Its gaming-design smarts and mega-following have given South Korea major clout in the worldwide online games business

Electronic Arts' (ERTS) $105 million purchase this month of a major stake in Neowiz underscores the growing global clout of South Korean design houses in next-generation online gaming. Gadget-happy South Korea is one of the most wired societies on the planet currently, and its avid young gamers represent the perfect global laboratory to try out new game concepts that will drive future growth in the $28.5 billion global video

Last year, the combined revenues of some 1,200 online gaming companies in Korea reached an estimated $1.94 billion, up from $1.54 billion in 2005, according to the state-funded Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute. The institute forecasts the industry's overall revenues will grow more than 20% to about $2.35 billion in 2007.

Neowiz and other leading Korean gaming companies such as NCsoft and Nexon already dominate in the MMORPG games, but they are also trying to muscle into the larger market for software that plays on game consoles. In recent years, they have been diversifying into more casual games such as racing, shooting, sports, and Web board games as well as card and chess games (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/26/07, "The New Avatar In Town").

Nexon's go-cart racing game, KartRider, for instance, has enjoyed a fanatical following in Korea since it made a debut in 2004. A third of Korea's population of 48 million has registered to play it at least once. It also has wild fans in China, where as many as 800,000 players log on at a given time to join the race (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/24/06, "China's Online Gaming Craze").

"With console games trying to add networking functions, online games are bound to take on greater importance in the global gaming industry in years to come," says Kang Kyung Seog, senior researcher at the Korean game development institute. "Online games are still a relatively small segment of the Western video games market, but I believe they have the potential to be as big there as in Asia."

Research firm DFC Intelligence expects the global online market to grow to $13 billion in 2011 from $3.4 billion in 2005. North America, Europe, and Japan, where most gamers grew up playing on consoles, are expected to offer a significant growth and to account for $9 billion in online game revenue in 2011.

More here 

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(* Source: James @ Trendcatching.com *) 

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(* Source: James @ Trendcatching.com *) 

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(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

The Bebo Mobile rumor has been making the rounds for months, during which time YouTube Mobile was rolled out and mobile social networking really began to build some steam. Originally it was rumored that the carrier O2 would land the deal, but on Wednesday Bebo will announce that it has partnered with Orange to offer a version on cellphones.

Due to the site’s popularity in the UK, Bebo Mobile will go live there this summer, with expansion to other markets later in 2007. The feature set is vaguely similar to MySpace Mobile: you can edit your Bebo profile, update your blog and add friends from your phone. Presumably you’ll also be able to access Bebo Mail, the internal messaging feature.

Like YouTube Mobile, the deal may have an exclusivity clause, but it’s unlikely that Orange will be the exclusive carrier for Bebo Mobile long term. That would allow O2 and other carriers to offer their own packages for users.

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(* Source:  Pete Cashmore *)

In what may be a slight increase to Rupert Murdoch’s claim of $25 million/month (which was only ads, not total revenue), analyst Richard Greenfield noted today that MySpace is now generating “in excess of $30 million” per month in revenue, with about $24 million in US revenue and $6 million internationally.

Monthly revenues are expected to double over the next year, making for an impressive $60M/month by this time next year. No word on whether the Google deal is being taken into account.

Should we be surprised that one of the world’s biggest websites actually has the ability to generate some revenue?

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Jamendo, the P2P music-sharing site, reports that they have distributed, freely and legally, nearly 1.5 million albums; 1 million through BitTorrent alone. Jamendo supports other P2P protocols including Kazaa and eMule/Donkey. Their distribution through these networks has been included in their estimate for their global “Platinum” reach.

Jamendo promotes themselves as a free and legal place for artists to distribute their songs. Users can rate and review artists as well (see initial write-up here). As Jamendo operates under the Creative Commons license, they’ve provided a way for artists to broaden their reach while retaining full ownership of their content.

Users can remix content from other members on Jamendo, helping to usher in the new era of artists rights and the erosion of the middleman. Jamendo also offers a revenue sharing option for artists that would like to earn money from the ads placed on Jamendo’s site.

Their recent growth is in part due to Digg–they are heavy promoters on the bookmark ranking site. Otherwise, this landmark of distributing such a large number of albums via the Internet is quite a feat, and speaks to the attitudes regarding the consumers and the musicians, and how they’ve met a happy middle ground.

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Fliptrack, which launches on Wednesday, is an online service that lets you put pictures to your music. Instead of laying music over your image slideshow, you choose your song first with Fliptrack, and the images you add will be timed with the song’s beat to make it a seamless integration. In this case, it looks like a more cohesive product, much like a music video.

Fliptrack currently offers over 350 licensed songs to choose from, in addition to the 50+ indie bands that have offered their music for Fliptrack’s purpose. Once you’ve created your video, it can be embedded on your MySpace, hi5, and Piczo profiles for further sharing. Other’s cannot take the embed code directly from the widget, though the video can be sent via email. The site’s emphasis is clearly on the video, as there is no direct way to search for users, though their videos can be rated and commented upon.

Fliptrack is partnering with Barenaked Ladies for their first promotional contest, the winner of which will have their video featured on the popular band’s website. Fliptrack also recognizes the potential for indie artists to offer their content to be mixed, as it’s a great way to let the users further spread their music.

The concept behind Fliptrack has been executed in a unique way, but it is a feature that can easily be added to many of the other services. In order for Fliptrack to at least be on par with other players in the fields, I’d suggest they include the ability to add friends as a way for users to keep track of the site’s activity, and incorporating the ability to search videos by their songs.

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(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

As Tower Records closes, HMV slumps and Virgin Megastore becomes Urban Outfitters, Rough Trade - the Indie music label and London record store - has plans to build a large store on London's Brick Lane that will bring new music on disk or through performance.

Rough Trade's store director, Stephen Godfroy, says:

"Our aim is to deliver something we feel has been missing in this country for far too long; an environment that celebrates music as an exciting art form, not just another commercial commodity - but on a scale that is a departure from the traditional perception of an independent record shop."

"The music industry seems to have a lot of doom and gloom about it at the moment, despite people's passion for music being as strong as ever. We certainly hope to put some smiles back on faces with something that reflects the true public appetite for exciting new music."

Reminds us of the energy Amoeba has.

Rough Trade

via NME.COM

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(* Source: Steve Rubel *) 

Adobe, today launched the CS3 suite - a massive upgrade to all of its core design products. However, there was some other news too that I thought was cool. And I am not just saying that because we work for Adobe and I want to be nice and all.

The company also unveiled a social network called kuler.  Basically  it's a place for designers to share color combinations for different purposes. The site has tags, RSS feeds and desktop and Apollo widgets as well. Using the site, designers can upload color combinations they used for different projects.

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(* Source: Adam Turinas *)

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(* Source: Gretchen Hyman *)

"But how do you break through and touch an audience?" Mandel asked. What are the most effective vehicles for brand and relationship building?

The following are some of the industry survival strategies Mandel explored and some of the successful campaigns that used creativity and innovation for interacting with consumers on their terms:

Become a better storyteller
Consumers are more likely to pay attention to campaigns based on solid and entertaining storylines. As an example, Mandel referenced the Jerry Seinfeld-Superman-American Express campaign, which was widely successfully because of its integration of online and offline promotional tools and its amusing resurrection of one of America's favorite comic book action heroes. Another example she presented was the "Brawny Academy" campaign and its tie-in to reality TV, as well as its success at integrating Brawny paper towels into the storyline.

