Bits & Bytes

A collection of the latest U2 news and announcements posted by our staff.

Bono Supports Matt Damon's 'Toilet Strike' Pledge (wink-wink)

Bono has pledged to join actor Matt Damon's "toilet strike" as a way to help raise awareness and money for improving clean water and sanitation around the world. And by "toilet strike," they mean they're pledging not to use the toilet "until everyone has access to clean water and sanitation." That could seriously impact U2's ability to finish recording its album and go on tour, so ... whew! ... good thing it's a joke about a serious topic.

Damon's "strike" is part of his StrikeWithMe.org campaign and Bono appears in a new video supporting it. You should probably watch Damon's original video first so that the Bono/Branson/Wilde video makes more sense.

Final Wrap: U2 Conference 2013

We're pretty sure now that all of our collateral from last month's U2 Conference is now online: all the videos, all the photos, all the articles, etc., have been posted. And, to make it easy on anyone wanting to remember it all -- or see what you missed -- we've added a dedicated conference page to our Events section:

U2 Conference 2013

On that page, you'll find links to our session videos, session recap articles, other articles that we wrote about the conference (before and after), and two sets of photos: our own and the 300+ photos in the official U2 Conference photo album. That's new and definitely worth checking out!

If you need to reach this page in the future but don't remember the link, just click the CALENDAR link up above in our main site navigation and choose "Events" below it. That leads to our U2 Events Coverage page where it's listed with several other past events from U2's and @U2's history.

Poll Results: 22% of Fans Say U2's Next Album Will Be 'Okay' (or worse)

A good portion of U2 fans aren't optimistic about the band's next album. In a recent survey here on @U2 asking fans to describe their expectations, about 22 percent said they think the album will be "okay," "bad" or "terrible." Even among the other 78 percent, fans seem divided. About 33 percent figure the album will be "good" and 45 percent are expecting it to be "terrific."

Considering that a fan site like ours is likely to attract only the band's biggest fans, those numbers seem a bit "low" -- i.e., that fans' expectations aren't as high as I'd expect.

The survey ran for most of April and more than 3,500 fans around the world voted. Here are the results in chart form:

We've just updated our poll question, asking for your guess about what the highest priced ticket will be on U2's next tour. You can vote now on atu2.com.

Video: Bono's interview with Charlie Rose

Bono appeared on Charlie Rose's PBS show on Thursday in a full-length interview that ran close to an hour. (Clips of the interview also aired on CBS This Morning, where Rose is a co-host.) Rose and Bono taped the interview Wednesday in New York City.

If, like me, you missed the interview on TV, you can catch the whole thing via the show's YouTube channel ... and embedded below.