(* Source: Mashable *)

It's come to the end of 2007 and i've been watching this social media scene for the past year and a half since I started this blog.  The Mashable 'Judge Choice' winners on this social networking/ web2.0 list are pretty much the word.

Happy Christmas & a Merry New Year to everyone as I start my safari adventure today in Kenya for the next 2 weeks till the start of next year.  This will be my final blog post for 2007.  See you all next year.   

Adam says... 

Here are the 13 winners in each respective category of the Judge’s Choice component of the awards:

Mainstream and Large Social Networks

Applications and Widgets

Social News and Social Bookmarking

Social Search

Sports and Fitness

Photo Sharing

Video Sharing

Start Pages

Places and Events

Music

Social Shopping

Mobile

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

A Big Thanks to Our Blog Partners

Techdirt
/Message
Blognation
Andy Beard
Collective Thoughts
Gadgetell
Watch Mojo
How to Split an Atom
Luca Filigheddu.com
Marketing Pilgrim
Pulse 2.0
ParisLemon
UnBlogged (Spanish)
Stuff We Like
Kineda
Crenk
WebAppers
RotorBlog
Small Business Trends
Skype Journal
BuzzMag (Czech)
Disruptive Conversations
Akimoto@CybozuLabs (Japanese)
BlogOnExpo
Under the Radar
Alarm:Clock
901am
LiewCF
Social Networking Watch
Download Squad

Posted by brian tiong at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

It has been several months since we last mentioned Zude, the very ambitious project from 5g for creating your own websites and merging your various social networking accounts. A new feature from Zude is working off an interesting trend that’s taking shape in multiple ways across the social media web.

Called “Follow Conversation,” Zude’s new feature is essentially a new way of organizing your guestbook comments. It’s very similar to the Facebook Wall-to-Wall capabilities, in that it’s a commenting system between select people where the entire conversation can be tracked. Zude’s Follow Conversation feature can be extended to any number of people, and it becomes a public/private way in which to actually keep track of all those comments left on your profile page.

It may seem silly to some–why not send a private message or an email blast to an entire group, or better yet, start a group? The thing about Facebook Wall-to-Wall and Zude’s Follow Conversation is that it gives you the option of tracking public messages for any reason. Should you happen to leave a message on another user’s profile and they respond to your message in the same way, there’s no contextual relevancy for that reply message unless you return to their profile and read your initial message (or if you happen to have a really good memory).

With Follow Conversation, you can form very focused commenting conversations with several users that respond to a single public message left on your profile’s guestbook. It’s like threading guestbook comments between users, or beginning a group discussion board. The use of the technology isn’t new, but the organization of such comments is somewhat novel, given the evolution of social networking’s public face of user profiles.

Posted by brian tiong at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Michael Arrington *) 

Another refreshing 3rd party player that is not in the music industry trying to move the dinosaur forward.  Will we see the next iTunes? Maybe not but helping artists connect to their communities and making some money in the process is for sure the right direction to head. 

Michael says... 

The signs are everywhere that a revolution is taking place in music. DRM is history, the price of music is falling towards zero (and sometimes even free isn’t enough to slow piracy), and even big music sites like Yahoo are beginning to break ranks with the RIAA and labels.

But Amazon may be doing more than anyone else to change the way music is discovered, promoted and sold. Not only do they have a music store that only sells DRM-free music, but they are experimenting with startups who are trying to break the stranglehold that labels have on discovering, promoting and marketing new artists. These startups are giving artists a different path to find their fans. And Amazon is helping them.

Today Amazon announced that it is partnering with a European startup called SellABand and will sell music from SellABand artists. We first covered SellABand in August 2006 - unknown artists upload music to the site and ask fans to chip in $10 if they like what they hear. Once the band gets to $50,000 they’ve proven themselves, and they get to record a CD in a professional studio. Each fan gets a limited edition CD. If the artist doesn’t reach $50,000, the fans can get their money back or give it to another artist.

Earlier this year we noted that the model seems to work. Today, more than 6,000 artists have uploaded music to the site, and a lucky few have been picked by fans to record albums. The top artists will now have their music sold on Amazon UK as well, making the model even more attractive.

See our coverage of Strayform, a different startup with a variation on the SellABand business model.

Amazon also invested in a different startup in the music space - Amie Street. Amie Street is a company I have long admired - we first covered it in July 2006, and last year I added it to my list of “web 2.0 companies I couldn’t live without.”