Create interaction
Instead of trying to draw the consumer to a campaign, engage the existing community where they are in an interactive experience. For this point, Mandel used Ogilvy's IBM Codestation campaign as an example. Based on research that a high number of people that engage in Second Life are software developers, Ogilvy integrated the campaign into the Second Life environment to tap into that a consumer market most likely to respond to an IBM product.

Mandel stressed the importance of integrating text messaging into a campaign, for which she cited the success of a Dove billboard campaign in New York's Time Square that encouraged consumers to weigh in on how they felt about the image of an older woman. Another example was a campaign titled "Text Messages from God" that successfully connected with the teen 18-21-year-old demographic and yielded 100 percent campaign awareness through texting.

Get them talking
The success rate for viral campaigns can skyrocket a brand to success like never before. Mandel used the "Shave Everywhere" campaign as an example. She also used a Dove spot, Evolution, that had originally been intended for a self esteem workshop that ended up on YouTube and proved more successful than Ogilvy's Super Bowl ad. The Dove spot also spawned numerous spoof videos, proving that a great campaign can experience extended brand recognition when it spurs interaction with consumers.

In summary, Mandel named three key components for winning in the interactive space:

1. On Demand: Get relevant information in front of consumers when and where they want it.
2. Entertainment: Use entertainment to create a consumer connection by being funny, outrageous or pertinent.
3. Community: People are using numerous digital means to communicate, and brands can and should be part of that conversation.

"In today's world, you have to get them to invite you in and agree to interact with your brand," she concluded.

Full article here. 

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

At $21 billion in overall spending, the automotive industry is the largest US advertising category, but automakers and dealers continue pulling ad dollars out of traditional media and redirecting them to microsites, digital media, SEM, mobile marketing and VODs.

The Automotive Online report analyzes the trend-setting online and mobile marketing strategies and tactics of the automotive industry. After all, where the auto industry goes – other industries often follow.

eMarketer predicts the automotive category, consisting of manufacturers, dealers and after-market vendors, will account for $2.54 billion, nearly 13%, of the $19.5 billion estimated to be spent on Internet advertising and marketing this year.

About $1.1 billion of that total will go toward search marketing strategies, including paid ads and search engine optimization.

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(* Source: Vito Greto*)

Millsberry.com was introduced to me by my daughter and her friends.  It’s in essence a site to play games, buy things, create an avatar, and travel around the town.  Sound familiar?  It’s like a mini Second Life in that you can be someone else and enjoy this virtual world, except the whole thing is brought to you by a cereal company.

General Mills has created Millsberry town – replete with a downtown core and suburbs. My kids love it because they can get trophies and score mills bucks, which can be exchanged for clothes, toys, and of course General Mills products.

And I thought she wanted the box of Lucky Charms because they were magically delicious!

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How hated is the thought of mobile marketing?

In theory, very hated.

Most people (90%) say that they are not at all interested in getting ads on their mobile phones, according to Harris Interactive.

In theory, that leaves less than 10% of users as an audience for mobile marketing.

In practice, the audience is much larger. As with any medium, once mobile ads are associated with something of value, user interest shoots up. If incentives are involved, it shoots up considerably.

Think about the Internet a decade ago. There was still some debate as to whether companies should be on the Web at all — would corporate influence stifle the free flow of ideas on the fresh new medium? Once companies did move online, consumers were initially reluctant to give out personal information. It took incentives and opt-in agreements to overcome their hesitance.

Right now, mobile is the only interactive medium where the typical user pays for both the cost of network access and the content it delivers. Mobile operators and content providers are finding that besides early adopters and enthusiasts, it is tough to find buyers for paid mobile music downloads, let alone video and games.

Introducing mobile advertising into the revenue mix changes the picture. Many users say that they would be willing to receive mobile marketing in exchange for incentives, so offering free applications, subsidized airtime or other goodies makes sense.

Over a third of adult mobile phone users say that they are willing to accept incentive-based advertisements. Of these, 78% say the best incentive would be cash. Other incentives that resonate include free minutes, free entertainment downloads and discount coupons.

As for ad formats, over half (56%) of those who are at least somewhat interested in receiving ads on their cellphones say they would prefer to receive them as text messages, while 40% would like to receive them as picture messages. Less than a quarter of adults would choose to receive them as videos, while others would have them sent as e-mail, voice mail or something else.

eMarketer estimates that mobile ad spending in the US will reach $4.8 billion by 2011, up from $421 million in 2006.

eMarketer senior analyst and mobile specialist John du Pre Gauntt says that current mobile business models practically beg for an infusion of ad dollars.

"Despite the best efforts to convince people otherwise, there is no mobility 'premium,'" says Mr. Gauntt. "Over time, the justification for charging a 100%-300% markup on a piece of content or service simply because it is delivered over a radio channel will not wash when the same content is available online to be synched with a handset."

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(* Source: Fred Guillet *) 

A new online survey across six Asian markets found that 28% of respondents were interested in paying US$1 to download a 30-minute television show, accompanied by advertising. When offered new movies supported by advertising for the same price, even more respondents (62%) said they would be willing to pay for online downloads.

The survey also offered the option to pay US$2 to buy the same content without advertising, but fewer respondents were willing to pay for TV shows (20%) or movies (53%) at the higher price, suggesting that Asian audiences would welcome advertising messages that subsidise the cost of online content downloads.

The survey also found that almost half (49%) of all respondents across the six Asian markets had paid to download content, ranging from the most likely buyers in China (67%) and Taiwan (62%) to 40% in Singapore and 38% in Australia.

MindShare Asia Pacific Insights Director James Chadwick said: “This new data suggests a massive demand in Asia for downloading digital content, and points to the potential for a win-win advertising model in the future.”

He added: “If Asian audiences are willing to pay to download their favorite content online, and prefer brands to subsidise their purchases through advertising or sponsorship, then we are likely to see the emergence of very exciting new marketing communications channels.”

MindShare conducted the survey among a total of 1,500 15-to-35-year-old Internet users in November 2006, using Pulse Group’s research panel across Australia, China, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan (250 respondents from each market).

Asians Love Music On Their Phones
The MindShare survey also revealed that Asian downloaders are more likely to play digital music on their mobile phones than on MP3 players. 28% of respondents said they preferred a mobile phone for playing back songs, ranging from Malaysia (37%) and India (34%) to Singapore (33%), China (29%), Australia (25%) and Taiwan (16%).

Looking into the future, 75% of those surveyed expect portable digital video players to become more popular, suggesting they want video-on-the-go to complement their portable music.

Greater Downloading In Greater China
In terms of overall content downloading, whether paid or unpaid, Internet users in China and Taiwan are more likely to download than other Asian users. As shown by the table below, Chinese respondents were most likely to have downloaded movies (41%) and exclusive celebrity interviews (17%) while Taiwanese respondents were most likely to have downloaded TV shows (25%) and music (56%).

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(* Source:Nathan Eddie *) 

The combined market value of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs or MMOGs) in North America and Europe hit $1 billion in 2006, according to a report from Screen Digest. Subscription services dominated the revenue stream at 87 percent, though microtransactions and in-game advertising played a role in the growth--a trend that is likely to continue as these revenue streams are more broadly integrated. Although the North American subscription market was worth $576 million and the European market was worth $299 million, by 2011 Europe will experience the bulk of the growth, the report predicts. By that time, there will be 10 million subscribers and these accounts will generate $1.5 billion in consumer spending.

