Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebflyte/
I didn’t buy a Glastonbury ticket earlier. I pre-registered, I have available funds and I would have been happy to go.
The reason I didn’t was not the history of poor weather (although it did make last year miserable in places). It was not the quality of acts thus far announced (I only saw two acts on the main stage across the 4 days last year). In fact, Glastonbury itself had nothing to do with my decision.
I’m not going because few of my friends are. Community is a large part of the festival experience. And like online communities; for all the features and draws of the infrastructure there may be, attendance/usage ultimately comes down to the strength of the community. Conversations. Connections. Shared experiences.
And so like the great Myspace to Facebook migration of 2006, 2008 suggests a similar move away from Glastonbury to Latitude.
The complication (for me, at least) is that Latitude is the same weekend as Truck Festival, an event I usually attend. In that respect, festivals differ from online communities. Open Social is making inroads into data portability, but festival attendance is still very much a zero-sum game.
sk
Filed under: music, social software | Tagged: glastonbury, latitude, online communities, social networks |
Curiously Persistent 
I couldn’t recommend Latitude highly enough – was there last year, and will be again this time round. I’m just hoping there’s not going to be _too much_ of a migration from Glastonbury… although ticket numbers are limited, so it can only really get so big (was also sold out last year).
Hi Mario. Latitude certainly sounds like it will be good – the bands announced so far are great and I’ve only heard good things about the atmosphere. I can only hope my Truck/Latitude dilemma is resolved before tickets sell out.