Amie Street has a model for selling non-DRM music that simultaneously earns artists money and ranks artists by popularity of downloads. All songs start at free. As users begin to download a song, the price rises steadily until it reaches $0.99. So the more a song costs, the more popular it is. Most of the muck is filtered out by $0.25 or so, and the site has some really excellent music. Even some well known artists have tried it out.

Amie street says that the average first time purchase on the site is close to $10. Members spend an average of nearly 8 minutes on the site each visit, listening to some of the 850,000 songs available for download. They also recently inked a deal with CDBaby, where those artists can get their music ranked on Amie Street. And they just opened a Japanese version of the site that is selling anime as well as music.

OurStage, a Boston based startup we recently covered, has yet another way of ranking indie bands.

What’s similar about SellABand and Amie Street is that both startups remove the need for a label to “discover” new artists and promote them in the hope that they sell CDs. Instead, the crowd is deciding what they like and showing it by donating to the artist (SellABand) or downloading songs (Amie Street). If either succeeds, they’ll have Amazon at least partially to thank.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

 
Author Nick Carr is someone I used to love to hate. He wrote blog posts that I strongly disagreed with - such as this one about the long tail of blogging, and another arguing that Web 2.0 had serious faults. We’ve had numerous direct disagreements as well - he’s called me smug and worse, and I’ve fought back.

But over time I’ve grown to respect his writing and thought process, even though he still takes the occasional mild shot at our posts. The guy just writes really, really well.

His first book, Does IT Matter?, helped change the way companies and vendors thought about technology and its place in the corporate entity. Now he’s preparing to publish his second book, The Big Switch. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

I have an early copy of the book. It’s timely and well written, arguing that computing services are turning into a utility, much as the electric grid emerged a hundred years ago. He argues that society will change drastically as a result.

I asked Carr if we could give away a dozen autographed copies of the book before it hits the market, and he agreed. If you’d like one, please leave a comment below. All you have to do is make sure to include your real email address in the comment form so that we can contact you. Tell us something interesting about yourself and why you want the book. Agree or disagree with something Nick has said on his blog (the first two links in the top paragraph above are easy targets). Or just have a good rant. The twelve most interesting responses will get the book shipped out to them asap.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Nick Wingfield *) 

Sounds like eBay all over again, only this time... all the goods are virtual and with the estimates and predictions that 80% of the online population will gave a virtual self by the year 2010, I guess this is the new limitless legal marketplace that all gamers were looking for. Welcome eBay2.0.  

A start-up plans to help game companies get a grip on the booming illicit market for virtual goods, including everything from currencies to magical swords that help players advance in online games.

Live Gamer Inc. is developing an online marketplace where players of Internet games will be able to safely trade in virtual goods, a business that is often plagued by fraud. In the biggest departure from current methods of trading in virtual goods, Live Gamer says it will only allow trading of items with the blessing of game publishers. Live Gamer is working with Sony Corp.'s Sony Online Entertainment division, Funcom GmbH, Ping0 Interactive Ltd. and other online-game operators to integrate its trading system with their titles.

Live Gamer, based in New York, is attempting to tap into the thriving economies that have emerged around online games, often without the consent of publishers. Within fantasy games like Vivendi SA's "World of Warcraft" and Sony's "Everquest II," players can achieve status and advancement for their in-game characters by acquiring powerful weapons, armor and game currency. But many people prefer to purchase those virtual assets with real money instead of putting in the long hours of game playing required to earn them.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Neil Perkin *) 

"Communities already exist and the question these magnates should ask instead is how they can help them to do what they want to do."

A statement that is true and close to my marketing heart and one that I have been preaching for the year.  Once brand/ marketing managers and understand this point, the community actions that follow will make a lot more (common) sense.  Good stuff Neil.   

Posted by brian tiong at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Dan Neumann *)

Ah... it's good to see 2D black & white barcodes moving into the airline space in the US and Canada. Saving trees makes sense.  Colorzip, a company I consulted for late last year has 3D color barcodes that have launched in Singapore.  How are we doing, Andrew?

Posted by brian tiong at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Alex Chitu *)

They're coming and it will be difficult to get away without having one. Google Profiles will be integrated in most Google services so you have a coherent identity and a simple way to manage your contacts.

"A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you're all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like."

Until now, you could create profiles in Blogger, orkut, Google Groups, Google Co-op and all of them could contain different information. You could also add photos in Gmail, Google Talk and orkut, so the situation started to become confusing.

The new Google profiles are already available in Shared Stuff, Google Maps, Google Reader and will be added to other web applications. For example, in Google Maps you'll find the link to your profile at the top of the page.

