and Facebook held a joint press conference on Thursday, where they announced that you can now log in to MySpace with Facebook. Being called “Mashup with Facebook,” your Facebook likes and interests will be automatically pulled into your MySpace account, making it easier to connect with entertainers. MySpace is also planning to integrate Facebook’s like button on their social network.

The Beatles Hit iTunes:

If you’re a Beatles fan, you may be excited to hear that Apple announced this week that you can finally purchase Beatles songs and albums on iTunes. Songs cost 1.29 a pop. Visit iTunes to purchase.

Twitter Analytics:

Twitter is testing an analytics tool, which is rumored to debut by the end of 2010. As Mashable reports,

“With Twitter Analytics, users will be able to see a plethora of data about their account; for example, information about which tweets are most successful, which tweets caused people to unfollow, and who the most influential users are that reply and retweet their messages.”

Cool!

Boutiques.com:

Google has introduced a new way to shop this week, debuting boutiques.com. This is a personalized shopping experience, which uses computer vision and machine learning technology to analyze your taste and match to clothing you can purchase. As of now, it is only available for women’s clothing, and is only available in the U.S. and in Canada.

Facebook’s Messaging System:

There are over 4 billion Facebook messages sent each day, which is one of the reasons that this week, Facebook announced a new messaging system. The new messaging system offers seamless messaging, cross-platform conversation history and the social inbox. This is not email according to Zuckerberg, who explained, “Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key.” The system will be rolled out slowly in the next few months.

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Oct
20

Will Facebook Die?

by Feedback

Note: This is the first of many posts by the newest Feedbacker, Jeff Kelley.

Will Facebook die? It’s a question I get a lot. Perhaps because I’m a blogger and have a Twitter account and know cool techy tricks like how to turn off Google SafeSearch and I work for a company that makes its living doing work online, and therefore I’m supposed to know these things. Quite honestly, you’d be better off asking me if I’d one day like to own a grenade launcher, as I could give you a definitive answer: “Absolutely.”

Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Available on the iPhone.

But I do not possess such a weapon yet, and regarding Facebook’s death, all I have is an opinion. And my opinion is that Facebook will go away, and probably sometime in the next few years. But what will be left behind are the communities, concepts and connections that Facebook has created (all FarmVille farms will perish, though, hopefully by plague).

The problem for Facebook is that its best features – the features that are most widely used – are being copied and made better by other developers. You can go to places besides Facebook to talk to old friends, meet new ones, find upcoming events, discover new links, look at photos of folks, and – most importantly – stalk people you think are attractive. You just have to use multiple services to do it. Facebook is really the only place that people are going to do all that stuff in one place.

Tumblr, which many people don't realize has a very social backend.

We are fast approaching an era when people will be able to customize their online experience with a variety of social networking services instead of just one big one. To put it one way: You can shop at Walmart for everything, or take an extra few minutes and visit a bunch of cooler, smaller shops.

At Feedback, we’re already seeing signs of Facebook’s great unraveling. Know when bands become “too” popular? Even the original fans start to pull away. We’re looking at you, Dave Matthews Band.

If you cut past the movie reviews and privacy issues and research what’s being said about Facebook on a grassroots level, you’ll hear from serious web users who balk at Facebook for being too mainstream. That there are too many people on it. That there are an array of better services to use to network online. That there’s too much noise on Facebook. Complaints about grammar. About too much information. And enough with the baby pictures or photos of that giant new engagement ring.

RSVPhere is a cool events site that merges hard copy invites with the online world. It's also Richmond based.

Many people, while still keeping their Facebook accounts as a sort of abandoned online home (think MySpace three years ago), are turning to less-mainstream networking services such as Twitter, Tumblr or a mix of other apps and tools found on iPhones or Droids or BlackBerrys. Games made popular on Facebook because of the social aspects can now also be played on increasingly faster and better mobile devices, and with other people. Facebook’s Events feature (which has largely become an annoyance: “Come to my DJ party 12 states away!”) are made more personal and less obnoxious through Eventbrite or RSVPHere.com, the latter of which essentially allows you to create, for free, a little microblog for your event. People can RSVP through the site, and events stay a bit more private than they would on Facebook. Plus, it’s easy to use.

