Woodstock had the flower generation and Coachella has the Facebook generation. Music festivals are synonymous with roughing it; whether it was mud-covered attendees making the most of a torrential downpour at Yasgur’s Farm in ’69 or tent cities littering the grounds of Lollapalooza in the ‘90’s, you’re expected to substitute comfort and convenience in exchange for cavorting and community. To an avid-social media fanatic this could be anxiety-attack inducing. Not to fear: this past weekend, Coachella had you covered.
So how do you survive a weekend in the desert without your social media accounts? In what strikes me as the most creative usage of social media this year, concert-goers at the Coachella music festival in Southern California were excited to learn that their entry-wristbands were connected to their Facebook profiles. In an attempt to curb ticket-counterfeiting, the brain trust at Coachella utilized unique barcodes to link wristband to user, complete with a registration process that involved syncing with the social media leviathan.
Even without the benefit of a smartphone or laptop, those in attendance could scan their barcodes at various locations on the grounds to check-in on Facebook and broadcast to their friends online that they’re seeing The Refused reunion and you aren’t (if I sound jealous it’s because I am.)
I often wonder if Zuckerberg and Co. even saw these types of innovations on the horizon. You cannot escape Facebook’s influence on everything; be it discounts for geo-tagging yourself at a local eatery or redeemable coupons on corporate accounts. Social media's expansive tentacles are everywhere; and with last weekend’s events in Indio, California, you can now post to your social media cloud without an electronic device. It really mind-blowing to consider the rapid evolution of Facebook, and entirely easy to get excited about the future.
-Carter Breazeale
PR/PR Public Relations