Profiles are public and contain basic information about yourself: a nickname (the real name is displayed only to your contacts), your occupation, your location, a list of links, a photo and a short description. They are embedded as iframes in pages that showcase user-generated content (personalized maps, shared bookmarks).


It's not a stretch to see that these profiles are the perfect host for your activity streams and your public activities could become a part of the profile (uploading photos to a public album, bookmarking web pages, posting a new blog post). It's basically FrindFeed's widget that can be contemplated at Paul Buchheit's blog.

A side-effect of the public availability of your profile is that people can find it. "Can people do a Google search for my name and find this profile? It depends. If you put your full name in the Nickname field, pages on which your profile appears may be returned as results by Google." You can already find more than 100 profiles attached to Google Maps pages. Maybe Google will even create a directory for profiles and start to suggest friends based on personal descriptions, location and activity streams.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a Blackberry addict, and increasingly a user of Twitter, I was pretty pumped to learn about TwitterBerry via Download Squad this afternoon. As the name suggests, it’s a version of Twitter optimized for the Blackberry, and it is very well executed.

To get started, I downloaded TwitterBerry over the air (OTA) by going to http://www.orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/ on the mobile browser of my Blackberry Pearl. The download took only a few seconds, and then asked for my Twitter credentials. You can also download using a USB cable if you prefer.

Once that was done, I had access to all of the main components of the Twitter interface: the ability to post an update, see any replies to me, and also check out my timeline, friend timeline, and the public timeline. All of these come with user pictures right next to the respective updates. When posting an update via TwitterBerry, the program will even conveniently tell you how many characters you have remaining.

I check Facebook status updates all the time using their Blackberry app, and I imagine TwitterBerry will ultimately lead to a similar addiction for me. Kudos to the developers of this very simple yet powerful app.

See Also - Twits to Go: Top 12 Twitter Apps for Your Phone

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

(* Source: eMarketer *) 

“But if social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations the flow of advertising dollars will turn into a flood,”  I like that word flood and it's not just online youth that are engaged.  Most people I know on Myspace/ Facebook are in their 30s. 

How much can social networks net?

Posted by brian tiong at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mashables *) 

I got sent this by my friend Simon last week and thought nothing of it and sent it on to a couple fo friends (you know who you are little elfs).  It just shows that creative 'avatar yourself' content is still pretty compelling & viral in this web1.0 email space and with a little contribution from web2.0.  Wonder how it will be like next year when virtual worlds take more stage space.  Elf Youself 3.0? Can't wait... maybe.

 
OfficeMax got it right last year when they launched the Elf Yourself campaign during the holiday season. The site that lets you turn yourself into a dancing elf was a big hit, and OfficeMax has brought it back for an encore this year. Hitwise reports that Elf Yourself has become the top-ranked site in the Humor category, and has held its ranking for the last three weeks. An 89% increase in traffic took place for the week ending December 8, 2007, from the prior week.

What’s interesting is the demographic that’s found this site to be most amusing. Thanks to the viral nature of email, and office workers being the target demographic, 62% of the traffic to Elf Yourself for the week ending December 8 came from web-based email services and the majority of the site’s visitors were aged 55 and over.

Looks like plenty of employees are staying on task while working in the office this holiday season. If your employees are going to waste time on the web, wouldn’t you want it to be for a dancing elf? Get in the holiday spirit! Is this the ultimate viral marketing campaign? The quick (once you get past the initial load time) and easy custom options make for high user engagement, and you even get OfficeMax coupons and promos when you’re done.

So what’s with the viral essence of email marketing? It still works beautifully, when you’ve got a compelling piece of content. The easiest way to share things with friends (email) has tapped 62% of the incoming traffic for Elf Yourself, with 35% coming from Yahoo alone. 19% hails from Windows Live, while MySpace and Facebook lent 5% and 2% respectively. Is this promising for Yahoo or Google, considering their evolving hopes for Inbox 2.0? It sure doesn’t hurt.

But what about OfficeMax? Does this type of marketing convert into good customers? This is the second year that OfficeMax has rolled out the Elf Yourself campaign, so it must be doing some good. Others have taken to this concept for temporary promos as well–SimpsonizeMe, for instance. Even YouTube is hoping to get a viral boost out of the holiday season, with templated sending options for video clips. See here for more holiday fun.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

We haven’t seen Nike get too heavily involved with online virtual “avatar hubs”, but its latest campaign gets pretty wrapped up in Zwinky, taking a few star athletes along for the ride. A new challenge launched by IAC’s Zwinky and Nike invites users to engage in the site in order to get their chance to meet a star athlete, a la Zwinky avatar.

