10 posts tagged “myspace”

Remember when everyone jumped ship from Friendster to Myspace, and Myspace got so freakin' huge that your grandma joined? Well, that's about to happen again. Since Facebook expanded beyond college students and began allowing everyone to join, the social networking site has doubled in size. By some measures Facebook is already blowing Myspace out of the water:

• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since January
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the web
• Facebook Photos draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three photo sites combined

While I've been frank about hating Myspace and pimping Virb as the technologically superior alternative, the truth is that Virb has stalled out a bit. People aren't joining. Obviously, Facebook doesn't have that problem. What they do have is a killer set of features Myspace can't begin to touch:

• Tag your friends in photos. Find out when your pals have uploaded photos that include you.
• Twitter-like status function lets you keep up with your pals. You can even subscribe to this in your RSS reader.
  
• Mini-feed also tells you when your pals change their profile, upload their photos, update their blog, or start a new relationship. But...
  
• You can tweak and fine tune your privacy settings individually so that your friends only see what you want them to see. You can even delete individual items from your personal feed.
  
• Import your existing blog/livejournal.
• Share videos and links with your pals.
• Sell your stuff in the new Classified. A little different than Craigslist, because sellers will be people in your network (e.g., Houston or Rice University). Makes it easy to sell and deliver locally to people who can't scam you (because you can see their profile and real name).
• Compete with your pals in March Madness and NBA Playoff brackets.
• Comment on everything.
  

The bottom line is this: Facebook lets you share your life with people you care about while allowing you to easily micro-manage your privacy. Instead of worrying about customizing your crappy looking page, Facebook focuses on your connections with real people. That's why eventually you and everyone you know is going to be on this site. I'm not even going to ask you to join. I don't have to. You, your co-workers, your friends and family will all sign up.  And you will wonder what took you so long.

Why? Because Facebook is becoming something Myspace has never been, and could never be.

Useful.

This afternoon Virb updated their system, and now you can import your existing blog (e.g., Myspace, LiveJournal, Vox, Blogger, Wordpress, Xanga...whatever) and it will show up on Virb. Details are here, and you can watch a screencast for a demonstration.

I think this is a pretty great feature. Myspace and Friendster both force you to use their blogs, so Virb joins Facebook as one of the only big social networks to allow you to import your existing blog. It's certainly better than forcing users to maintain separate blogs to communicate with different sets of pals.

Naturally the feature isn't perfect. When I imported my blog, most of the posts looked funny (probably because of the way Vox formats their feeds). Virb is aware of the issue, though and they're working on it:

We are aware of the issues with some styling with HTML elements within the blogs as well as special characters being turned into boxes. We're working on this now.

Virb is working on some additional features that are going to make the site even more useful and compelling. You should check out their new blog if you're into geeky stuff like that.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Virb has remedied a lot of the complaints I talked about here. I'm not suggesting they listened to me, but they're listening to someone, and I think that's great.

On some social networking and music sites, when you click on a flash music player to listen to a song, you must remain on that page if you want to keep listening. This is pretty annoying because many users want to keep browsing, even as the song continues to play. Virb announced a new feature yesterday that allows users to do just that. If you want to listen to a band's music while continuing to browse elsewhere, just click "open player in new window." That will open a tab or window for the flash music player. And you can continue browsing.

Player pop up

This post attacking Virb raises a number of stinging, and I think legitimate, criticisms of the nascent, would-be Myspace killer. In his post titled "10 Reasons virb sucks big time," Michael Kamleitner gives voice to a number of misgivings I've had myself:

• virb is not open - in fact it’s way more sealed up than Myspace ever was. virb currently supports external flash-content from YouTube, Google and a few other approved popular service only. compare that to the widget-ecosystem which has emerged around Myspace for the past 2 years. bidirectional content syndication from and to social networks might turn out crucial. it will be exciting to see Myspace’ anticipated/dreaded policy shifts in 2007.
• virb is hard to syndicate - I haven’t found a single RSS-feed yet. not even on my personal blog (c’Mon, even myspace offers RSS-feeds, though without full content)
• virb ain’t valid - agreed, virb’s code is lightyears ahead of Myspace’s, but does it validate against current web-standards? not really.
• virb is poorly communicating itself - I was suprised that virb isn’t using the merits of blogging to communicate with its userbase.
• virb is a silo - there is currently no way (i.e. API) to get data out of a virb-account (except of course by content-scraping). since social networking is almost commoditized (check People Aggregator or Ning) by now, and most users have realized they want to be part of numerous networks instead of one monolithic, this is probably a bad move.
• but most of all: virb is a lonely place (currently only 35 users based in Austria). sure, it’s kinda unfair to compare a service just started with Myspace’ community of +100mio users. but in the end, size-of-community is exactly the key-feature of any closed down, centralized social network as is virb or Myspace.

