Marc Brown's Buzznet

This weekend is the LA Weekly Detour Festival, which should be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to a concert in the middle of Downtown L.A.!  They haven't done anything like that in a real long time, Peeping Tom, Beck, Blackalicious, !!!, Basement Jaxx, Of Montreal, and a ton of other bands will be playing during the all day event.  I think tickets are still available, and Buzznet will be there in full-effect!

See you there, or look for the LA Weekly Detour photos and videos on Buzznet.

Wow, it is finally here, Snakes on a Plane drops one week from today.  Buzznet is going to be at the soundtrack release party with Cobra Starship on Wednesday August, 16th.  I can't wait to meet Gabe Saporta.   Buzznet will be there on the red carpet shooting photos of every fan that attends the event and we will also post video interviews. Shout out to Friends or Enemies, Pete Wentz and Gabe Saporta.

Also, everyone, go welcome Donetodeath to Buzznet.

We've been battling this for a while.

But, for the last week, users of the popular dating site, MySpace, have been unable to type in the phrase "buzznet.com"  which makes it impossible to add Buzznet's Syndication code, or embed a Buzznet photograph on your MySpace profile page.

For some reason Fox have been reaming us *specifically* -- any ideas why?

More on Craig Newmark's Blog and ValleyWag.

Another interesting ValleyWag entry about the origins of MySpace.

Getting ready to hit - DAY 2 - of the Coachella Music Festival  Buzznet is manning the Photo Upload tent, and we have nearly 800 photos from just the first day!  Lots of Buzznet users coming by to say hello, and many more being signed up. 

Today - the early crew is waiting for the Madonna Sound Check to finish, the entire area is roped off,  i think that the entire day will be a little surreal with such a major star commanding the dance tent.

I had a great time in Austin!!    Saw so many bands, and shot a few good live videos,  check out Metric and The Go Team and many other SXSW videos on the SXSW Buzzword page.  I am going through and adding more videos that i shot.

 

Coachella Gets Wired, Blogged

By Antony Bruno

March 18, 2006

Navigating more than 80 bands across five stages in two days amid 50,000 fans is a tall order for anyone attending the annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

Coachella organizer Goldenvoice envisions helping out with that dilemma. This year, a partnership with Buzznet will allow fans at one stage to use their mobile phones to access photos and fan feedback from concerts at other stages at the same time. The deal is part of a broader strategy for Goldenvoice and other promoters to use blogs to enhance fan interaction before, during and after the event.

"Music festivals are all about community," says Paul Tollett, founding partner of Goldenvoice, "and blogs are a great way for that community to express itself."

 Although the festival established a MySpace profile to interact with the 54-plus million registered users of the most popular blog site on the planet, Tollett wanted something unique to Coachella as well.

So he turned to Buzznet, a blog community of about 200,000 members that specializes in multimedia content like photos, videos and mobile. Buzznet built a Coachella-specific online community available only to festival attendees. Once fans buy a ticket, they will receive an e-mail with a unique registration code offering them access to the site.

Buzznet's Coachella community member profiles differ from those on MySpace. Questions skip personal details like marital status that are geared for hookups and instead focus on information specific to the event, such as listing their favorite Coachella artists or years attending the event.

Since fans travel from every state to attend Coachella, Tollett hopes they will post photos, videos and journals of their road trips for other members to follow. And all the site's content can be accessed via tagged links through MySpace and other blogs.

ARTIST BLOGS

Participating acts also are involved, including Hasidic reggae phenom Matisyahu, who is posting a mobile blog tour diary leading up to Coachella. Tollett says he would like eventually to convince participating acts to use the system already established by Goldenvoice rather than look for their own blogging opportunities.

As for the mobile element, anything posted to the Buzznet-powered service can also be accessed via any Internet-enabled mobile phone. This combination of real-time blogging and access-anywhere viewing is expected to bring an even greater element of interactivity to live events, some of which already embrace text-to-screen messaging.

But problems with wireless access may negatively affect the initial experience. Like many festivals, Coachella takes place in an area -- a desert -- where a strong signal is difficult to find.

Coachella aside, the wireless industry is keenly interested in these sorts of community-driven, multimedia sharing -- read: billable -- opportunities. Operator Sprint recently launched a new element to its Picture Mail service that enables subscribers to create an online community about any subject. And MySpace is working with youth-focused upstart operator Helio to create a mobile extension of its online community.

Meanwhile, Buzznet hopes to create more custom blog services for ongoing tours and other entertainment events. This is the company's first official partnership. At other events, including the annual South by Southwest Music and Media conference in Austin, the company has posted fliers encouraging attendees to upload pics to the Buzznet site for others to view.

Depending on how this first implementation works, Tollett says he may include a custom blog as a standard part of all Goldenvoice events, including Hootenanny and the New Orleans Jazz Fest, and is recommending the experience to other promoters for events like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo.

"It's a way to make the experience better," Tollett says. "I don't think it's going to help sell another ticket, but it will make you more invested in the event."

Some of you may have noticed that there are a few changes to the design of our main pages, Buzzword pages and of course user pages.  Steve, Anthony, Fiel, Kevin, Joe, Tony, and the rest of us at Buzznet have been working very hard on this new look and feel, it is just one of many changes that will be coming in the next few weeks.

We hope you like it, there are a lot of new features, and video is much more prominent for those users who have been posting video, and the tags/buzzwords area and tag-specific pages have been totally revamped.

There are many other changes too, and we are constantly tweaking, but i personally love the new look and feel, the new logo and all of the changes that we've made. 