The Field Reporter challenge requires the user to know a thing or two about a particular star athlete, which includes Maria Sharpova, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, LeBron James and Abbey Wambach. If you pass the first round of questions, then you’ll still need to solve the clues that will lead you to your star athlete. Find them, and then cart them off to a virtual press release in your stretch Hummer, where you’ll also get the opportunity to ask them a question. It looks like you only get one shot to ask something of your star athlete, so make it good. You’ll also get some Nike gear to take home.

Seeing virtual events or brand marketing inside virtual worlds is nothing new–the trend grew quite rampant earlier this year with th sudden growth of Second Life. What often differs in these smaller, temporary campaigns, is the level of integration for the users. Depending on the brand, the type of campaign, and the long-term goals for that brand, we’ll see different levels of integration into the virtual world. The Nike campaign doesn’t seem to be looking for a virtual way to market its products for long-term use on Zwinky, though this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *) 

It’s the end of 2007 now and this time last year, I thought the social networking large network battle was over when Myspace got over a 100 million users. As soon as i thought that, Facebook opened their platform and all of a sudden, it was the golden child of social networking and it some case invented spam 2.0 with vampire bites. It hasn’t got as many users as Myspace but its sure valued more by the market.

Reading this article now confirms that these social networking battles are far from over and the one that manages to aggregate the community of both users and developers from both their own networks and also manage to draw users from other social networks may be the eventual winner. Widgets are now the star players of the game.

Erick says... 

Let’s call a spade a spade here. When the third largest social network in the U.S. announces a platform for social applications that mirrors Facebook’s and appeals to Facebook developers, it is a snub to Google. For all the promise of Google’s competing OpenSocial platform (which Bebo is also supporting), it is just not ready yet. Bebo’s embrace of Facebook says a lot about the true state of competition between Google and Facebook. The fact that Bebo will have Facebook apps running on Bebo before OpenSocial apps indicates where its priorities lie.

When OpenSocial launched, we suggested that Facebook might have no choice but to join it as well, given all the initial support from other Websites and application developers that Google was able to muster. But this move suggests otherwise. Facebook is not going to join OpenSocial unless it has to. In fact, Facebook actually helped Bebo with this effort, and for good reason.

How does Facebook crush OpenSocial? By helping to make Facebook applications easily portable to other social networks. It would rather open up its own application platform to other social networks and compete head-to-head with OpenSocial. That’s the game plan. Facebook already has all the developers anyway. This is Facebook’s game to lose. Round Two goes to Facebook. But can it get LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, and others—some of whom have opened up their own platforms to outside developers—to also play ball?

(Read our on-the-scene coverage with full details about Bebo’s platform here).

Update: In fact, what I suggested above is exactly what Facebook is doing. (See this post on the Facebook developers blog). And this was just added to its wiki for developers:

In the next step of opening up Facebook Platform, Facebook is now making its platform architecture available as a model for other social sites. Facebook will even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags for use by other platforms, which means that the 100,000 developers currently building Facebook applications can make their applications available on other social sites with no extra work.

It is mano-a-mano, folks.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Scott Gilbertson *) 

A social network showdown is coming. LinkedIn, which aims to track your business and professional connections, has rolled out a new developer platform and already the majority of the web press is comparing LinkedIn's efforts Facebook's platform. It's a fair comparison, but there's one key difference between the two — LinkedIn's platform is actually useful.

Where Facebook’s platform provides a proprietary programming language for developers to build applications that run inside the site (so you can send you friends a fresh pair of virtual diapers or whatever), LinkedIn has created a platform in the sense of what the word used to mean — a way of mixing, mashing, repurposing and sharing your data. Think Flickr, not Facebook.

The LinkedIn platform, known as the LinkedIn Intelligent Application Platform, consists of two parts, a way for developers to build application that run inside your LinkedIn account (via OpenSocial) and the far more useful and interesting part — ways to pull your LinkedIn data out and use it elsewhere.

As an example of the second half of LinkedIn’s new platform, the company has announced a partnership with Business Week which will see LinkedIn data pulled into the Business Week site. For instance, if you land on a Business Week article about IBM, the site will then look at your LinkedIn profile (assuming you’ve given it permission to do so) and highlight the people you know at IBM. Call it six degrees of Business Week, but it does something Facebook has yet to do — it connects your data with the larger web.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Duncan Riley *)  

Picture and file hosting has established credentials as a business idea. As the cost of storage has rapidly decreased as social networking has boomed picture hosting has been a hot vertical. There’s no shortage of sites in this space, and easy money to be had. At the very top Photobucket was acquired by MySpace for $250 million. To date free file hosting sites have been just that: free file hosting where essentially you get a service for free and the operators keep the profits from the site. Shareapic wants to change that.