Paper.li turns links from your Twitter feed into a newspaper/blog-like format

You can share links and articles through a cool newspaper-like service called Paper.Li. A neat photo-sharing app for iPhone called Instagram is basically Twitter with pictures. Tumblr is the latest social media media darling. You can even add the location where you took the photo.

There are hundreds of these types of services. Many will fail. Some will not. And those are the ones that you will combine together as you desire, eventually bringing Facebook to its knees. That sentence was way too overly dramatic.

Facebook is already failing in some of its offerings. It may be too soon to call its Places location feature a dud, but Foursquare is doing a much better job of alerting burglars to empty homes.

You've probably gotten an invite from here before. of these invites before.

Now, enough hate on Facebook. Let’s be real: It’s a great thing. It’s fun. It has enormous use in the business world. It connects people to companies and brands to the masses. It’s a lead generator for everything to music to movies to news articles or those neat-o things on the Internet. Facebook has a long time to go before it’s gone, even by technology standards.

Whether Facebook is here to stay depends on how well it can respond to the growing market of individual services that can do the same things it does, and how people will use those services to create their own experiences. If that’s the case, Facebook may be to social media to what the Model-T was for the automobile.

-Jeff (@jeffkelleyrva, or @jephkelley for the lighter side)

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Sep
03

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (09/03/10)

by Feedback

Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:

Ping:

Apple had a big event on Wednesday, where they introduced Ping, a social network for music lovers. Ping allows you to follow friends and artists, have custom music recommendations based on your followers, and share concert details. You can access Ping by downloading iTunes 10, going into the iTunes store, and activating Ping. Read our blog ‘Social Network, Meet iTunes‘ to find out more.

Twitter Usage Up:

Twitter usage went up 33% from May to August. In August, Twitter processed over 2.64 billion Tweets. Twitter now has over 145 million registered users, and activity has more than doubled this year.

Chrome 6:

For Chrome’s two-year anniversary, they are introducing Google Chrome Version Six. Mashable describes it as “The Modern Browser,” Chrome 6 does indeed boast a number of improvements, but as with previous updates, the focus remains on speed and simplicity.” Download it here: http://www.google.com/chrome

If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em?:

Once the leading social network, MySpace is now syncing up with Facebook. This week, MySpace announced that users can now sync status updates with Facebook. You can also sync status updates with Twitter. Even with this new development, with the introduction of Ping, Myspace has to wonder whether their last niche, music, will be compromised.

Spot Trot:

I am including a local social media pick this week  – this one derives from Richmond, Virginia. There are plenty of social media apps and tools being developed in Richmond, one of which is Spot Trot.  Created by Joel Erb, Spot Trot has a big music twist to it. The app offers a customized mobile platform to artists, which they build for their fans. Clients include Dave Matthews Band and Tim McGraw. Partners include Live Nation and Apple. You can follow them on Twitter at @spottrot.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Aug
16

A Note About MOG

by Feedback

MOG introduces the new MOG Music Network (announcement here). Bravo, MOG for not just redefining a music network online, but also showcasing CONTENT and writing. This is an important point many people forget in social media: it’s about content, comment and quality crowds. Better still if you can crowd-source, curate and promote great writing about your industry. A great lesson, writ large for MOG who has been doing interesting and relevant things for fans for years now.

For example, MOG began in June of 2005 but really hit its stride a year later as an actual social network built on fans and music. My first contact with it was a year later, at Bonnaroo, after which I started a profile and dutifully used the iTunes plug-in that took glimpses of my catalog of songs and my play counts and suggested people with similar interests, artists I didn’t have and critical and fan thought I might like. Instead of “follow” or “like” (now ubiquitous terms for socializing) MOG used a much more forceful and meaningful term for those you cared to read: “Trusted.” If someone visited my profile page, perhaps drawn by a blog post, my music list or any other number of custom lists I had created (at one point detailing all of the tour t-shirts I owned) than they would also see a list of the writer/music-blogger (“MOG’ers”) that I trusted. It was interesting to see how slavish our re-posting was between us. It really was about trust. I discovered more new music in my first year of using MOG than I had at nearly any other point in my life. And it was all music I would come to LOVE. I discovered Arcade Fire, NIN spinoff projects and more.