"During the past few years the Western landscape for massively multiplayer online games has become increasingly fragmented following the introduction of new genres of games including social networking, virtual pet rearing and virtual world building titles," said the report's author, Piers Harding-Rolls. "These new games and platforms have brought with them many new gamers and also new business models that are generating revenue that is largely incremental to the incumbent subscription business." In comparison, an IDC report in January predicted online gaming in China would be a $3.2 billion business by 2011, although the report did not break down different types of gaming.

For an overview of the report:
- visit the Screen Digest website

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(* Source: Ceri Kirkland *)

I am a die-hard Pandora enthusiast. I love being exposed to new music that I don’t hear on mainstream radio, and I enjoy being able to fine-tune my channels to play music that would interest me the most. However, my listening days may be coming to an end, due to a ruling that could put Pandora out of business.

Web radio is fighting back against possible fee increases of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) that may cripple the industry. The ruling, announced earlier this month, imposes a yearly royalty rate increase set “per performance” from 2006 to 2010. This could be severely detrimental to small web broadcasters, who claim that it could exceed their total revenues. In a WSJ article, the co-founder of Pandora states that if the ruling stands, his company may cease to exist.

Pandora has had some success this year in growing its site visitation by an average of 10% each month. With over 150% growth in unique visitors last year, Pandora’s popularity may come with a steep price. The CRB ruling also indicates that there is a $500 minimum fee “per channel” per year. The ambiguous definition of a “channel” puts websites which offer limitless customized “channels”, like Pandora, in a precarious position.

Live365.com, which allows users to create their own radio stations, is in a similar position. It could face the per channel fee or be subject to royalty rates which will jump from $ .62 per person per month in 2006 to $ .86 in 2007. Unique visitors to the site increase by a mere 0.34% per month on average; however, the royalty fees alone grow at an average rate of 2% a month. If Live365.com has to pay royalty rate fees retroactively as the board has demanded, it could possibly cost them over $3.7 Million in 2006.

*Based on listening statistics reported by BridgeRatings, this analysis was calculated using an estimated 45.5 Listening Hours/Month, and an average song length of 3.5 minutes.

This has the potential to be the nail in the internet radio coffin. By forcing radio stations to pay these increased fees, the level of access and choice to consumers will flatten within six months. Sites like Pandora and Live365 have been urging listeners to sign a petition to overturn the ruling. A rehearing is imminent, so hopefully listeners (myself included) will be able to enjoy the new music we’re exposed to through web radio in the future.

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(* Source: eMarketer via Laurent Verrier *) 

 


Reaching gamers in their extra lives takes skill.

There's some little video game the kids are playing now called World of Warcraft.

Except that it's not little, and it's often not kids playing. Globally, 8.5 million people play the game, and many pay $15/month for the privilege. South Park recently devoted a whole episode to parodying it.

The game's popularity drove revenues for the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) sector to $576 million in 2006 for North America alone, according to Screen Digest.

"During the past few years the Western landscape for MMOGs has become increasingly fragmented following the introduction of new genres of game including social networking, virtual pet rearing and virtual world building titles," said Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest. "These new games and platforms have brought with them many new gamers and also new business models that are generating revenue that is largely incremental to the incumbent subscription business."

Subscription services account for 87% of the MMOG market in the West, but virtual item sales and in-game advertising are starting to contribute to the revenue mix.

In-game advertising is estimated to reach $589 million in 2010, up from $182 million in 2006, according to a January 2007 study by Oppenheimer & Co. that examined data from IDC, Yankee Group and Parks Associates.

This would all seem to be great news for marketers. The oft-sought-after 18-34-year-old male demographic is heavily into gaming. MMOGs offer the potential for viral communication, both in the games themselves and in dedicated message boards.

Despite the heady estimates, eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna says that marketers need some perspective when considering how to associate their brands with MMOGs.

"In general, MMOGs do not lend themselves as readily to in-game display advertising or product placements as many console games do," said Mr. Verna. "On the other hand, the fact that MMOG players are, by definition, online makes them attractive to marketers looking to expose their brands to a connected audience.

"It's also worth noting that MMOGs make up about 50% of online gaming revenues on a worldwide basis," Mr. Verna continued. "With online gaming poised to grow at dramatic rates in the next five years, MMOGs should be closely considered for advertising opportunities provided that the brands in question not detract from the game experience."

Beside sweepstakes and other non-intrusive promotions, some actual in-game ads are possible, depending on the MMOG.

In URU Live, the MMOG based on the popular Myst franchise, players start out in the "real" world before being transported to the game's more fantastic settings. Players meet a guide in the "real" world who's got an open bag of Doritos in front of him.

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(* Source: Patrick Dunphy *)

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(* Source: b-side *)

What's up KL?! I'll be in KL next week and will be speaking at a media conference (MMC07). We'd love to hear from anyone involved in some great ventures and projects in the city - just to hang out with and possibly feature on b-side. Drop me an email and we can coordinate.

Looking forward.

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(* Source: Chris Portella *)

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(* Source: Misha Cornes *)

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(* Source: Tangos *) 

The New York Times has just published an article named “Internet Boom in China Is Built on Virtual Fun“, which is mainly on history and development of Tencent. I agree with the key point of the article, that currently Chinese internet users are mainly for entertainment and fun, foreign internet companies need to understand this culture.

While America’s Internet users send e-mail messages and surf for information on their personal computers, young people in China are playing online games, downloading video and music into their cellphones and MP3 players and entering imaginary worlds where they can swap virtual goods and assume online personas. Tencent earns the bulk of its revenue from the entertainment services it sells through the Internet and mobile phones.

Another distinguishing feature is the youthful face of China’s online community. In the United States, roughly 70 percent of Internet users are over the age of 30; in China, it is the other way around — 70 percent of users here are under 30, according to the investment bank Morgan Stanley.

…And in China, the No. 1 priority for Internet users is entertainment; in the U.S., it’s information. That’s why Google is dominant in the U.S., but Tencent rules China.

…Analysts say the American companies struggle here partly because of regulatory restrictions that favor homegrown companies, but also because foreign companies often do not understand China’s Internet market, which is geared primarily to entertainment and mobile phones.

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(* Source: Tangos *) 

Totally 16 companies from China made the Fortuna China Magazine’s 2005 Coolest Companies List, 7 among them are internet companies, their business range from online games and download tool to new online media like podcasing and e-magazine, from mobile search to WAP portal.

3G.net.cn is a Guangzhou-based free WAP(Wireless Application Protocol) portal for mobile users, to provide ringtone and image download, mobile game, news and information and other mobile-based services. By the end of 2005, its users amounted to 10 million. In early 2005, IDG invested 2 million USD in 3G.net.cn, and it is seeking second round financing.

Cgogo, established in 2003, provides wireless search service that enable mobile users to search internet information on their cellular phones. “Cgogo Search is an innovation of dynamic fuzz search for concept clustering.” It generates revenue by the similar way as Baidu does, that is auction-based paid list services for corporates.

ChinaCache, founded in 1998, is the most famous CDN (Content Distribution Network) provider in China, and currently renders services for Sohu, Netease, eBay China, XinhuaNet and many other main stream sites. ChinaCache made break-even in 2002 and become profitable since 2003. Its revenue of 2005 is expected to RMB 62 million Yuan (about 7.65 million USD).

Nineyou mainly provides online casual games One of its most important games is O2Jam, a multi online music play game developed by O2media from Korea. 9you got 20 million USD investment from Carlyle Group and other investors in 2004 and 2005. Its peak concurrent game users reached 600,000 by the end of 2005. Nineyou’s revenue of 2005Q4 amounted to RMB 50 million Yuan (about 6.2 million USD).