Shareapic’s model is simple. It offers the same basic service other free hosting sites offer; upload your pic, get an embed code then display the pic on your site of choice. But Shareapic believes that their success in hosting files and profiting from this should be rewarded. Every registered Shareapic user gets a cut of any advertising revenues Shareapic makes. Primarily this isn’t based on advertising revenue made against each image (although users can add their Adsense code for some revenue via Google), payments are calculated based on image views. Their example:

If in month one Shareapic calculates to distribute $1,000 to our members, we will first tally up the total number of image views for that month. Using these two numbers we can determine the respective payouts for each user. If there were a total of 500,000 image views for the month, image views will equate to $0.002 each (1,000 divided by 500,000), or $2 per 1000 image views. If you’re posting lots of pics in forums, MySpace or eBay, you can see how easy it is to earn quite a bit of money!

Perhaps the only draw back is that Shareapic doesn’t disclose the revenue share; it may lack transparency but it’s still more than other sites pay in this space, which is zero.

We’ve covered two other companies that paid members to participate today, AGLOCO which went to the deadpool, and Capazoo, both of which had dubious multi-level marketing schemes (some would suggest pyramid schemes) and usually come with a catch. By comparison Shareapic has an honest model, so honest in fact that it should be the way of the future. What Shareapic does is recognize that users of a free service provide a financial benefit to the provider, and that in return profits provided by user participation should be shared (at least in part) back. Imagine the hours and hours put in by Facebook users or users of other sites; they may be free services but the providers benefit from each participant, and in the case of Facebook’s valuation, greatly. Expect to see more sites like Shareapic who value their users to the point that they offer financial rewards in return; it’s not only a smart marketing pitch it’s also fair recognition of your time and your effort in a market where many have business models that expect a free ride from their users. Build it and they will come may well be replaced with reward them for their time by sharing profits, and we’ll all be the winners from that.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

In case you didn’t already think of MySpace as a launch pad for musicians, MySpace UK has launched Earwig, a custom profile page specifically for promoting up and coming bands and musicians. The purpose is to offer a centralized location for hand-picked talent. Earwig seems to be an editorial section for labels wanting extra marketing. Is this more useful than MySpace TV’s front page?

If you’re looking for a “friend” approach to staying caught up with what the folks at MySpace UK like to listen to, then add Earwig as a friend. This isn’t the first time MySpace has branched an independent entity for promoting a particular aspect of its larger appeal, and as music is its core competency, a good portion of these branches have been very much tied to music.

What Earwig looks to be striving towards is a recommended look at the troves of content that goes through MySpace. Similar to sites like DailyTube which use editors to grab the good stuff for you so you don’t have to dig through the longtail of media on sites like YouTube, Earwig is MySpace’s own answer for digging through its own longtail. Other larger media companies have been taking similar steps, including Sony’s Crackle, which has launched a similar network for its promoted minisodes.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins *) 

Earlier this year, YouTube released a way to finally make a bit of cash off this internet video thing with the “Partner Program.” The program was widely panned for a number of reasons: CPC were thought to perform far inferior to CPM, and only a select few were being allowed into the program.

Now that folks know they can make substantial piles of cash monetizing with CPC ads with Revver and other places, folks have been clamoring to get into the limited beta program. In response to the overwhelming negative coverage of the fact that the Partner Program was limited to an ambiguous group of “YouTube Elites,” YouTube has created an expanded version of the program.

This applications process for this version is open to, and I’m quoting here: “anyone living in the United States or Canada.” On face value, it at least sounds less ambiguous.

Problem is, while you may be free to apply, those allowed to actually join will be limited to “the users who have built a significant audience on YouTube (as measured by video views, subscribers, etc.) and who consistently comply with the YouTube Terms of Use.” The program, as of the time of this writing, only has 100 extra users that have been accepted.

So, to recap and translate the YouTube-speak: “In response to the allegations that regular uploaders felt miffed they weren’t accepted into our limited beta, we’re having a limited beta.”

I’m really starting to wonder what’s going on over there at YouTube. I can’t tell if they just think we’re all stupid, or if they are actually, in fact, stupid. Phrasing this as if it’s opening it up to the wide wide world of the YouTube userbase while boasting of an additional 100 members to the program looks rather foolish in the face of the millions of users that YouTube presently has.