        (ok, that was only 7 issues, sorry for cheating on the headline )

Excepting the ridiculous criticism of Virb's small size, I think some of these criticisms are dead on, and I love Virb. The two biggies for me are the lack of support for additional "approved" flash services & the lack of communication with users. Yes, Flash widgets have their security issues, but Virb has been less than proactive about approving additional sources, and most widgets in wide use on Myspace (e.g., Twitter, Slide) are safe as milk. A cynical user might wonder whether Virb is just worried about cannibalizing their own offerings. For example, how likely are they to approve Last.fm widgets, when Virb offers their own competing feature. Their reluctance is not entirely unsurprising, but Virb isn't going to compete with Myspace by offering less flexibility.

Much of the skepticism might be alleviated if Virb had a conventional beta blog that addressed user questions regarding upcoming functionality. There is a group on Virb that solicits user feedback, but I've seen nary on official Virbster writing in response. Communication with users of a new service is paramount if you want to retain their tenuous loyalty. As big a Virb fan as I am, I still think Facebook is better, offering more useful features and excellent communication with readers.

Okay, but does Virb really suck? Nah. This list of features literally counts the ways in which the site is better than Myspace. And Virb is still new enough that users are willing to give them a pass while they roll out additional features and functionality. But they need to be careful not to spoil the honeymoon.

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EDIT: Turns out Virb does have a group for its developers. But they're not really using it to talk about what's happening at Virb. Actually, they're not using it at all.

As you know, I'm your pal that tries out all the new Web sites. Some are too boring or too useless or too buggy to mention. But sometimes I find a site that's worth mentioning. That's when I share them with you. If I'm your pal on Gmail chat, you probably noticed the link to Twitter. So here's what's up with that.

In a nutshell, Twitter wants to be your micro-livejournal; a second tiny blog that you can update from your IM, phone, or the Web. Instead of boring people with long entries, you just put in one or two sentences (up to 140 characters) that tell your pals where you are or what you're up to. You can send (and receive) updates from your instant messenger, including, AIM, Yahoo, and even Google/Gmail Chat. If you want, you can also send and receive messages from your phone. Thankfully, this can be easily switched off. Basically, it's like Dodgeball with more features and fewer annoyances. A few Twitter features stand out for me:

• First, like Livejournal, you can view your own blog, or you can see all your friends' updates on one page. Yours are also mixed in there. Here's mine "with friends." As you can see, I have a scant few friends. I managed to get Carrie to sign up, but she was too hung over to figure out how the IM worked.
  
• Second, you can create a "badge" that you can put on your Myspace page or your blog. This actually replicates the instant update feature that Facebook has and Myspace doesn't. You can see my badge at the right. Note that this badge uses Flash, not Javascript, so that it can work on Myspace. A more feature-rich Javascript badge is also available.
  

The core reason to have Twitter is the ability to just dash off updates by typing into Gmail chat or AIM. If you've got this enabled, all your pals will see your update instantly as long as they're online OR they've got their phone. Naturally, you might want to avoid flooding your pal's phone with updates about your cat. Also, you can direct messages to only one of your pals. For example, I can type "I'm stuck at school" using my laptop, and my girlfriend (an no one else) will see it on her phone.

Recommended internet! A++++++. Would post again.

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UPDATE: Twitter's still a bit flooded with traffic after all the SXSW hype it received. So it's a bit slow, and the IM feature isn't working right now. I expect them to fix those problems shortly. I should also note that the service has received some criticism for being a one trick pony.

Personally, I think I like the fact that it does only a few useful things, and doesn't clutter the interface with ads or crap that I don't need. What it does well is let you keep in touch with people without having to surf the Internet or even be near a computer. And I think the following observation might be true for a lot of people:

What’s interesting to me about Twitter, though, is that it actually reduces my craving to surf the web, ping people via IM, and cruise Facebook. I can keep a Twitter IM window open in the background, and check it occasionally just to see what people are up to. There’s no obligation to respond, which I typically feel when updates come from individuals via IM or email. Or I can just check my text messages or the web site when I feel like getting a big picture of what my friends are up to.