Toodou is the only company in the list that we have covered before, and I think our readers are very familiar with it. It seems Toodou has been a representative sites for web2.0 development in China, many main stream media will take Toodou as an example when reporting China’s web2.0. Congradulations, Gary!

Thunder, a IDG invested company, provides a broadband download tool using P2SP/P2P technology.

Xplus (Nu Channel) is a company to distribute online interactive magazines. Its Xplus software takes advantage of P2P service to effectively distribute e-magazines, and will also provide readers analysis for magazine publishers. In the year 2005, total magazine volumes exceed 28 million copies. In April 2005, investors led by Legend Capital and iD Tech Ventures Ltd. (Acer) invested 4.5 million USD into Xplus.

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(* Source: Luyi Chen *) 

Xplus is the online publishing platform of Nu Channel, a company established in 2003. Its shareholders include ID Tech Ventures, Legend Capital, China Merchants & Fortune Venture Investment Group, etc. Originally its main business is online emagazine. Although it has launched a platform for users to upload DIY magazines, but the whole UGC market in China still not matures enough for any serious business to rely on.

What caught our eyes is its new online newspaper publishing platform. It launched by the end of last year. It provides a new navigation style that combines traditional and online newspaper.

The advantage of traditional newspaper is how things are organized on one page, big headlines, fonts, images, etc. You can recognize important stuffs at a glance. Xplus epaper shows you an image of the hardcopy of the newspaper. Users can click the pixel area of any particular article and read it on the right side. Also it provides search, headline view of all the articles on one page and navigation to others pages, etc. In one word, it provides a way just like reading real newspaper and its content is more discoverable. What technology it uses? Seems Flash.

It also has some social features too. Such as people read this newspaper also read the following ones. People can leave comments on the newspaper, although not to each article, but the whole volume of one day. On its about page, they have an image which shows their business model. By showing newspapers in this way, they can track how users find interesting stuffs on a page and this data can be used by publishers to tweak their printing style, advertisers can adjust their strategy accordingly.

As the company said on a 5G seminar, newspapers will never die, and its evolution will last. The other big news about newspaper today is Usatoday’s relaunch with a bunch of social features.

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(* Source: Tangos *) 

Yeeyan is an excellent blog which I tracked daily and added into my RSS reader immediately when I found it in last year.

Why? Yeeyan is a group blog which intends to translate articles, mainly blog posts, on tech, startups and internet into Chinese, to help to bridge the language gap. So far, they have done a terrific job. They update blog almost every day, translate many informative posts from A-list English bloggers, such as Michael Arrington, Richard MacManus and Fred Wilson, thousands of readers subscribe their rss or read the blog, including me. They even got the Chinese copyright of Inside Facebook, and will translate and publish it in China.

But now, I would like to introduce Yeeyan to overseas readers as well, because Yeeyan launched its English version recently, that is to translate Chinese blog posts into English, to help foreigners to know opinions and analysis of Chinese bloggers, such as U.S. internet companies’ top 10 mistakes in China and Yahoo China’s Fiasco.

In fact, in late 2005, we have also tried to summarize some Chinese blog posts in English for our readers each week, but we just can not continue it for various reasons. So I’m extremely happy to see Yeeyan’s English version. I’m sure it would be a must-read for those who want to know more about Chinese blogosphere and internet market but bothered by Chinese language barrier. Forget Google translation, to subscribe Yeeyan.

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(* Source: Luyi Chen *) 

Riku has found a new music service that looks like Pandora, and with a name sounds like Pandora’s brother - Dola.

The company behind Dola is MusicGene, a Shanghai based startup. Some readers have pointed out that their website is much like MusicGenome, an Israel company.

Dola originally was LazyFM. Here’s one of their presentation on a venture conference by the end of last year. You should scroll down to find them, since there’re several companies.

From the report: 1. Their service launched in July 2006. 2. Two main founders, Victor Zhang is responsible for technology, Cao Zhifeng is responsible for marketing.

As of this writing, I have received a mail from Cao Zhifeng, CEO and co-founder of MusicGene. I have written back to ask for more details other than those publicly available.

Of course I remember Yobo is doing similar thing. So I asked Yobo if they have heard of Dola. I expected an answer sounds like no comment. But Allen, CEO and co-founder of Yobo kindly typed more than two words, so that I have something to share with you.

Music analysis is not an easy job. We should seriously treat it. It requires professional teams with enough hard working and passion. Dola is an early project, probably we are both targeting similar market. It’s not suitable for us to comment it. It would be better to leave it to our users.

In this stage, the important thing is doing, with the right attitude and approach, not talking. Yobo is also an early stage project. We are learning while we grow up. It’s inevitable to learn from advanced products and technologies from other countries, but we won’t feel lucky to skip any necessary fundamental steps. Chinese users need someone devoted to work out products they really want, not merely concepts.

Hat tips to Yobo. Yobo’s brand has suddenly risen up in my mind.

I also asked Yobo about the recent “per play per customer” royalty rate proposal. Yobo’s answer is:

Will Chinese authorities make the same policy? I am not sure. But they seem to have too many things more important to deal with. They even haven’t nailed down all the cases with mp3 search engines. On the contrary, we are doing with legal approach. We will become a promoting platform for copyright holders.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Luyi Chen *)

Since the latest launches of online music services like Musicpaw and Yobo, we have been tracking online music services that can help you search, organize, listen, share and discover music online.

What differentiates music from other media like article, photo and video is that you would listen to music you like again and again, while you won’t do this with others. And music is a bit difficult to understand, so that you probably don’t know why you like a particular song.

So application for organizing and sharing music must be different from the ones for photos and videos. Besides Musicpaw and Yobo, there’re six other services also worth looking. They are 8box, Douban, Yahoo Musicbox, Baidu Zhangmenren, We@zone and Funbox.

We first look at two search engines. They are the places to look for online music links. Although this has brought copyright issues, search engines still act as a promotion platform for artists.

• Baidu mp3 search is the most frequently used music search engine in China. One year ago, Baidu launched Zhangmenren, which is a service for users to sharing their playlist. To celebrate one year birthday of this service, they have opened several public lists where everyone can distribute their favorite songs.
• Other search engines have similar feature too. My second choice is Yahoo Music. They have human-edited profile page for artists and bands with their album release history. This is useful to music newbie like me. Their music box service, launched in June, lets users keep their own playlist. You can generate playlist more freely in Yahoo music than in Baidu Zhangmenren. Yahoo’s service is more like a private service, while Baidu’s is for public promotion. In Yahoo, you can save music into your music box directly from search result.

Some services don’t act as a music search engine or host any music files, but they provide a place to organize your online playlist, which contains music that you can play directly without downloading them to local storage. Three services result in this category.

• Musicpaw is a new service launched on Nov. 26 2006. I like their tagline, Sketch with music. Hope they really can let us describe music visually like this. Currently you can organize playlist, tag and review music in this community. I think the website is cool especially their command line console, where you can navigate the website and perform all operations of the music player.
• We@zone is in a different style, and I like its simple design. It lauched on June 26, 2006 by Andy, who is located in Beijing, now a product manager of Hexun. On its Digg style homepage, users can share music review, recommend artist, and promote music related event. On users’ personal page, visitors can listen to their music collections though a flash player.
• Funbox is a service launched in July. The main feature is to organize online music links into playlist. It doesn’t provide music review, but it does have quite a lot of embedded code in different styles to publish playlist on other website like blogs.