On that same note, I understand the legal need to mention that a user needs to comply with the Terms of Service to maintain the ability to stay within the YouTube Partner Program, but it probably wasn’t the best decision to include that in the “Wow, We’re Announcing New Awesome” verbiage. The first thing that comes to mind when they mention the Terms of Use is the shifting definition of what that means, and the many users world-wide that have their free speech curtailed as a matter course.

Regardless, YouTube is going about this thing all wrong. As a result, I predict that the level of serious producers that use YouTube as their primary distribution platform will go down. The strategy they want their users to employ seems to be: “Build it, get the people coming, and then if you’re lucky we’ll give you some cash.” That’s completely backwards. I understand how the behemoth can think this way - they’ve a glut of advertising inventory. The problem is that for serious producers, there are many other ponds to go swim in that will produced guaranteed revenue. You won’t perhaps get all the perks of the huge YouTube community by focusing on them exclusively. On the other hand, you won’t lose revenue by spending months building up a significant sticky audience only to later find out you may be turned down from participation in the Partner Program.

My advice to serious producers? Stick to respectable distribution methods with a history of paying their producers: BlinkX, Revver and Blip. Use YouTube as a promotions vehicle to funnel folks back to distribution methods with monetization on it. That means turning off viral features, and tagging your YouTube uploads with URL stamps leading back to your website or podcast feed.

Perhaps when YouTube gets their ad program figured out, I can change my advice a bit.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Microsoft has started to ramp up its MSN Mobile portal, rolling out ads and additional content for users. The portal already had search tools, quick access to various applications and mobile content for your phone. Now there are additional content like options for purchasing movie tickets, ringtones, wallpaper, games and video clips for mobile users.

The expanded portal will first launch in the U.S. and branch out from there. After the success of the FOX Sports Channel on MSN Mobile, it’s clear that more niche content will make the mobile portal more attractive to a wider range of users. This seems like a good opportunity for more integration of recently acquired MusiWave as well.

Having added in more content, the mobile portal is now primed for advertisers. Banner and text ads are being rolled out on MSN Mobile. Initial advertisers include Paramount Pictures and Jaguar Cars. Microsoft isn’t the only one building out its mobile portal. Every other major player, from Yahoo to AOL to Google is doing the same. In terms of direct competition, AOL’s been heavily layering the ads as of late, and Google will probably have an even stronger push once Android is completed.

So Microsoft, which has a mobile platform as well, will also be able to hold initiatives on both fronts. Mobile advertising overall has been seeing a good amount of development as well, with AdMob playing up its device-specific programs and a renewed attention towards mobile content (games, etc.) that can be leveraged for advertising as well.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Adam Ostrow *) 

Imeem has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group that will allow users of the social networking site to stream full-length tracks and videos for free. The company now has deals with all four major record labels (EMI, Sony BMG, and Warner Music being the other three previously signed agreements) to stream music and videos on an ad-supported basis, becoming the first company in the space to do so.

Despite all of the deals and new content, Imeem’s traffic seems to have fallen off since earlier this year, from a peak of 5 million visitors in April to 2.37 million in November according to Compete.com:

For its part, Imeem now claims 19 million users, up from the 16 million they reported in May.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mark Hendrickson *) 

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, is trying to establish itself as a better destination with a stronger presence on the web.

As a better destination, LinkedIn would experience higher levels of user engagement and more page views, which in turn would translate into greater advertising revenue. With a stronger presence, the site would grab mind share away from rising competitor Facebook, which has already become a household name for many.

A new homepage, with a focus on providing users with reasons to return more often, is under development and meant to turn LinkedIn into a better destination. A “beta” version of this homepage will go live for a subset of LinkedIn users this Monday. The three homepage components meant to entice users back to the site include on-site messaging, news articles from around the web, and “network updates” (i.e. a news feed). On-site messaging is not new but will now enjoy prime real estate on the homepage, with the inbox sitting on the top of everything else. The news feed, which will be given third greatest prominence, will display the network activity of people in your network.

Most notable is a new feature, discovered by Erick last week, that will display headlines from around the web which may be of professional interest to you. Unlike the early version of this system that Erick stumbled upon, the most recent iteration of LinkedIn’s news aggregator - the one featured on this beta homepage - will not require any manual training. It will rely on its own algorithms to automatically determine what you may be interested in reading, in part using the history of what other people in your network have read to make its selection (LinkedIn is not disclosing what service it actually uses to aggregate all the headlines in the first place). News articles will be filterable by topics such as: most read, company, competitors, and industry.

