YouTube Live brings online stars to the main stage
For years YouTube has been drawing attention to user-generated video and even has its own breed of emerging online video stars. Now the company is hosting some of its most prominent community members alongside music superstars onstage at the first ever YouTube Live event.
The company is billing the event as “part concert, part variety show and part party,” and will be hosted in the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco. If you can’t make it to San Francisco on November 22nd, YouTube will have teams of vloggers broadcasting from backstage.
YouTube Live has attracted music stars such as Soulja Boy, Joe Satriani, Will.I.Am, Katy Perry and Akon. The organizers aimed to find stars whose success is drawn at least partially from their online following. Many artists are starting to use the Web as a way to interact directly with their fans.
These artists will share the stage with popular YouTube characters like Fred Figglehorn, who hosts YouTube’s most popular weekly video show featuring his comical rants. Other acts include Jon M. Chu of the ACDC dance crew, another popular YouTube video crew.
YouTube has a page set up for the Live event at http://www.youtube.com/live that lists all of the acts. The sign-up form to request tickets has already been removed after overwhelming interest. There’s a countdown widget that you can use to keep track of the event’s start time on your own site.
The event is being sponsored by Lionsgate Films, Virgin America, Guitar Hero and Flip camcorders among others. It will also include a visit from the stars of the television series Mythbusters who will test out urban myths related to explosions on stage.
YouTube Live demonstrates a further blurring of the lines between Internet notoriety and mainstream media stardom. It also puts YouTube squarely in the middle of this leading-edge media transformation.
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