Although in above three services, you can also discover new music by browsing others people’s profile page or by looking at what they are listening if the service supports this. But chances to find music suitable to you are still small in this way. So you probably want to try some recommendation services.

• 8box is one of the earliest services to provide music recommendation in China. It launched in May 2006. Originally based in Shanghai, now located in Hangzhou. What I like most is the music roaming feature. You can start from one music, then it will guide you though a series of tracks with similar style. After you rating enough tracks for the system to learn about you, it can recommend new music to you based on collaborative filtering technology. We have an interview with 8box in June.
• Yobo is a Pandora like service just launched several days ago. Main part of the service is a big flash player where you can listen to endless music. While you are listening to music, by telling the system whether you like it or not, you can affect future music recommended to you. Based on my own testing, there’re too many duplicates in its current recommendation result. That’s probably because of the small media database.
• Music recommendation feature of Douban is weaker than 8box and Yobo. It launched in July 2005. As we mentioned in the beginning of this article, music is different from book. While few people would say they particularly like one chapter of a book, most of them just like some tracks in an album. On Douban you can only treat music in album level, which makes the service less flexible. But this is still a great place to find useful music reviews.

Summary

Online music is a wonderful world. After you move your listening habit from local to online, you can not only access music from anywhere but also discover more music from others.

Search engine is useful for searching online music links, but you cannot find music you don’t know in this way. Recommendation service as ongoing search will give you more personalized experience and help you find music that you like but you would never discover in other ways.

Music communities that don’t have explicit recommendation feature are also useful for discovering new music. It’s hard to tell which style is better for music community. There’re still rooms for killer applications to show up.

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(* Source: Dave Pinter *)

 


I've made mention of Beatport before on PSFK and there is reason to make mention of it again. It's growing to be the definitive resource for buying electronic music. Now I like the iTunes music store. DRM aside, it's generally easy to use but frustratingly slow to add new music. Especially in the 'electronic' category. There are other alternatives on the web where you can buy quality electronic music. Kompakt (the german techno label) has an extensive online store, but it's not so intuitive to use.

Beatport is making serious strides to not only serve the casual buyer, but also the serious DJ. Their weekly podcast Beatport Burners makes it easy to hear and buy the latest tracks. The show continues to evolve and now sounds every bit like an Essential Mix. Also for the heads, Beatport provides direct software integration into digital dj systems like Native Instruments Traktor essentially making shopping, buying, organizing, and djing seamless.

But here's the clincher....content. And there's been some serious heavy weight labels added to the catalog over the last two weeks. First was the announcement that Kompakt is going to be sold on Beatport. Yep, the folks who run their own store are opting to sell through another channel. But the biggest news dropped this week when Detroit techno icon labels Planet e and Underground Resistance/Submerge both announced new and back catalog releases were available in digital format. UR is particularly interesting due to their longstanding commitment to do-it-themselves.

Clearly this is the first solid example of an online music retailer that really understands how to sell a specific genre and own the category through innovation and quality. By the way, part of the UR catalog is the Interstellar Fugitives - Destruction of Order release, a 34 track monster compilation. It's definitely some of the most stunning music you could treat your ears to. It's not cheap, but you'll cherish it.

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(* Source: Kristin Gorski  *)

Avatars are no longer known only for being the virtual toys of hard-core online gamers. The word "avatar" is losing its exotic, tech-geek luster in part because of a growing acceptance of "life" taking place on the Web. With so many people and businesses participating in avatar-related sites and activities like Second Life and World of Warcraft, and with more just around the corner, the avatar population could soon explode dramatically.

New technologies could further encourage avatar growth. From the Christian Science Monitor article "Is this the age of the online avatar?":

...On March 7, Linden Labs, the California firm whose massive servers have hosted Second Life for three years, announced the beta testing of an integrated voice function that could substitute, as desired, for typed exchanges that appear on screen.

"We know where other [avatars] are in your audible range," says Joe Miller, a Linden vice president. New software mimics the human ear so that voices come from "wherever they are."

That move and others go toward creating what Mr. Miller calls a "persistent space." He predicts a near future in which far-flung family members circle a virtual campfire, in photo-realistic avatar form, on a regular basis.

As more people accept avatar worlds into their lives, marketers will have new venues for reaching them:

...Businesses both real and virtual thrive in-world. Reuters recently established a Second Life news bureau. Presidential candidates have built campaign headquarters. Major League Baseball has a presence. Some 70 colleges and universities, including Harvard, now teach classes inside Second Life.

There are still obstacles, however, to virtual worlds becoming the place we'd rather live instead of out here with the flesh-and-blood and brick-and-mortar:

..."Fantasy playgrounds actually don't work particularly well as social networks," says Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at Berkeley and fellow at USC's Annenberg Center who was dubbed the "high priestess of Internet friendship" last year by the Financial Times.

Yet a new level of avatar fascination may just be beginning. The artistic duo Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) has created an online show titled "13 Most Beautiful Avatars". (Two of their images are above.) In doing so, they have created the ultimate beautiful "people."

Or have they? As the real/virtual line continues to blur, what's next? With the growing acceptance and creation of avatars and their realms, could avatar brands, celebrities, and a unique avatar culture be so far behind?

How will all of this play out as what and who we create online influences how we live in "real life"?

"Is this the age of the online avatar? As Internet communities grow, virtual alter-egos are becoming mainstream." from the Christian Science Monitor

13 Most Beautiful Avatars by Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)

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I just came across the Digital Outlook Report 07 by Avenue A | Razorfish, an agency that provides interactive marketing and technology services, on the deviant’s blog.

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(* Source: Misha Cornes *)

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(* Source: Catherine Holahan *)

MySpace and Friendster’s runaway popularity and exposure have helped spawn an array of targeted networking sites. Advertisers are noticing

New Models

Since launching to the general public on Oct. 26, Vox has nearly tripled in size, says Anker. Its success indicates a trend among newer social networking sites, which are gaining traction not by focusing on the mass-popularity model that made News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace famous, but by helping users connect with smaller, more specific, groups.

Take, for example, itLinkz. On Jan. 31, the social networking company launched the first of its 13 planned targeted networking sites. Its initial offering, NurseLinkup.com, already has more than 500 health professionals visiting the site. Michael Ragan, chief operating officer of itLinkz, says that the site launched, in part, to help users frustrated with the party atmosphere of MySpace, which has users with hundreds of thousands of friends and a reputation for having a 25-and-under audience. (Incidentally, comScore reports that more than half of MySpace users are over 35.) "MySpace is for everyone," says Ragan. "Our focus is on communities."

There are several reasons for the more targeted approach to social networking. One is the sheer popularity of sites such as MySpace and Friendster. As those sites have expanded and become among the Internet's most trafficked, some users and potential users have grown wary about exposing themselves to so many people. Some users would rather connect with people with whom they share common interests, such as hobbies or professional associations, other than knowing somebody who knows somebody who is listed as a MySpace friend.

Some Successes

Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer, says a demand for more specific social networks, and the resulting targeted sites, is a natural outgrowth of MySpace and Friendster's popularity. "The inevitable reaction to when something gets too big? Leave for a smaller, more personal experience," Williamson wrote in an August report on social networking.

Dozens of such targeted sites have taken root in the past several years with varying degrees of success. Among the most popular is LinkedIn, a site with 9 million members focused on helping people further their career through professional networking (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, "LinkedIn Reaches Out").

