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Nice Festival, Shame About The Website?
By Jamie | June 25, 2007
Like many music lovers, last Friday I was excited about the prospect of listening and watching some of my favourite bands (Chemical Brothers, Killers, Manics, Arctic Monkeys) perform at the Glastonbury Festival. Having been stung twice in the row by the weather in 1997 and 1998, I now prefer to watch from the comfort of my home, and how wise I was!
Glastonbury 1.0
Anyway I was listening to some of the coverage on Friday afternoon in the office via BBC 6 Music, and thought I bet the official website has embrace Web 2.0 (the two way web) big time. Let people attending the festival upload photos, video’s etc from their mobile. No, nothing like that, in fact the website itself wasn’t even updated. Okay there was a blog if you looked hard enough, but no media content. Anyway at least the BBC had a decent website and even dedicated Flickr account.
Glastonbury 2.0, next year?
The great thing about all this Web 2.0 stuff, they wouldn’t needed to hosted the media themselves. Simply used the RSS feeds from the various media providers. So next year Glastonbury Festival why not try integrate a few of these web services?
People could text their latest reviews of bands
Flickr
Upload their photo’s as it happens
http://www.flickr.com/search/glastonbury
YouTube
Upload their video’s.
http://www.youtube.com/glastonbury
What Would You Mud Mashup?
What would you integrate with live festival such as Glastonbury and its website?
Topics: Events, Marketing & Social Media, Web development & eCommerce |
June 26th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I’m not sure you really looked very hard at the section - yes there was a blog, but there was also:
Galleries: http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/glastonline.aspx?folder=65
Interviews:
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/glastonline.aspx?folder=63
Lively reviews:
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/glastonline.aspx?folder=61
Poetry from the Glastonbury poet in residence
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/glastonline.aspx?folder=99
Media
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/glastonline.aspx?folder=67
All of this was updated daily! It was also very prominant on the front page - you’ve even proved that with your screen grab (bizarre you should say otherwise)
Yes Web 2.0 is great, but if you haven’t noticed Glastonbury Festival is hardly a profit making get up with tons of money for technical web development - I think the editors did a freaking great job, and used masses of creative originality with the resources and volunteers available. (show me the bbcs glasto poet in residence!)
Finally… Everyone is uploading their own pics onto facebook/myspace/flickr/photobucket/bebo/etc etc etc - why does the Glasto website have to follow the crowd? More doesn’t always mean quality.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Helen - Sorry for the delay your comments got spammed, I think it didn’t like all the links.
My point was it doesn’t cost much to do and I reckon a web design company would do it for free. Very easily of pulled RSS feeds from Flickr/YouTube very very easily, the whole point of Web 2.0 it isn’t expensive.
There was no RSS feed on the main site so I disagree with you. When I looked at it on Friday I couldn’t find anything about the latest weather conditions etc. I wanted some fresh content.
September 26th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
You are absolutely right, and it is difficult to understand why we dont have all of this. The first website had many of these features in the year 2000 including mobile phone photo uploading. There is however a fear in the management of allowing the public to comment on their official website for fear that they will damage the reputation of the festival. They also feel that if all their tickets are going to sell out regardless of what they do, they don’t have to listen or be part of this revolution. It’s very frustrating for me. It’s why I got involved with creating a website for Glastonbury in the first place. There is however incredible resistance to these ideas. I live in hope that 1998 will be better, going to have another go at winning these arguments. Any help with winning it would be much appreciated.