Hope you feel the same. Go crazy and let me know what you think.
You'll see that some have already left comments on steve's page letting him know.

someday, i'll move my blog over to buzznet. We have all the features and none of the freakin comment spam that i get with my wordpress blog.  We have photos now... as you'll see below (meaning inside the post, not just linked to it).  BTW, you can resize the photo after uploading by selecting and grabbing the handles on the corners.

The Coachella Festival is just a couple months away, or something like that.

A killer lineup, and this year a cool new Coachella Community  and the Buzznet Coachella  gallery.  I can't wait!

Azalea and I had a great time over the holidays and did a lot of travel.  I met my birth-mom and half sister for the first time in San Antonio, TX.  Karen and David and Stephanie were gracious hosts and we had a fantastic time seeing the sights of town. Then we went off to see my parents in Phoenix AZ and had a Buzznet Meetup on Christmas night.

After that, we visited Azalea's mother out near Palm Springs and then took some downtime in Ensenada Mexico, at a wonderful little beach house.    Seems like we just got home yesterday, but of course we've been back for nearly a week now.  And still have thank you cards to write and more memories to share.

I hope everyone had a wonderful new year! What a trip 2005 was, I'm looking forward to 2006.

2005 has been a pretty crazy year all the way around.  Work has been very busy, as you may have noticed we've hired a number of employees at Buzznet, and have been adding many new features and doing lots of work on the site (new servers, new features, new employees, and many other good things to come in 2006).

But this post isn't about Buzznet.  It is much more personal. See, I have always known that I am adopted.  And in 2005 (35 years after I was born) we found my birth-mom.  It has been an emotional and amazing thing.

It has been wonderful emailing back and forth and seeing photos from her and my newly found sister here on Buzznet.  I've been made to feel completely welcome in this new family, and my parents (The Browns) have been totally amazing through all of this (as I would have always guessed).  They have been sending email detailing every year of my life to my birth-mom and I've learned a lot about myself  and my amazing parents (those first few years are a little fuzzy).

Wow.  So, Azalea and I are going to visit.  Although I was born in Los Angeles, my birth mother now lives in San Antonio, and my half-sister, Stephanie, also lives in Texas, and we are all spending Christmas together.  My new family, my best friend (Azalea) and me.    I don't think the emotions have totally hit me yet, and I don't think that it is possible to prepare for this visit (other than bringing some christmas gifts and things...) 

We leave on December 23rd.

So, since tony has started at Buzznet he has been updating the Buzzblog daily. Today he will announce the winner of the Buzznet Halloween contest.   

Speaking of contests, through the TSAR Fan contest,  Buzznet and TVT Records are giving away a sweet camera-phone and a bunch of import-only Tsar 7" singles.  I suggest you send in some entries (just add buzzword: "TSARFAN" to photos. 

Monday night we are hosting a Buzznet NYC party. For New York Buzznet members and bloggers alike, as part of the BlogOn Conference. Marc and Tony will be there, we will be celebrating Tony's first day of work (as Buzznet Community Manager) and the release of his new book Stiff. 

Lolita
Monday 10/17 9pm - 2am
266 Broome Street
Lower East Side

Tony's blog entry.

You may have noticed that we've added a few new features.

* Larger Images on user pages (500 pixels)
* New top bar for easier navigation
* New tools to customize the colors of your Buzznet page
* AJAX for user tools (Add Buzz, etc.)
* Modified Dashboard page
* Modified buzznet.com homepage with more user photos

Let us know what you think!

Many readers are submitting photos of the wildfires burning around Los Angeles and Ventura Counties on the Ventura County Star photoblog. In Friday's print version of the paper, they will run several of the Buzznet photos along side the staff photos. Yet another example of the excellent photos that you find on Buzznet.  Be sure to check the VC Star's homepage to see the pictures and read more about the fires.

Buzznet has partnered with the Houston Chronicle to create a gallery of readers photos and stories of Hurricane Rita. (chron.buzznet.com)

We hope that everyone stays safe during the storm. Share your experiences by emailing or uploading your photos.

Hey Buzznet Party People.
Yes, we know about the hit-counters.

Steve rebuilt the system, so it runs much better on our servers.  The counters are back,  and we are slowly adding the old numbers to the new numbers.

You are still popular.

Soon you will be back to where you were before. We are going through the millions of posts and merging the old information with the new.

Wendymay has just spent the last week as a volunteer for the Biloxi Red Cross.  Wendy is truly an angel and has many stories from her work in Mississippi.  Look at her  amazing photos and journal entries from her visit.  God bless her.

Buzznet wants to show our appreciation to Wendy and the many other volunteers who donated their time and energy to the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Our hearts go out to them all.

BTW, many people from the Southern Mississippi area are sharing their stories of Katrina on the SunHerald/Buzznet page.

You may have seen the MSNBC clip where the reporter asked Cheney if "he gets that a lot." The "heckler" is now selling off his videotape of his run-in with the Vice President and other footage of storm ravaged Gulfport, MS on Ebay.   (video is no longer for sale, obviously Ebay yanked it...).  The story can be found here.

Video of the incident is here on iFilm.

Also, this is a nearly unbelievable and quite scary  story of escaping from New Orleans.

UPDATE:  Some good links below from AXA13 in the comments below, and of course on his buzznet page.

Our thoughts are with the residents of New Orleans and the rest of the areas in the path of Hurricane Katrina.

Share your experience with Hurricane Katrina by posting journal entries and photos on Buzznet and adding the Buzzword: Hurricane Katrina.