Event Industry News: Billboard Music Awards, Event Tech, QSR trends, Tumblr

May 20, 2013

Bruno Mars opens with newest hit “Treasure” (photo taken from Billboard)

Billboard Music Awards: The 2013 Billboard Music Awards was full of fun: confetti, balloons floating through the air, laughs, falls and flashing lights. With Tracy Morgan as host and a smooth flow of performances and award presentations, the night was an overall success. Selena Gomez, who performed at the L.A. County Fair in 2010, sang her latest hit and Carly Rae Jepsen from the 2012 Fair made an appearance on camera. Additional guests included Chris Brown, will.i.am., Justin Bieber, Nicki Manaj, David Guetta and winner of the Billboard Icon Award: Prince.

Event Tech Circus Winner: A few months ago we gave the heads up on Event Tech Circus, a new event conference bringing event organizers, tech companies and investors together. The Amsterdam-based event came to fruition this past week with all eyes on Conferize. The conference app was chosen as “best startup” out of the 13 companies that presented during the conference.

QSR: Square–the nifty credit card reader that allows customers to swipe their credit cards directly onto an iPhone, iPad or Android device might be entering the food industry in mass quantity. JStarbucks was one of the first QSRs to adapt the trend in late 2012. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square is heading the initiative. A fixed 2.75 percent swipe fee is the only charge restaurant and food truck services need to worry about and eliminates the complications of additional fees from different banks.

Social media – Tumblr, meet Yahoo: Yahoo! has officially purchased popular blog site, Tumblr for $1.1 billion. While this means major bucks for the social media platform, a number of users are less than pleased about the transaction. Despite Yahoo!’s promise “not to screw it up,” the community is still wary.

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