Nearly 100,000 fans gathered to watch Bono and the legendary rock band U2 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California last night. The concert made history in two regards; largest attendance ever at a Rose Bowl concert gathering and the first time that YouTube streamed an entire concert live. The latter is what I really want to highlight here, because it was utterly magnificent. Sound and visual was stunning from this (Time Warner Roadrunner high speed) customer's perspective. The option for either full screen or partial screen with a YouTube and Twitter comment section was available. This YouTube live stream was available in 16 countries including the US, UK, Canada, Japan and various South American venues. Watching the concert live with continuous comments from joyous fans around the world was truly an uplifting moment. If you missed the "live" version, YouTube will re-stream the entire concert on their page sometime today.Combined with the jaw dropping 360 degree set (pictured) 
which was patterned after the "Spider" theme building at the Los Angeles airport, the entire event felt like something out of a Sci-Fi movie. I also spent most of the concert texting friends and family, who were either at the Rose Bowl or watching it on YouTube, as well as adding my status updates about the whole thing to Facebook continuously. It was one big virtual concert blast for me.It will be very interesting to see what kind of an impact this web event had in terms of grabbing eyeballs from Sunday night television. Video content continues to migrate from one medium to the next, (or occupy both spaces simultaneously). The YouTube U2 concert was thrilling and its execution was smooth and seamless. I would expect to see more splashy live video events on the web soon, since this one was such an amazing success.
Oh...yeah. Bono and The Edge were phenomenal too. Here's a taste of the boys from Ireland performing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", while 100,000 adoring folks from Los Angeles sing along. Transcendent. Gorgeous.
1 comment:
I was there and it was an amazing event. Black-Eye Peas opened and they were terrific. U2 gave a two-hour plus performance which was outstanding, as was the furturistic rotating stage, lights and sound system. As far as getting people in and out of Rose Bowl was concerned - it was an EPIC FAILURE!!!
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