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Another update: This article compares Dodgeball to Twitter. Like me, he also compares Twitter to Facebook.

Uh, maybe not. But this amusing (and very fake) Virb profile for Myspace founder Tom Anderson is funny as hell. It also makes a great point about the flexibility of Virb. It might look like Myspace, but every link on the page is a functioning part of Virb's back-end feature set. The not-so-subtle implication is this: Virb is so customizable you can even make it look like Myspace. Unfortunately, Tom can't make Myspace look like Virb.

Tom

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UPDATE: One of the features that's received a lot of attention is the "turn off customization" button. How well does it work? Well, here's the same page above after I pressed the magic button.

Tom without customization

After turning off customization, you see a bare-bones profile page. All the content is still there. You can restore the customization using the same button, and in an instant, the souped-up page is back. What's that sound you hear? The grateful sighs of a generation poisoned by terrible design.

Virb

Virb is a new site that's competing with Myspace head on. That's right. They're not making widgets for you to put on Myspace. They're not giving you code to help you spruce up Myspace. Instead, they've built a new site from the ground up. Their ambition? To be a better Myspace (and Facebook and Last.fm). They don't just want to compete, they want to win.

They're not doing it piecemeal either. Today, they opened the site up to the public and nearly everything is working right now: fully customizable profile pages, video and photo sharing with generous upload limits, separate pages for bands (with beautiful flash players), interoperability with 3rd party widgets, blogs, and robust search functionality. A full list of features, including some that are coming soon, is available here.

I could write all day about this site, but I'll start small. Here are five things the company seems to have done right the first time, right out of the box. Note that I'm not going into much detail. That will have to come later, in future posts.

1. Perfect balance. Virb has managed to what many have thought impossible. Make a feature-rich, coherently-designed site that is also super customizable. They wanted to build a site that avoided much of the ugliness for which Myspace is notorious, and yet they knew people wouldn't accept a competitor that didn't let users tinker with their, uh, spaces. Well, Virb is gorgeous and "dripping with AJAX." It has a ton of features Myspace users have begged for, and yet it gives users considerable power and discretion in building their (much more) beautiful pages (e.g., here, here, here, & here).  That's not to say you can't still build an eyesore. But there's one more thing: Virb lets you "turn off customization" for individual pages when a pal has simply gone overboard in tricking out their page. Genius!
2. Plays well with others. First, you can sync with Flickr. Hallelujah on that alone. But that's not where it ends. They allow users to create custom modules, which retain the general size of the disparate modules on the site, but which also allow you to insert your own HTML code or third party widgets from approved sites (e.g., You Tube, Google, Brightcove, Revver, Vimeo, Odeo, Metacafe, Veoh). Like Myspace, they don't let users insert Javascript. But flash-based widgets seem to work okay. Finally, they're planning to let users import their own blogs via RSS. That feature isn't live yet, but it's hugely important if they want to attract new users weary of Myspace's "lock-in" mentality.
3. Not afraid to borrow ideas. Some of Virb's best features appear to be cribbed from other sites, and that's a very good thing. For example, Virbtunes is an iTunes plug-in that logs your tracks as you play them and posts them on your profile page. It works just like Last.fm. It doesn't have Last.fm's enormous feature set, but it's already smart enough to identify bands who have a Virb profile and provide an autolink to their page. Another useful feature comes from Facebook: after you log into Virb, your homepage displays your "recent friend activity." Whenever your friends add photos, videos, blogposts, or songs, a notification shows up on your homepage. It's very similar to Facebook's mini-feed, but it avoids some of the controversy that feature spawned. Virb doesn't tell you about interactions among friends.
   

   Recent Friend Activity
4. Media isn't an afterthought, it's Virb's central nervous system. Take a look at Virb's home page, and their pages for video and music. Everything about the site says it's built to run on media. That image transfers to the content and features on the site. Virb is going after Myspace's core competency in music. Hard. The site's founders, Unborn Media, previously brought you PureVolume, a kind of Web 2.0 version of MP3.com. Now, bands can get a Virb site that ports over a killer feature set from PureVolume. The resulting artist pages are so pretty, we're not sure PureVolume is even necessary anymore. Take a look at this page for Bloc Party, or this one for Finland's Day Eleven, and you'll see what I mean. A lot of bands are going to flock to Virb. Bands like The Decemberists, Mastodon, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, and The Hold Steady are already on Virb at launch. Users don't get left out. They can add as many as 15 songs from different artists to create their own custom player. And as for Video, Virb is the first site I've seen to launch WIDESCREEN video that can be embedded anywhere. And with the click of a button, you can dim the rest of the screen for maximum enjoyment. Are you starting to get amazed?
5. Search and you shall find. Virb makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Myspace veterans know that's not a small thing. Virb has a speedy search function that crawls the whole site and returns results in discrete categories (e.g., people, blogs, music, video). Tagging is actively encouraged, and damn near everything can be tagged, including your friends. This fixes one of my biggest complaints about Myspace: once you had about 200 friends or more, it became impossible to find them again. While Virb doesn't let you search your friends (yet), you can tag them any way you wish, and then filter them accordingly (e.g., work, school, home, golfing buddies). This is made easier by the fact that Virb allows you to keep Organizations and Bands separate from your "People" friends. This is what social media is all about: finding people, sharing information, and staying in touch.