More interesting to me is LinkedIn’s attempt to build a stronger presence on the web by providing an API, previously disclosed but until now without any real details available. There’s still not a lot of information, but the company has disclosed that it is actively working with select group of partners to develop applications with the new API. BusinessWeek, the only known partner, will implement a few features using LinkedIn’s API, as shown in the screenshot to the right. The API will basically allow BusinessWeek to draw from the information in users’ profiles and associate it with the content in its articles. One way to do this will be to display, via a popup, how many people in a company are directly connected to a user or in the extended network or geographical region of a user.

LinkedIn hasn’t disclosed exactly when the API will be readily available but the company does say that the API will eventually be accessible to any and all developers sometime in the next year. The API will provide access to information in profiles, connections, search, network updates, and the “company insider” (its news article service).

Posted by brian tiong at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *) 

We’ve covered a variety of casual gaming sites before on TechCrunch. It’s a hot vertical, particular since the rise of the Nintendo’s Wii console proved that there was a huge willing market for games that don’t need a 4 hour long instruction session from a gaming geek.

South Korean company NHN comes with strong credentials. The company is claimed to be the be “the leading internet company” in its home market and has a huge gaming presence in Japan and China, with the company claiming 170 million registered gamers in China. Its US arm NHN USA Inc launched the ijji.com gaming portal in 2006, and since this time its grown to high levels, with Alexa counting the site at 580, but notably 256th spot in the US (yes yes, Alexa cant be trusted etc.., but sites don’t get this high on Alexa without some traffic).

Ijji.com offers a variety of games including traditional titles such as Poker and Chess, and then site specific games including a warfare game by the name of Soldier Front, a shooter called Gunz and a couple of other games. I’d read about their driving game “Drift City” on Something Awful this weekend so this was my starting point.

Casual Gaming

Most people would presume that casual gaming would equate to quick to play, but with Drift City the word casual is someone’s idea of a joke. First up was the site telling me that I needed to be using IE 7 to play the game (no mention of Windows, but that’s a given), so I switched across to a virtual machine running Windows to get started.

The next hurdle: a 700mb + download. Why you need IE7 when the game runs on its own software is beyond me. Ijji.com also scrimps on a decent server to handle downloads; I may only have a 2mb cable connection but the 700mb took nearly 4 hours to download via a Windows installer program that gave no indication of download speeds or how long it would take. The only option on the download was to turn off P2P sharing, which warns you that if you turn it off your download will be slower, how wasn’t explained but it never takes me that long to download something off BitTorrent for example so perhaps others weren’t using this option.

Then there is a number of screens during installation, and it attempts to install something called XFire, a gamers communication device that isn’t necessary for the game, I hit cancel on this one and finally got to the game itself.

Game play

This is a free game so you wouldn’t expect top level graphics, and you don’t get them. It feels a little bit like the classic arcade game Outrun, which if you’re old enough to remember the game isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

You start with a standard car which you can drive around a city scape which is apparently on some sort of mining focused island in the North Pacific (I tuned out during the intro screens). Like say Second Life or similar virtual worlds you can communicate with other members. Driving itself is as hard as using your arrow keys, and all cars are automatic so there’s no gear shifting. Control gives your car “boost” powered which as the name suggests makes the car go faster, and SHIFT allows you to drift around corners ala The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.

Beginners are presented with tasks that involve driving to one point, picking up an item (by driving over the target area) then returning to base. You do this in an environment which is rich with other users and computer controlled cars as well. Half the fun is driving into other users and things, although you lose “boost” power by doing so.

After getting past a certain point, users can upgrade their cars, change colors and take on new tasks such as special deliveries, goals that earn you money for upgrades etc..

At this point you also have the ability to race other members. The social side of the game allows you to join with other members in teams and participate together. Races offer a variety of challenges other different courses.

Overall

It took me soo long to actually get to the point of having Drift City running that I was prepared to rip shreds into the game and NHN for it, but having eventually got online and played Drift City for a while I actually enjoyed it. It’s not going to appeal to a generation raised on cutting edge computer gaming but for those a little older (and the installation process aside) it’s a bit of casual fun.

Is it however the future of casual gaming? Ijji.com’s offering are a step above the true online casual gaming offered by startups such as Kongregate, but they’re got a much lower barrier to entry than say Second Life or Project Entropia. Many of the low graphics (mostly 2D) virtual worlds such as Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel target kids (and usually girls) where as Ijji.com has an older masculine target audience and offer games that don’t require an ongoing presence or commitment to succeed. If Alexa can be believed this isn’t the future of casual gaming, it’s the now of casual online gaming, and it will likely find a growing audience.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *)

Cruxy, the marketplace for independent artists to sell their own content, is releasing a Virtual World Widget today.

