We covered Fast Society a couple of weeks ago as a GroupMe-like multi-party texting app so addictive it caused an entire conference panel to succumb to its distractions.
Today the guys behind Fast Society have taken the concept one step further and expanded the original vision behind the app — i.e. the ability to coordinate friends at a rock concert — hooking up with New York’s revered CMJ Music Festival as its official mobile partner, definitely experimenting with the app’s capability to handle larger scale crowds.
With an expected attendance of 500,000, the CMJ Music festival runs from today through October 23rd, and during this time you will not only be able to set up texting and conference calling groups through the Fast Society app, but you can actually navigate through the festival as well, clicking on the CMJ button within the app itself to access a CMJ concert schedule as well as bring up maps of different show locations.
Co-founder Andy Thompson describes the partnership:
“We’ve created a completely interactive brand experience that exists entirely within the app. Instead of throwing in standard ad units, we chose to create an awesome tool that can compliment Fast Society itself. The platform allows brands to tie in multimedia, special event-based messaging and offers or even interactive contesting so that Fast Society teams can engage with throughout their duration.”
This kind of mass market partnership is rare for an as of yet unfunded startup, especially when you consider that Fast Society will also be hosting a party on Friday at CMJ, indicative of how integrated it is with its target market.
When asked how an app with no VC funding currently can afford this kind of placement, Fast Society founder Matthew Rosenberg responded.
“We hustle our faces off. We made a sick deal for placement that was dirt cheap because we made the right friends. We are throwing sick parties because we made the right friends. We are on the ground working hard everyday because we are New Yorkers, and that is what New Yorkers do.”
I miss New York.