Williamson cites Fuzzster, a social network for pet lovers; Yub.com, a site for shopaholics; Model Mayhem, a network for models and photographers; and Mog, a network for music lovers, as just some of the networks now catering to specific interests.

Other sites target demographics believed to be left out of the Friendsters of the world. Gather.com, for example, targets older users, more likely to listen to National Public Radio than hip hop. Chat rooms are focused on particular topics such as wine or politics (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/26/06, "Gather.com: Social Networking Grows Up").

There are financial reasons fueling the targeting as well. Advertisers are expected to spend $1.9 billion on social networks by 2010, up from $280 million in 2006.

More here 

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(* Source Marketing Shift *) 

Bryan Brickley discusses the various options for bloggers to generate ad revenue on , but he fails to mention one important solution: brand sponsorship. Most bloggers are lucky to make a few pennies per page view through in-line text links (which for me are disruptive and not relevant), and cost-per-click ads like AdSense that are prone to click fraud and generate next to nothing.

But blogs might be a better match for display advertising that reinforces a brand. Because most blogs focus on a few to a dozen or so posts a day, most visitors read an item or two and then move onto something else. But they can be loyal readers, making it attractive to brands who would like to have multiple interactions with a reader.

For example, Reebok could sponsor a sports blog because the odds are that each visitor won't see the same ad more than once or twice a day. By making sure that the same visitor sees your pitch several times a week, you can start to build a relationship especially if the blog uses cookies to track repeat visitors.

Through multiple creatives, advertisers could change their ads based on how many times a person has been exposed. By changing the message and recognizing that this isn't the first interaction, brands might have a better chance at getting a response. Wouldn't this be better than being part of a blog ad network where you aren't sure which readers have actually been exposed? Advertisers like TV because (pre-TiVo) they could be fairly certain that nearly everyone who watched the program saw the ad (aka reach). This can also be done through blog sponsorships.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Marketing Shift *) 

As surely as the Sun will shine (okay, I'm in Oregon, so maybe not today), marketers will attack the social network space and push the boundaries of good practices to get the word out about their product.

JupiterResearch, says that 48 percent of marketers plan to use social marketing during the next year. Social networking websites have a young and skeptical audience that doesn't trust advertisers, so getting word of mouth from "trusted peers" is important.

Most marketers will be up front about their activities, but you know, that just as PayPerPost is offering to bribe bloggers to endorse advertisers' product, so to are the marketers willing to pay people to casually tout their products. For example, see PlatinumMillennium, which has an affiliate program that pays commissions for touting "how to make money" videos on MySpace.

Affiliate programs are legitimate businesses as long as they are banners etc. But paying people to talk about products they don't use isn't right. After 50 years, the music industry is still ripe with payola, and soon MySpace and all of the social networking sites will be awash in the same practices. Marketers will give away free music, clothes, cell phones etc. to get the endorsements of influential social stars. Has anyone out there been approached by a company willing to pay for a little social love?

Posted by brian tiong at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Steve Rubel *) 

Hitwise dug into the the top 20 social networks and found that they grew by 11.5 percent from January to February 2007. They now account for 6.5 percent of all Internet visits. Myspace, an Edelman client, continues to be the big daddy. They have 8x the market share of their closes competitor - Facebook

Posted by brian tiong at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

A keynote speech delivered by senior Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco has got pundits suggesting that the Mii system found on the Nintendo Wii will evolve into a social networking phenomenon.

Miyamoto's words echo a speech given the PSFK New York Conference, gaming expert David Resenberg hinted that gaming would be the future of social networking. On Miyamoto's speech, TopTechNews reports:

"We've been working on this idea of 20 years and never been able to turn it into much of anything," he said. "The view was it would be very popular with creative artists. But the view was it was too complicated and would make most players frustrated."

...Miyamoto announced that the gaming company is planning to launch a Mii channel this year that will allow Wii users not only to share their avatars but also to vote for them in virtual popularity contests. Miyamoto's speech did not contain any specific information about when the channel will launch or what other features it might have.

World Wide Web - Can Nintendo's Mii Concept Kill MySpace?

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A new ad by H&M with Madonna launching her new range. Odd, weird, a little compelling:

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The 3rd MediaSnackers vodcast, which focuses on youth media, features a piece filmed at the Royal Television Society event on user-generated event. Attended by a variety of media industry professionals the youth journalist simply asked them one question: how will user-generated content affect your industry or role?

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Think movies are marketed heavily online? That's just special effects.

The 2006 numbers are in, and Hollywood has increased the percentage of its marketing budget that it spends online. Barely.

Hollywood studios, as tracked by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), spent 3.7% of their media ad dollars on the Internet.

Movie marketing spending changes from year to year, especially when TV upfront spending spikes. Marketing costs also vary from studio to studio because each one releases a different number of films each year. That said, movie marketing costs were actually down on average in 2006, to $34.5 million per film.

There are a number of reasons why Hollywood spends a smaller portion of its ad dollars on the Internet than the US overall, which eMarketer estimated at 5.7% on average in 2006.

One reason is comfort with the traditional TV-heavy approach. Another is that some movie marketers tend to think they are spending more online than they are, by including unmeasured online creative production costs. eMarketer has talked with two movie marketers off the record who thought their Internet ad spending was generally about 6% of total ad spending — more than twice as high as the MPAA's reported 2.6% for 2005.

Given Hollywood's dependence on young moviegoers, who are its most reliable seat-fillers, online ad spending increases are inevitable. eMarketer estimates that the percentage of its media budget that Hollywood spends online will reach 8% by 2010.

Besides the ongoing push to get more demographic data from Web sites to marketers, legal movie downloading services will help increase online movie ad spending. Movie marketers like to reach film fans while they're watching movies, as increasingly long pre-show ads prove. As such, Amazon Unbox, AppleTV and other downloading services will give them new verified targets for such marketing.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Rachel King via Business Week *) 

The online tools for building collective info banks are making deeper inroads in corporations and rewriting the rules of collaboration

In late 2005, Intel engineer Josh Bancroft needed a tool that his colleagues could use to share company information, from historical highlights to progress of internal projects. Inspired by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled by users around the world, he devised Intelpedia, an internal Web site that draws on the input of employees companywide.

Although it ruffled feathers—some employees don't like being edited by colleagues, especially those further down the org chart—Intelpedia caught on. In a little more than a year, Intelpedia has amassed 5,000 pages of content and garnered 13.5 million page views. "Employees can be frustrated that somebody else edited their work," says Jeff Moriarty, collaboration technical architect of Intel's information technology group. "It's a disruptive capability—it shakes things up."

Welcome to the world of corporate wikis. The sites that make it easy for people to add and edit information have revolutionized encyclopedia creation, evidenced by the growth of Wikipedia (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/7/04, "Wikis' Winning Ways"). And though they've been used by corporations for a few years, they're making deeper inroads lately and are gradually rewriting the rules of collaboration at companies as varied as Sony (SNE), Xerox (XRX), Disney (DIS), and Microsoft (MSFT). "If you did a comprehensive survey of Fortune 1,000 companies, you would probably find some sort of wiki in all of them," says Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business School professor specializing in technology and management operations.

More here 

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60% of MySpace users are now 25 or older, according to Hitwise. The stats, which come via eMarketer today, show that in May/June 2005, 45.5% of MySpace users were over 25, while that number had risen to 60.3% by February 2006.

We’re always fairly skeptical of these stats, since it’s virtually impossible to measure the age of social networkers with a high degree of accuracy. MySpace users are likely getting older, but whether those older members are quite as addicted as the youth demographic isn’t so clear. eMarketer adds that social networking is less popular than email, search, business, shopping, entertainment and porn - so no surprises there.

