On Wednesday night, I attended the flash-mob hyped Jay-Z concert in Second Life on Pontiac's Motorati Island.
The set-up was sublime. Jay-Z would be performing on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and simulcasting the performance live in Second Life. In my mind, we would be watching Jay-Z's avatar hip-hopping around the stage, listening to the music AND simultaneously, people watching the Jimmy Kimmel show would be watching the SL concert i.e. two-feeds bouncing back and forth.
The reality was that Jay-Z performed in the street to thousands of fans (which meant his avatar was not even been watched, let alone controlled by him), Jimmy Kimmel barely mentioned SL and about 50 avatars (probably less when all was said and done) sat for almost 3 hours, bored out of their skulls as the feed was strictly controlled by lawyers who essentially only allowed 2 songs and about 30-second of show feed to come through to the Island.
For the first time since I started out in SL, I felt like a geek (in a bad way)
The whole experience was pretty underwhelming to say the least and the sad thing was that it was a tremendous opportunity for Pontiac to hit an integration home-run as they currently sponsor the music portion of the Jimmy Kimmel Show (Pontiac Soundstage)
I don't blame Pontiac (they can't be ecstatic about the publicity), their agency or even Millions Of Us (although Rodica...manage our expectations better next time please!), although I do want to wag my finger at the various lawyers and no doubt producers of Kimmel who were allegedly going backward and forward in terms of minimzing and controlling the actual show feed in-world. To me this was just sad because of what this could have been for Second Life, Pontiac, Jimmy Kimmel and most importantly, Jay-Z (I wonder if he even knew this was going on in the first place...)
Highlights for me was my being bounced for running up to (but not going ON) the stage and doing my lame dance, as well as the informal after-party on crayonville Island afterwards.
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