It was pretty incredible and way before it’s time. When I saw Twitter’s “Who To Follow” space debut earlier this month I thought it was a nice addition but part of me had to laugh– MOG had been doing that for four years and far more accurately.

So cheers to MOG, who may have lost me as a regular contributor (my profile is a bit of a misshapen ghost-town of 2007-8) but gained me as a fan of their other efforts such as their Pandora-like music service (app and all) and now their aggregation of the best music writing on the web.

We here at Feedback love music AND social media. It’s nice when we can get the chocolate in our peanut butter.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

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Aug
13

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (08/13/10)

by Feedback

Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:

The Official Tweet Button:

Third-party Twitter-sharing tools now have their own official competition. This week, Twitter launched an official tweet button, which lets you easily share links from the website you’re on directly with Twitter. Just as we’ve grown to expect with other tweet sharing services – when you click the tweet button, a pre-populated box including brief text and a shortened link, will appear. Something different: Once posted, Twitter may recommend accounts for you to follow based on the news story you shared (such as the site account and reporter of the article you shared.)

MySpace’s Makeover:

MySpace has completely redesigned their homepage – & surprise! It looks similar to Facebook. A sneak peak was given to some users this week, and will be available to all MySpace users on August 16th. Changes include a stream (aka newsfeed), friend recommendations, birthday reminders, & “My stuff” (events, photos, videos, etc.). Too little too late?

Minor Changes To FourSquare:

Small changes to Foursquare this week include:

  • Superusers, mayors and venue owners can now see the location of recent checkins and enter an exact latitude and longitude to move a pin to it’s exact location.
  • Tips now include an option to add a link directly from the venue page.
  • Privacy wise, if you aren’t sharing your location, you can have the added comfort of making sure – the “Current Location” link now has a bar explaining that your location is not being shared.

Bye Bye Facebook Page Sidebars:

Changes are coming to Facebook Pages. If you are an admin of a Page, you may have even been prompted to review your Facebook Pages to make any edits before the new layout arrives. This new layout will not include sidebar boxes, and will have narrower tabs. The change is set to occur on August 23, 2010, with the goal of having cleaner, easier to navigate pages.

Bonus Reading: Can Google Get Social Networking Right?

My final pick is about an article I read this week called Can Google Get Social Networking Right? It is about Google’s innate want to create a social network and compete with the likes of Facebook. They want this in part because they want to remain the authority on online search, and social networks are collecting commercially valuable data that Google cannot access. But this article delves into the ‘can they do it’? They have successful social tools such as YouTube. They’ve had unsuccessful attempts such as Wave and Buzz. But, with the recent purchase of Slide, and their investment in Zynga, one can only wonder if they are attempting, and if they will succeed at creating a social network. Just something to think about.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Jun
17

They’re Back!

by Feedback

The Feedback Mobile Lab has returned (finally!) from Bonnaroo.  Here at HQ, we continued to monitor Twitter feeds for ‘Roo, but those in the field have returned with video treats and observations about social media use at the festival.

Notes from the Home Front

When you think of Bonnaroo what pops into your head? Certainly not Brazil! Believe it or not, the Manchester festival seems to be quite popular in this South American country as demonstrated by the surprising number of tweets in Portuguese.

On Friday the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) posted an article entitled, “PR’s Role in Building Bonnaroo,” highlighting PR’s role in the evolution of the festival. In essence, the PRSA attempts to take credit for Bonnaroo’s success, and seems to discredit the festivals original crowd and perceived purpose.  We found it comical that the article was tweeted almost a week after its posting, used poor grammar, and came out when Bonnaroo attendance was low in comparison with recent years.

Saturday afternoon’s World Cup match between the United States and England was expected to be a popular topic among festival tweeters. However, surprisingly few tweets circulated around the world’s most popular sporting event over the weekend.  Much to our dismay, Bonnaroo was a little late starting the game’s live video stream, causing ‘Roo-goers to miss the opening ceremony.

The most common themes of the weekend centered around the heat and the bands.  Extreme temperatures caused tweeters to vocalize their discontent, but who could blame them? On Friday, Nashville was reported to have a heat index of 100!   ‘Roo goers, likewise, expressed their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with band performances on Twitter.  Reviews posted by Spin! and Rolling Stone magazines were frequently linked; however, it is indescernable if this was by those at ‘Roo or those at home living vicariously through the opinion of others. Our hearts were captured by The New York Times’ “4 Word Review” – short, sweet, and simple.

