This coming Saturday, YouTube will stream its first ever live event: YouTube Live.
The event will be held in San Francisco at 5 p.m. It aims to highlight the scale and diversity of YouTube content; it comes with appearance of some of notable celebrities who relied on the Web content to boost their careers. The live show will feature performances from Soulja Boy, Will.I.Am, and Akon.
Not to be outdone by the music stars, YouTube partner Discovery Channel is sending some of the network’s stars to the event. Discovery Channel hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman will also be in attendance.
While the stars have different niches in the media world, they all share one common trait: they all have a huge following on YouTube. In fact, over 50 of the celebrities in attendance account for 2.5 billion video views.
“The idea behind YouTube Live really sprung up via the YouTube community via a series of ‘gatherings’ that took place in 2007 that they organized on their own,” comments YouTube CMO Chris Di Cesare, who helped organize the event. “This was really exciting to us and we wanted to find a way to help the YouTube community celebrate themselves and each other in a truly global fashion.”
Di Cesare claims that the network made an extra effort to make sure celebrity names, brands, and advertisers were fused in an “organic way” to the pioneer event. Di Cesare comments, “It was really important to us out of the gate to make sure that all aspects of YouTube Live, including our sponsors, were grounded in YouTube in an organic way or were contributing something additive to the event.”