The Cruxy Virtual World Widget will work inside virtual world games such as Second Life, There.com and World of Warcraft. For you Second Life fans out there, you know that there is a lot of stuff you can do to create your own presence and turn a decent profit as well. Cruxy is banking on that drive. Their Second Life player looks like an mp3 player and can be worn by your avatar wherever they go, so you can listen to music. They’re hoping that musicians will use this as further promotion for themselves, leaving them in public Second Life places for others to take, or distributing them to only those avatars that show up at your Second Life concert. Going along with true Second Life nature, the player is fully customizable.

Cruxy’s other new releases include a multi-format social player to present audio, video or image content, a purchase-enabled widget for consumers to buy a download without leaving their current web page, and a Play this Page feature, allowing a browse view or search to be dynamically loaded into the player. A user can take that player’s code with the newly loaded playlist directly from your MySpace page. Cruxy has topped it all off with a new API that includes every component Cruxy has to offer.

Admittedly, Cruxy has come a long way since their initial launch last September. Their Virtual World widget is niche, but a good move considering the typical marketing economy within Second Life and the inevitable shift to systems such as Second Life for the future of social networking. Whether or not their other new tools will help with marketing back on the regular Web is yet to be seen, but we like that they’re advancing the promotional value of their service and extending it to users.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Gaia, the avatar-filled virtual world, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Sony Pictures. You may be wondering why. It appears to be, in part, for building out Gaia theaters, where users can congregate in virtual rooms for the purpose of viewing video clips.

This was really brought to the forefront of Gaia’s feature set when it launched a VJ tool for users to create their own theaters and feature video clips from around the web. This concept has now been expanded to include content from Sony and Warner, who will be streaming films and television shows inside the virtual theaters found in Gaia. Some content will be pay-per-view while other content will be ad-supported.

This seems to be somewhat of an extension for centralized viewing options that broadcast companies like NBC have taken advantage of for streaming events such as concerts in virtual worlds like Second Life. What’s interesting is that we’re seeing these centralized streaming options pop up in multiple virtual worlds, not just one. It speaks to the importance of virtual worlds, and even moves attention away from the idea that companies don’t need to focus on certain avatar spaces for realistic quality alone.

As Sony has indicated its interest in finding more ways to distribute its content as a way to rival iTunes, this could be considered another way beyond Crackle and its other offerings, for Sony to do so. Gaia has a pretty large following, and while I don’t think television shows and pay-per-view films will make a major dent in Apple’s market share, I do like the idea of streaming content through more interactive and social places, like Gaia.

On the music front, Sony and Warner are in fact the two major labels that have not offered up DRM-free music downloads, which was highlighted in a recent announcement of Pepsi’s deal with Amazon for a promotion that will run beginning next year, during the Superbowl. As advertising and content owners look for more creative ways in which to insert marketing material and content into interactive and social areas of the web, perhaps the integration with Gaia will be a good way for Sony to test out more advertising options for its content.

[via paid content]

Posted by brian tiong at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Coca Cola has apparently found it useful to market itself in virtual worlds. Having made its claim in Second Life through various promotions, the beverages company has moved on to There.com. CC Metro is the island Coke has created in this virtual world, where avatars can hang out. There’s a virtual movie theater for viewing short films (this seems to be very popular in virtual worlds), a diner, and shopping stores where you can use your Coke Rewards points to redeem items for your avatar to don on themselves or in their homes.

The island, shaped like a Coke bottle, is one example of a more integrated marketing solution for a brand within a virtual world. It also highlights the usability of other virtual worlds outside of the dominating Second Life. What stands out for this particular marketing campaign is the attempt at subtlety, which greatly differs from Coke’s Second Life promotion which invited users to design a vending machine. Cosmo is another brand that’s found There.com to be a viable virtual world for targeting teens.

But is there anything in particular that makes one virtual world better than another, and will these brands eventually launch larger campaigns that can reach across several virtual worlds at once? Cruxy has created one tool that will work in multiple virtual worlds, making it easier for distribution purposes to have an offering in more than one community.

And as I mentioned before, showing movies in virtual worlds is becoming more popular–this is a far easier format to offer across virtual worlds and Sony has even bought into it, as it’s invested in Gaia. It doesn’t seem like virtual worlds are dying off anytime soon, with