I went to Webster Hall last night to see Röyksopp.  The show was great, it sold out and then some.  Since you couldn’t move (or see) from the floor, I chose the view from the balcony.  There, I noticed something rather peculiar.  At any given moment there was a minimum of 30 people on the floor with their phones or cameras in the air, taking photographs and filming.  No exaggeration, 30+ people at all times.  This isn’t anything new.  People are doing this all the time.

I personally prefer to enjoy a show with my eyes and ears, not through the lens of my camera or phone.  I’ll snap a photo here and there if I have a good shot and the lighting is just right, but that’s about it.  I think it’s a bit weird that people choose to wave their phone in the air for the entire duration of a show, but it’s just going to get weirder.

There are two types of people who are taking pictures and video during shows: those who post immediately to Facebook or Twitter, and those who take their shots home, edit them, and upload them to a portfolio or SNS of choice.  I’d venture to say that the first category of uploaders is growing faster.  People want to be the first to break news, share with their friends, and be the premiere source of a live story.  Everyone wants their time to shine and provide that golden nugget of information.

There’s a lot of room for building applications around live events.  Hot Potato is doing this right now, enabling people to converse and create metadata on a specific topic in real-time.  There’s plenty of room to explore and there’s a definite need for these services.  We’ve seen successful executions of this such as CNN and Facebook Connect’s coverage of the Presidential Inauguration, but there are very few tools that empower individuals to create their own streams around an event of their choice.  Tumblr is especially useful for this (spend some time in the tag channels and you’ll be amazed by all the quality content you find).  I can take a video of a performance with my iPhone, tag it, and immediately post it to my blog in a matter of seconds.  More importantly, it’s immediately discoverable in everyone’s dashboard.  It’s the platforms which empower people to create and disseminate information they’re interested in that are most influential.