Grammys Kick Off 72 Hours of Live Online Coverage

If you’ve been spending even a little bit of time online this week, you’ve no doubt bumped into the Grammys massive campaign for your attention, centered by what could be the largest social media roll-out ever for a televised awards show. For the 52nd Annual Grammys we’re not just talking about the standard Twitter, Facebook and YouTube approach—they have all those of course—but instead a full-on rethinking of what ‘social’ actually means.

Probably the most visually compelling is the We’re All Fans site custom built around the theme of this year’s awards. Grammys tapped their agency of record, TBWAChiatDay to craft an immersive hub for user-generated videos, photos and tweets surrounding their favorite artists. You have to head to the site to fully experience it, but you can get the idea in the Beyonce video below, which weaves together fans singing—often in their bedrooms—their best attempts at covering the pop star’s hits. There’s even a real-time visualizer to see which stars are getting the most UGC fan love. (As of now, Lady Gaga is in the lead with 170,976 fan posts with Beyonce close behind at 112,105).

In a possibly insane move—for those that have to staff it—GRAMMY Live! kicks off today at 2:00 PM (PT) with 72 hours of continuous live streaming coverage of the pre-awards hoopla on Grammy.com. For the live stream, the Grammys tapped Ooyala which will deliver the feed to an expected audience of “millions” over the three day period.   On camera talent for the marathon of music include a number of video bloggers like CBSNews.com’s Shira Lazar, Drew Hinze from the Recording Academy and HardRockChick.com’s Jamie Harvey. For a complete run-down of the Grammys use of social media this year, check out Mashable’s in-depth look.

The main bummer for online video viewers is that despite all of this online push building up to the big show, the awards themselves won’t be streamed online. Instead fans will have to tune in to CBS on Sunday, a sign that TV still isn’t quite ready to make the multiplatform broadcast leap just yet.