Madonna is trying to update her status.
She’s not particularly techy and hasn’t had much of a social media presence. Yet, to promote MDNA—her new album that was officially released by Interscope Records today—Madonna, 53, has sworn off magazine covers and morning-show concerts. Instead, she is launching her 12th studio album worldwide by shoring up social cred and giving just one in-person interview: to comedian and late-night talk-show host Jimmy Fallon for broadcast solely on her Facebook page. She will follow up the Facebook interview tonight, when she tweets for the first time in a live Twitter chat at 10pm EST.
A social-only promotional effort for a music-industry launch of this size is the first of its kind. “The idea was to do things differently,” says Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary.
Facebook, which reported last December it has 845 million “active” users worldwide, hopes to become even more of a platform for celebrities and it has created new features that help it compete with the appeal Twitter has for public figures. With Facebook “Subscribe,” for instance, users can read in their newsfeed a celebrity’s publicly posted updates, even if they’re not “friends.” It also allows users to have greater control over whose updates end up in their feed, and in what doses.
“Madonna is launching her new album on Facebook because it allows for effective word-of-mouth on a massive scale,” says Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, a team that works with celebrities, politicians, news organizations and app development companies.
The Madonna Facebook interview took place on Saturday, at the social network’s New York office. In the cafeteria, a no-frills set was in place: two chairs juxtaposed TV-talk-show style, with an Apple computer and docked iPod Touch on side tables as well a flat-screen monitor showing the MDNA cover.
Before the live chat began, the 100-or-so Facebook employees who would make up the audience milled and chatted, drinking wine from plastic cups and beer from bottles. (Overheard: “So can we post about this yet, or no?” and “It’s usually Menlo Park that gets the cool stuff.”)
Around 6:15 PM, Fallon—dressed tech-indy chic in a T-shirt sweater and black jeans—appeared. As a makeup artist repowdered his nose, he warmed up the crowd:
“How’s your boss?” (Nervous laughter.)
“He’s not here, we can talk crap about him.” (Uproar.) “How was your bonus?” (Nervous laughter.)
As he sat down to prepare to introduce Madonna, Fallon was visibly nervous and keyed-up. “This is historic, you guys!” he said. Then he turned to the live-stream camera and began the broadcast. “Hello the world!” he said.
Madonna then came on to the set, teeny and strong in painted-on shiny black pants, the back pocket of which said “Le freak” in rhinestones. The Facebookers went wild, showing that even though many of them were in utero when “Like a Virgin” came out in 1984, they are fans of her page so-to-speak.
For a little more than 30 minutes, Fallon and Madonna bantered about the album and her career. She answered questions that fans were posting in real-time on Facebook. Madonna was reliably the provocateur: she demonstrated to Fallon how she eats ice cream in bed and tried to teach him to dance to her new song, “Gang Bang.” (There is danger in a single appearance in a make-shift studio: the interview’s audio isn’t great at certain moments.)
“I had a great time - wish it could have gone on longer,” Madonna said, according to her spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg.
The idea for the Facebook promotion solved logistical issues, Oseary says. Magazine shoots and multiple television interviews and appearances require time—something Madonna hasn’t had much of in the last several months as she was preparing her Super Bowl halftime show, promoting her film “W.E.” and now in all-day rehearsals for her upcoming MDNA global tour.Madonna “wants us to try new things,” says Oseary, who is tech-focused and invests in a fund with Ashton Kutcher. “It could all go wrong but she is willing to let me really run with it. She’s up for trying,” he says. In advance of the live-streamed interview, Oseary worked with Facebook to build Madonna’s page. Her “timeline” is robust, with archived footage, such as her “Express Yourself” performance at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, and the “Cherished” music video, filmed by Herb Ritts. Now Madonna herself is getting into it. She emailed to Oseary BlackBerry photographs of the bruises she’s gotten while rehearsing for her tour and asked him to post them to her timeline. “She’s not a tech head,” Oseary says of Madonna, “but she understands that this is a great way to exchange info with her fans without anyone in the middle.
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