Another favorite of ‘Roo fans was Aziz Ansari’s photo with Beyonce and JayZ (http://bit.ly/d5005G) is staggering with 100 retweets.

Notes from the Field

In a previous post (Feedback’s Off To Bonnaroo 2010), we mentioned some of the apps the Feedback team was would be testing in the field.  Well test they did! Here are some of their findings.

The biggest issue at the festival, by unanimous vote, was cell and wi-fi service. According to Dean (@dbrowell), Bonnaroo’s problem is that it has an end customer that is savvier than they are.  They need the technology to accommodate them.  In spite of this, though, our field agents were able to get a pretty good idea of how some of these apps worked.

The team agreed that the official Bonnaroo app, while an improvement from last year, still has a few kinks to work out.  The schedule feature worked well, but Road Trip was virtually useless.  Bonnaroo radio’s purchase feature, while a good idea, was ineffective.  This function could greatly benefit bands, provided Bonnaroo and Apple can get it operating next year.

In the eyes of soccer fan Jeff (@ideaman), the FIFA app worked very well.  A banner for MobiTV ran across the top, and for $9.00 he was able to sign up for the service and watch live matches streamed to his iPhone.

Hot Potato, while a cool app, did not achieve the level of adoption we had hoped for.  It seems we were a bit ahead of the curve on that one though, because today an updated and much more efficient version of the app is available. Another new app, FriendMapper, was interesting, but likewise had glitches.  Friends have to be logged in for it to work properly because it doesn’t automatically find and geotag you.  The team believes that partnering with events or vendors would likely help remedy this issue and make the app more user friendly.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for observations from the field.  Feedbackers at Bonnaroo have seen some things no man should see.  Stay tuned for future updates and detailed reports on the utilization and success of social media at Bonnaroo.

Before we part, we at Feedback would like to send our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Matt Sloan.  His untimely death was a shock and tragedy.  May his memory rock on.

— Feedback Intern Brittney Trimmer (@bntrim). Video montage edited by Feedback Intern Brad Carr (@bcarr).

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Jun
10

Observations from the Homefront — The Road to ‘Roo as seen from afar

by Feedback

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is upon us once again and Feedback is taking all this fun quite seriously!  While our Field Team has made the 600-mile trek and set up camp for four days of entertaining acts, innovative art and a ton of fun, the crew at HQ is glued to the Internet, hoping to gain whatever insights we may from ‘Roo-goers interacting online.  Having monitored Twitter and Facebook for the past week to measure the ramping up of excitement for the event, we’ve begun to notice some interesting trends and the bands are just now starting to play!  Check in with Feedback daily for our latest observations from home base, as well as highlights and experiences from our Field Team.

Without further ado, here’s what we’ve seen so far…

It’s Time for ‘Roo!

The majority of the early posts have been people counting down the hours, expressing excitement for their trip to Bonnaroo or, in some cases, scrambling to find or get rid of extra tickets.  On Thursday, however, the clamor changed.  Many commented on leaving for the festival and their specific journey, while others lamented, wishing they were going to be partaking in the fun.  While discussions about traffic were few and far between on Wednesday, come Thursday, they were everywhere! In fact, complaints about traffic and waiting in lines dominated the conversation today.

@Bonnaroo vs. #Bonnaroo

In our early monitoring of the Bonnaroo feeds on Twitter, we discovered that most people in the discussion were using the @bonnaroo account tag, as opposed to the #bonnaroo tag, by a large margin.  As the festival’s start has arrived, this trend has reversed itself.  As the overall volume of tweets continues to ramp up, we are seeing twice as many posts tagged #bonnaroo as @bonnaroo.  It is worth noting that over 55% of tweets that reference Bonnaroo use neither tag.  We will continue monitoring this trend, to watch and see how Twitter customs and usage patterns develop among Roo-goers.

Guides

Numerous tweets have arisen with embedded links to personal and/or professional guides on how to survive, what to pack, what to wear, and who to listen to at Bonnaroo.  Some of our favorites include Rolling Stone Magazine’s Bonnaroo 2010 Essential Sets, eMusic’s An eMusic’s Guide to Bonnaroo 2010, and Owl and Bear’s Guide to Bonnaroo.

