Shaker’s Club53 Socializes Facebook With Music
The concurrent launch of online hangout Shaker and video chat servce Airtime raises the possibility of a more face-to-face experience on the web. While Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning's Airtime is a video service for everybody (that's into that kind of thing), Shaker is a virtual world organized around music that's already working with BandPage and Live Nation.
Airtime may have gotten more press but Shaker's Club53 certainly captured its share of attention:
"Imagine Facebook profiles were avatars in a virtual venues, and had the option to listen to live music, chat with friends and buy a virtual drink for other patrons."
"It's taking part in a hot trend called social discovery—technology which helps you find new people, not just people you already know in real life."
"Visit Club 53 – A Virtual Hangout For Shut-Ins"
Shaker also caught attention last year when it won TechCrunch Disrupt's September conference. Club 53, the current venue at atshaker.com, is the first North American site:
"and has a focus on live music. Like an actual music venue, it only opens in the evening. When entering the virtual club space, there is music playing, and users can control the volume, mute, or look up the artist’s info, which is taken from their Facebook page."
Logins and user id also rely on Facebook so the Club 53 experiences relies quite a bit on the Facebook social graph. The weekend launch included the live involvement of Far East Movement. BandPage and Live Nation are launch partners.
See Digital Trends for a nice review of launch events, in particular, the confusion created by comparison with Turntable.fm leading to disappointment that participants can't dj within Club 53. Also worth checking for a look at some bigger issues such as monetization.
There will clearly be music marketing opportunities at Club 53 and most likely at future Shaker digital venues though they may be constrained by the limits of the environment. Definitely worth keeping an eye on even if it's not initially your kind of virtual scene.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business Changes and about dance at All World Dance: News. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
