Five dozen bands played to thousands at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park this past weekend (Aug. 22-24). And the three-day event was well-documented - not by local cable stations and newspapers, but by the thousands of digerati that attended.

CrowdFire, the brainchild of tech and media entrepreneur John Battelle, is a real-time "digital media mashup" of all of the media generated at the live show, including camera-phone pictures, hand-held digital-video recordings, blog posts and Twitter "tweets."

To compile the digital orgy, pavilion kiosks were spread throughout the venue. From those kiosks, concertgoers could upload and tag digital content, which was aggregated into an online media stream. Site visitors can search by tags (e.g., "stage one tree grove") to find specific content and interact with others through posts and comments — much like a social network.

Results were broadcast live on large screens and at the CrowdFire website, making the concert experience accessible to those not attending, writes Advertising Age.

"Our fans and concertgoers are incredibly digitally savvy, but they're also incredibly socially active. They want a place to bring the two together. This is the perfect synthesis of music, online networking and face-to-face fun," said Rick Farman, co-founder of Superfly Productions, creators of Outside Lands and co-creators of the Bonnaroo Music Festival.

But for all the fun and frolic, Battelle's goals are bit more serious: "I want the performance to go from one-to-many to many-to-many," he said, adding that the project created a platform for music fans to manipulate music as they manipulate web content. CrowdFire is also an "ongoing, living archive" of what has happened and what might happen next, he explained.

Battelle is using his Federated Media network, which consists primarily of blogs, to promote the project, sponsored by Microsoft and Intel. The center pavilion was thus stacked with Microsoft goodies: Vista-equipped computers, plasma screens, PCs and mobile devices, an Xbox gaming center, and a Zune interactive area.

The first fête to be simulcast online was in May '07, when several Denver bands joined ManiaTV to bring a live show to virtual world Second Life. MSN also distributed summer concert Live 8 to users that summer.