Meanwhile, JupiterResearch reports today that 48 percent of brand marketers will use “social marketing” in the next year, compared to 38 percent last year. That means more branded MySpace profiles, more YouTube contests and more “pull” marketing that engages users, rather than forcing ads down their throats.

See also: MySpace marketing, Most MySpace Users over 35?

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(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

Microsoft Dynamics Live, which just launched at the Convergence conference in San Diego, is a community for financial professionals. That’s interesting, since Reuters just announced that it too will launch a “MySpace for Finance“. Microsoft Dynamics Live is aimed at accountants, finance managers, finance staff and other people with adrenaline-filled jobs - they will, however, change the name of the community to something catchier fairly soon (based on their current naming system, it’ll be Microsoft Windows Live MSN Finance Dynamics Community Beta). Users don’t need to use Microsoft Dynamics apps.

Is it any good? Well, like aggreg8, Microsoft’s “MySpace for It Pros”, it’s just a bit odd. There are some notable social features - a Digg-like rating system for blog posts, tagging of your posts, forums and expert columns, but you get the sense that it just isn’t ready for prime time yet. Maybe Microsoft should acquire a white label social networking company so it can roll out more of these niche communities?

[via]

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(* Source: Misha Cornes *)

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(* Source: Dan Sicko *)

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(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

Albert Kugel thinks he's spotted a branded utility developed by Warner Bros for MySpace users. He says:

To promote upcoming fantasy megamovie “The 300,” Warner Bros. has maintained a MySpace page for the film. But in a twist, the movie sponsored a feature upgrade on the site that alerted users that they could now store 300 photos on their profile. Usually people are limited to just a couple dozen photos to upload....

This proves that branded utility works–though this should go without saying! When a brand is thinking about the little things, like adding value to your MySpace experience, it goes a long way.

Branded Utility and MySpace Movie Promo « a kugel:

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( Source: John Gartner *) 

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The folks at Ether knew this would happen eventually: Skype is challenging their model with the launch of Skype Prime, a service that lets you charge for audio and video calls via Skype. Ether’s pay-for-calls model, which works on normal phones, is a great utility for consultants (and bloggers who do consulting on the side), and they’ve had a long time to build the service and fix any kinks. I used it last year, and it was top notch.

However, a challenge from Skype could be troublesome for Ether. The service, which is paid for using your Skype credit, allows consultants to charge a one-off fee or by the minute. In a move that might actually signify the first worthwhile synergy between Skype and eBay (!), consultants are paid via Paypal. The percentage taken by Skype, however, is hefty: 30%. Last time I checked, Ether only took 15%.

That high fee will probably console Ether: Skype may be on every desktop, but are serious consultants really going to accept an extra 15% off their wages for routing the calls through Skype rather than a phone?

Skype Prime is currently only available on the Windows version, and both users need to download the latest version to make it work.

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(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

The BBC have launched a special channel for the BBC, BBC Worldwide and BBC World. Looks like you'll get behind the scenes, out-takes and additional content.

www.youtube.com/BBC

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(* Source: Misha Cornes *)

This week USAToday.com revealed a new look and a serious upgrade to its features.  Along with Web 2.0 standards like article tagging, tabbed browsing, and more white space, what you'll really notice are the new community components.

In a clear acknowledgement on the shifting balance between newspaper-as-authority and newspaper-as-content-curator, USAT offers:

• In-screen content feeds from other sources
• Reader comments highlighted against every article
• Digg-style voting for popular stories, with a directional stock indicator
• Photo uploads from citizen journalists
• User profile pages
• Recommend stories or comments to other readers

While they have clearly taken some pages from the New York Times playbook, the site goes even further in trying to redefine what a newspaper website can be.  In a letter to readers, the editorial staff lay out their ambitions clearly:

"[The redesign] is a mission recast for an era in which readers are inundated with information, have little allegiance to a single news source, struggle to assess the credibility of what they read and have the capacity to share their own insights with a wide audience."

While USAToday has never been considered a paper of record, it's very significant that America's most-read paper is seeking to democratize news.  When it comes to information consumption, the user is more in control than ever.

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(* Source: Sam Cannon*)

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(* Source: Digital Music News *) 

iTunes is one of the most popular applications ever created, but what is its global profile?  According to information recently published by the Digital Music News Research Group, iTunes installation levels are fairly evenly distributed across the globe.  For the month of January, the United States and Australia grabbed the strong installation levels, with 28.6% and 28.9% of total users, respectively, while other areas only fell slightly behind.  Specifically, Canada grabbed a 28.0% level, Europe pulled a 26.5% level, and Latin America drew a 23.7% level.  That is a fairly strong level of uniformity, and follows increased iPod sales across numerous regions outside of the United States.  It also positions Apple strongly in front of an increasingly digitized music audience, a transition that is rapidly happening throughout the world.

Other competing music applications were less evenly distributed.  For example, Windows Media Player pulled a 68.3% share in the United States, a 69.5% share in Europe, and a 75.0% share in Australia.  But other regions were less well represented, including Canada, which showed a 59.9% installation level, and Latin America, which dragged with a 48.0% pull.  Meanwhile, RealPlayer also experienced some regional differences.  In the United States, the application showed an installation level of 45.0%, while Europe pulled a 39.8% total.  But Canada showed a 34.5% total, while Australia and Latin America both fell shy of the 25% mark.  The data is part of the larger Digital Media Desktop Report, which tracks monthly installation levels across thousands of music applications using actual  system scans.

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Xplus is the online publishing platform of Nu Channel, a company established in 2003. Its shareholders include ID Tech Ventures, Legend Capital, China Merchants & Fortune Venture Investment Group, etc. Originally its main business is online emagazine. Although it has launched a platform for users to upload DIY magazines, but the whole UGC market in China still not matures enough for any serious business to rely on.

What caught our eyes is its new online newspaper publishing platform. It launched by the end of last year. It provides a new navigation style that combines traditional and online newspaper.

The advantage of traditional newspaper is how things are organized on one page, big headlines, fonts, images, etc. You can recognize important stuffs at a glance. Xplus epaper shows you an image of the hardcopy of the newspaper. Users can click the pixel area of any particular article and read it on the right side. Also it provides search, headline view of all the articles on one page and navigation to others pages, etc. In one word, it provides a way just like reading real newspaper and its content is more discoverable. What technology it uses? Seems Flash.

It also has some social features too. Such as people read this newspaper also read the following ones. People can leave comments on the newspaper, although not to each article, but the whole volume of one day. On its about page, they have an image which shows their business model. By showing newspapers in this way, they can track how users find interesting stuffs on a page and this data can be used by publishers to tweak their printing style, advertisers can adjust their strategy accordingly.

As the company said on a 5G seminar, newspapers will never die, and its evolution will last. The other big news about newspaper today is Usatoday’s relaunch with a bunch of social features.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Fred Guillet *) 

Royal Dutch Airline KLM has created a customer-centric online community catering to business-class passengers in Africa and China, according to Springwise.

KLM Club China and KLM Club Africa aim to enable and streamline contacts that would otherwise be made while waiting to board an aircraft, or over breakfast in business class. The clubs also offer a range of business and concierge services provided by partners; for example, a dedicated phone line gives details for translation agencies, legal bodies, hotels, and more.

Club China, the first to launch in June 2006, has signed up over 3,000 members so far, 40 percent of whom log on at least once a month.