Friendly Advice and Well Wishes

In line with helpful guides, we’ve noticed a lot of Twitter and Facebook users wishing ‘Roo-goers a safe and fun trip, while also offering some seemingly obvious advice: Don’t forget the sunscreen and bottled water!

The ‘Roo Rumor Mill –Manchester Going Gaga?

Thursday afternoon, a rumor began circulating that pop diva du jour, Lady Gaga, will be at Bonnaroo. No distinction was made as to whether or not she will be in attendance or performing; however, that was of little importance.  Tweeters went crazy posting comments and questions about the alleged coming of Gaga.  As of this posting, the rumor has been neither confirmed nor denied.  Hopefully, the thousands of merrymakers won’t lose their collective minds in anticipation.

Dirty, Stinky Hippies?

It is apparently common knowledge that hippies love music festivals.  Perhaps it’s the limited access to showers, or maybe the ample amounts of vegan-friendly food?  We kid because we love, but, for many, this ‘element’ is an unwelcome development.  As you might imagine, the terms “dirty hippies” and “smelly hippies” have been circulating on social media sites Twitter and Facebook.  People are preparing for the invasion and warning their brethren of what to expect.  Here are some notable “anti-hippy” comments:

  • @mitchholland1 camping with dirty hippies and watching acts like dave matthews band and weezer..and people ask why ive never been to bonnaroo
  • @Greg Gookin Just saw 2 hippies getting their car searched on the interstate. No Bonnaroo for you, dirty hippies. Their fashion crimes were far more egregious than any controlled substances they no doubt possessed
  • @Anonymous I smell hippies
  • @Israel Anthem Excited for Bonnaroo. Scared of the heat and 26% of Hippies.

When reached for comment, Joe Hippie said, “Dude, we were here first.”  Touché.

‘Roo Inspired Grub

Jiffy Burger’s Bonnaroo Burger and Ben & Jerry’s Bonnaroo Buzz have been making the rounds among the masses.  Mouths are surely watering over these festival-inspired foods!  We suggest you check them out if you’re in Manchester or near a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop!

Experiencing Bonnaroo at Home

Numerous tweets and posts have made mention of the free Bonnaroo mix cds from Spin! Magazine and NPR online.  If you’re stuck at home, depressed that you’re missing out or just looking for a partial ‘Roo experience, they’re definitely worth downloading. Similarly, for those who prefer to watch from afar, YouTube’s Bonnaroo channel and NPR’s live streaming site have been linked in numerous posts.

KGB Spam?

Text message and online answer service KGB took advantage of the festival’s buzz by spamming Twitter users with messages telling users to tweet Bonnaroo to 542542 for special perks.  We’re all for free stuff and we’re sure your average ‘Roo-goer is, too.  That said, the approach was a bit over the top and felt like the feed was being bombarded.  Some tweeters we know (@thomasmcdonald) have un-followed people for less!

Everybody Loves the AP

Yesterday, the Associated Press posted a story entitled, “Bonnaroo Spreads the Festival Experience Online.” Everyone (seriously, everyone!), tweeted a link to this article.  While it’s difficult to track an exact number due to the variety of sites syndicating the piece, it’s popularity was undeniable.  In crude terms, it rehashes the YouTube, Fuse and NPR streaming that will be happening this year and makes the claim that, due to this online presence, attendance is no longer necessary to enjoy the Bonnaroo effect.  Clearly, we disagree, but it will be interesting to see whether such a message has validity.  Other festivals like the Jazz Festival and Coachella will surely be watching as well.  Is this a glimpse into the future of festivals and concerts in general?  Perhaps things are starting to look like they did in Demolition Man, with Bonnaroo offering itself up as a formaldehyde-soaked piglet to be dissected by the masses.  Here at Feedback, we have our scalpels ready.

That’s our wrap-up for today!  As we said before, be sure to check back with us for daily Bonnaroo-related content  from Feedback HQ, as well as highlights and experiences from our Field Team in Manchester, not to mention all the latest news from the world of social media and beyond!

— Feedbacker Thomas McDonald (@thomasmcdonald) and Intern Brittney Trimmer (@bntrim)

Keep up with us on our Feedback Facebook page and follow @feedbackagency for the latest on Twitter!

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