Event Industry News: 4th of July celebrations and mishaps, Vine strikes back, Facebook launches Graph Search

July 5, 2013

4th of July in California: KABOOM! was a sold-out, loud and American proud success at Fairplex on the 4th of July. Monster trucks and motocross dominated the evening with flips, jumps and stunts to please the whole crowd. The show ended with a large fireworks spectacular that lit up the sky over Fairplex in red, white and blue.

Unfortunately, not all fireworks shows had the same happy ending. A fireworks malfunction at a Simi Valley show injured at least 28 spectators. Thankfully, no one died despite several serious injuries. The incident started when at least one firecrackers exploded pre-launch in its’ canister, triggering similar errors in other firecracker containers. Investigators are currently analyzing the situation to grasp a full understanding of why things went wrong.

Vine Strikes Back: Despite Instagram’s popular video feature, Vine hasn’t given up just yet. A recent iOS update reveals new features for the second-tier app. Instagram video beats Vine in multiple ways: Filters on the video, longer screen time, a cohesive platform for images and video to live together, an already established user and follower base and last but not least, more compatible with Facebook sharing. Sure Vine might dominate Twitter, but it’s much easier to highlight a video/photo on Facebook than in a constantly flowing tweet stream. Still, Vine rises up with features like a focus button and grid options for shooting, a ghost function–allowing users who create time-stop videos to see exactly where they last left off–and categories as a means to search through photos with specific hashtags and subject matter. As far as Vine is concerned, the battle isn’t over yet, and they aren’t going down without a fight. Photo from pcauthority.com

Social Media: Facebook finally launches Graph Search today. Back in January we mentioned the possibility of Graph Search–the enhanced searched tool for Facebook–and now that idea has finally come to fruition.  The social media powerhouse plans to roll out the graph search to a number of users today.

Google Doodle fun: Today marks the 66th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident. In a nod to the alien hoo-ha, Google has created a fun and short animated game on their homepage, during which Google users help an alien rebuild his ship so he can return home.

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