Travel destinations are not the only basis for forming such clubs. KLM is also considering lifestyle, with its Flying Blue Golf Club is the first such effort.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Steve Rubel *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Steve Rubel *) 

USA Today is unveiling a massive overhaul of their web site that adds a number of great features. The notable additions include: reader comments on every story, the ability to create a profile page that can be shared with others, citizen journalist photos, story tagging and digg-like recommendation buttons.

This is exactly the direction USA Today needs to follow. However, it doesn't go quite far enough. In addition to building these features, the media need to bridge their communities to the ones where we already spend our time. RSS, widgets and embedded content would help here. For example, USA Today should let us add our blog, Twitter or Facebook feeds or even embedded YouTube vids to our profile pages.

Connecting communities is so easy today with web services and it would go a long way toward making the their site - or any site for that matter - stronger. Hopefully we'll see this happen soon.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Andy Kazeniac *)

Not many people will be surprised to hear that the giants of the online video market are here to stay. Six out of the top seven video sites in January were the usual suspects: YouTube and the major search properties’ video sites. There was only one site without a big name that snuck in among the big boys, and it actually has a stupid name: StupidVideos.com

As impressive as it is that StupidVideos.com came in sixth in total sessions and seventh in unique visitors, some other metrics show an even more interesting, stickier picture of the site. StupidVideos is the runaway leader in page views per session with a massive 43, which is 74% more than Break.com in second place.

StupidVideos excels again in the number of sessions per unique visitor, out-pacing all other sites in the top ten and trailing only Compfused.com (the 16th overall site).

Other Highlights:

• YouTube is way out in front of second-place MySpace, with 98% more unique visitors and 165% more sessions
• When combined, Google Video and YouTube had well over 1 billion sessions, which is 230% more than number two MySpace
• 19 of the top 20 sites had more than 1 million sessions last month
• 15 out of the top 20 sites had over one million unique visitors

The big sites still have a strangle-hold on the market, but with StupidVideos and Compfused making strong showings, there is reason to think they’ll stick around.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of all the MySpace add-ons, it seems like the music category is filling up the fastest. The latest to join the long, long line of MySpace music players is BeatPort, an online music store that specializes in dance music and remixes. They’ve just announced the launch of the Beatport player and a site, based entirely in Flash, to promote it. Users can create widgets from Beatport’s Top Downloads, a certain genre of music (mainly dance), one of the 10,000 electronic/dance artists in their store, or from one the 4,000 labels they work with.

In short, Beatport is targeting a niche - it’s simply seeking further distribution for all the dance tracks in its store. The player looks ok, albeit a little bulky and lacking customization options. I actually think every music store should roll these out if they have the right licenses to do so. The obvious next step is to integrate an affiliate scheme, but sites like MySpace prohibit ads on widgets, which would presumably include sales.

So any store that wanted to do this would need to approach the social networks with an offer of rev share - something that’s likely to be rebuffed by MySpace due to their Snocap deal. In truth, only Snocap is correctly aligned to combine affiliate marketing with music sales - and if they did implement such a system, it could spread like wildfire. Unless, that is, one of the other major social networks (Bebo? Facebook?) sees the opportunity here. Maybe Facebook could create an iTunes widget, or Bebo could figure something out with Amazon.

Related:

-Faces.com Relaunches, Adds MySpace MP3 Player
-Finetune Launches MySpace Music Player
-ProjectOpus Releases MySpace Music Player
-Sonific’s Music Player For MySpace and Blogs

Posted by brian tiong at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Pete Cashmore *) 

The process is best described by the video below, but here’s the short version: visit orb.com/myspace to download the MySpace version of the Orb software, then select the music files you want and click the “share” button in the Orb software interface to get the embed code. It works on Piczo, hi5, Friendster and blogs, but the prime target here is most definitely MySpace. You can see the widget in action on the MyCasting page.

I’ve no idea if that’s legal or not, but it’s certainly something there’s a demand for. The only question I have is whether users will actually download software to reap these benefits: in the past, our experience has been that downloadable apps don’t get much traction with the youth demographic. That said, perhaps this offering is compelling enough to overcome that hurdle.

Rivals would presumably include downloadable apps from MOG and iLike, which let you post a list of your recently listened-to tracks to social networks and blogs (last time I checked, none of these actually let your visitors listen to the tracks). And of course there are the growing ranks of MySpace music players to contend with. We’ll be tracking the Orb widget over at Mashable Labs and perhaps we’ll revisit that market later this year.

Related:

-Faces.com Relaunches, Adds MySpace MP3 Player
-Finetune Launches MySpace Music Player
-ProjectOpus Releases MySpace Music Player
-Sonific’s Music Player For MySpace and Blogs

Posted by brian tiong at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Pete Cashmore *) 

The eMarketer data pretty much speaks for itself, and it seems to gel with our assumptions: college kids prefer Facebook, while MySpace is more of a teen hangout, even though its mainstream news coverage has resulted in plenty of adults signing up.

That said, we should always take these surveys with a pinch of salt: how come Pink is the New Blog, a BlogSpot blog with seemingly not a great deal of traffic compared to giants like YouTube, is the favorite website among 7% of girls in that age group?

Posted by brian tiong at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

Mobuzz.TV has a special feature where they interview tech entrepreneur Joi Ito about World of Warcraft. Joi gives some insight into who plays, why they play and how personal traits such as leadership in the real world translate badly into the virtual world.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jeff Squires *)

Dan Pinch points us toward a great new service that lets people sample new products at discounted prices.  Developed by Cape Town trends blog Cherryflava, Cherrypicka links up companies who want to market something new and connects them with consumers who review the product in exchange for a hefty discount.  Part shop/part blog, the new service is still in beta, but is already offering products ranging from new shoe brands to albums by local bands.

Cherrypicka

Posted by brian tiong at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Piers Fawkes *) 

User-generated haven MySpace recently made the bold move to stop Widgets from running on user pages. Users were adding widgets to their gaudy pages to play songs, videos, the weather. A few weeks ago, MySpace decided to block all widgets that weren't MySpace widgets - maybe as a step towards commercializing the content on the user generated pages.

What the step did is restrict the freedom and anarchy that fueled the boom of MySpace. Will users flee from the service?

Fast Company blog says:

For users who don't own a personal domain or blog, MySpace (despite its privacy issues) is a great way for them to share their identities and personal tastes with both offline and online friends. Besides all of the cool bands there, the personalization is one of the big draws for the millions of teens who hang out there. But lately, it's becoming more difficult to use third party services on MySpace... The potential of users becoming frustrated enough with MySpace's blockage of widget providers to the point of leaving the service could become inevitable at some point.

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch says that MySpace had got rather annoyed that, gawd-forbid, people were making money off their site with these widgets. MA says:

"It’s clear that MySpace isn’t happy with the fact that other services are building their business on the back of their massive user numbers - Peter Chernin, the COO of News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) said as much late last year and specifically named YouTube, Flickr and Photobucket as services that were “really driven off the back of MySpace.”

MySpace

Posted by brian tiong at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Adrian  Lai *) 

On the heels of the Myspace widgets fiasco, Lifefilter points us towards "Streaming Video Hacks:" Applications which allow users to personalize their videos with effects, animations, graphics, and text.

The example provided at Lifefilter definitely needs a lot more work (and maybe also a name change). But with our increasing options for video sharing and online editing, maybe it's a sign of things to come?

Posted by brian tiong at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: David Feldt *)

Posted by brian tiong at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)