Coachella and the Use of Social Media

While everyone is still buzzing about the Tupac hologram feature at this year's Coachella music festival, I am intrigued with the way they have included social media as a large part of the festival. Unfortunately, I could not attend the festival but I noticed a lot of buzz about it via social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Instagram made it easy for concert promoters to promote the festival and made it easy and fun for concert attendees to chronicle their adventures.

One of the ways social media networks were used to connect fans to the festival was through Facebook. With over 30,000 attendees, Coachella used technology that allowed concertgoers the chance to automatically update their Facebook status at several checkpoints with where they were and what they were doing.  Coachella attendees were given wristbands that were implanted with radio-frequency identification or RFID.  RFID uses electromagnetic fields to transmit data from one object to another—mainly used for tracking and automatic identification.  The Coachella music festival already has a large following, but due to the launch of the wristbands, its online audience was increased tremendously.

The annual music and arts festival allowed concertgoers to create a phone app that customized their concert schedule as well as create memorabilia they could tag to sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Festival attendees also used social media sites Foursquare, GroupMe, Tumblr, You Tube and Pinterest to access information and share their experiences to friends near and far.

 Social media has allowed people a chance to go places they have never been before, see things they could never imagine, and hear things from around the world.  I can only imagine how much the live performance industry will change in the future.

What are your thoughts?