Instead of wriggling your way through a crowd of people to achieve the perfect view of First Aid Kit at Chicago music festival Lollapalooza, you're spending your Saturday sprawled on your couch at home.
That doesn't need to stop you from getting in on the action, though.
Thanks to Facebook's widespread roll out of remotely-accessible "Place Tips," you can still see photos, posts, and the line-up from the music festival even if you or your friends aren't there.
"This is the first time Place Tips will be implemented for an event and until now, Place Tips have only been available when you’re at a particular place," a company spokesperson said in an email. "During Lollapalooza, fans around the U.S. will be able to browse Lollapalooza Place Tips to see posts and photos from their friends who are there and live, trending content from the festival."
You should see a "Place Tips" info box when you fire up your Facebook app. Press it to start scrolling through Lolla-related content:
More striking than the umpteenth screaming-fans photo is the fact that Facebook is throwing itself into the same live-events space that Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are tackling too.
Back in June, Twitter announced plans to launch "Project Lightning," which will curate events-centric photos, videos, and tweets. Snapchat's Live Stories do the same thing (sans tweets of course). During Facebook's recent earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Instagram one of the "best places to get a real-time snapshot of the world," and the app's recent redesign puts a much greater emphasis on tapping into live events. .
Even Tumblr has been experimenting with using live-events — like the music festival Coachella — as big opportunities for combining organic content curation with marketing.
By making Place Tips remotely accessible for Lollapalooza, Facebook hints at greater live-events ambitions for the future.
"Lollapalooza Place Tips are just one example of the deeper, immersive Place Tips we’re developing for specialized events and other new applications, too," the company says.
