Fringe 2010 and beyond!

Exit stage left: The Fringe 2009 takes its final bow.



It’s been a bumper year for the Edinburgh Fringe and despite the best efforts of tram workers, Edinburgh has enjoyed one of the most positive and successful Festivals ever.

Scrap that, let’s just focus on Twitter. It was always going to be the centre of attention and developers responded. Aggregating tools like EdTwinge and Fest Buzz meant regular opinions of shows via Twitter were presented in a format that could influence the kind of performances people might ultimately go and see.

EdTwinge started and grew quickly. The site really succeeded in alerting performers to the value of a positive tweet. Get into the Top Ten and not only are you doing something right, but the chances of people hearing about your show through all the noise rose considerably. The Top Ten list was even replicated on The Skinny Festival site and clearly was a great stab at capturing word of mouth and broadcasting it to a larger audience.

Of course it wasn’t the finished article, but EdTwinge gave a cracking real-time insight into the shows people were really enjoying. It did raise a number of questions that will certainly come into play come 2010. Firstly, how to ensure tweets about performers were about the show someone had seen, rather than a simple reference. For example, Tim Key (great as he is) benefited hugely from winning the Best of Fringe award (deservedly so I’m sure), as this stirred a huge amount of positive ‘noise’ on Twitter, helping him to almost topple the unstoppable force of Chris Cox.

Secondly, is it enough to look at the general consensus regarding a show? A key selling point for the arts pages in newspapers and magazines is the relationship the reader could build on a weekly/daily basis with their reviewer of choice. You are able to establish which reviewer shares similar tastes and select shows accordingly. In the rush to the Fringe, Bloggers and websites tussled to try and get their reviews read and appreciated. But was there enough time to connect with newer reviewers? And where were the mainstream media in all of this? Twitter is an ideal haven for sharing your newly published reviews but apart from a few exceptions the engagement with Twitter was limited.

Let’s not forget the apps. Fringe Guru and others brought us a fantastic iPhone application (iFringe) which would help with the opportunistic audience who were willing to take a chance and see something based on their location, the timing etc all through a simple interface. Are there opportunities for something like this the year round, or is the Fringe the only period we open ourselves up so much to culture that an app like this can be of assistance?

2009 was really the testing ground period, getting used to these new tools and trying to decipher the part they would play. 2010 is going to be the real meaty fun. A year to prepare and have knowledge of the impact social media can play. What will be the great tools of the Fringe be in 2010?

We saw fantastic tools bringing together and ranking shows based on Twitter audience opinion but will the professional reviewers feel overlooked? Is there an opportunity to aggregate the reviewers? Plenty of excellent bloggers and websites come to Edinburgh looking to cover shows, perhaps bringing these reviews together with writers from more traditional spaces such as newspapers and radio could be successful? The Guardian has always amalgamated reviews, so it does seem surprising there wasn’t a tool to do just that for prominent critics and budding bloggers.

And for the Fringe itself? After the success of its own Twitter profile, including hosting the popular Twinge party, could we be in store for more ongoing engagement through these channels and will the Fringe capitalise on this by creating more exclusive events and offers?

It’s all very exciting. The notion that there might be the next ‘twitter’ to consider in 2010 is very much a possibility. But one thing’s for sure, lessons and fun was the experience of 2009 and performers who fully embraced social media at the Fringe would have surely reaped the benefits.

This article was originally posted on the Hot Tin Roof blog