I'm not saying Virb is perfect. They're still adding features and tweaking the service. It's still in beta for chrissakes. A massive influx of users could still crash their servers. And even if everything goes right, they've still got to overcome the significant network effects advantage Myspace enjoys. Are people really going to bother with another social network, when they've invested so much into Myspace? Who knows. But I like Virb a lot. And they've got a good unofficial motto that I'm going to adopt.

I'm moving to Virb. Who's coming with me?

P.S., I'm starting a new Virb group on Vox. If you like Virb, join up!

At ZDNet's Google Blog, Garret Rogers puzzles over some translation text for a mysterious Google service called "Fensi." He wonders whether it might be a wisp of confirmation for an earlier rumor/tip he received:

A few months ago I received an anonymous (and thus potentially unreliable) tip from a "Trusted Tester".  He told me of a service coming soon that he would only describe as a mix between "MySpace meets Microsoft Live".  I still don't know what that would be — maybe he was talking about Fensi?

I don't have any doubt that something like Myspace is forthcoming from Google. Although the myriad Google products seem to suffer from inconsistencies and and a scattershot lack of focus, the reality is there is sufficient uniformity amongst an axis of popular Google offerings to form a powerful back-end infrastructure for a social network. The obvious starting points are Google's enormously popular Gmail and Google Calendar services. Together, with Gmail's integrated chat, and the recently overhauled Google Groups, Google already has a few of the compelling synergies MySpace has been working to achieve. Namely, unified messaging, chat, and calendaring functions. With Google's PicasaWeb and Blogger properties, its burgeoning Office tools, and the YouTube/Google Video dynamo, Google certainly has the pieces of something that could be bigger.

I'm not suggesting Google is going to create a Myspace clone. What they produce will certainly be a Myspace competitor, but there's going to something else, something unexpected. I'm betting the something extra is going to be related to Google Domains & Google Apps.

Right now, any company or organization that signs up for Google Domains can issue each of their users a Gmail account, a calendar, and a personalized start page, all under their own domain name. Administrators can also create custom Web pages using Google Pages. Essentially, Google's saying to companies, universities, and other organizations, "We'll give you e-mail, shared calendaring, instant messaging + (a somewhat crude) intranet for free." Sure, there are more sophisticated offerings, but they all cost more than $0.  If (or when) Google manages to integrate Google Docs/Spreadsheets and Blogger into their Domains product, they'll be able to offer small businesses the kind of tools that may have been out of reach before.

Now, think back to that tip Rogers received: "MySpace meets Microsoft Live." Myspace is a Web site. But Google wants to build an application. Google probably will recreate Myspace in its own image. But they're going let you do it, too . I think when Google rolls out their version of Myspace, a Google App version of the same product won't be far behind. The idea of social networking for Corporate and Organizational clients isn't new. Facebook owns universities and has some corporate penetration as well. For that matter, Zoho and Zimbra are offer excellent email and collaboration software to small business clients. But Google Domains and Apps is going to bring all those elements under one roof. Communication, collaboration, and social network. Easy to manage. Easy to deploy. And no one will beat the price.

Well, that's my guess anyway. I must make clear this is pure conjecture. I sure as hell don't know anyone at Google. I'm just guessing/fantasizing. But I thought I'd share my guesswork with you guys, and see what you think. There are a lot unanswered questions about how a GoogleSpace might work, but I'm going to leave that for a different post. I'd like to see some feedback first.

I've been an emusic.com subscriber since August 2001. Back then, you could download whatever you wanted, as much as you wanted for $9.95 per month. Unfortunately, there wasn't a ton of music on the site at the time. All you can eat isn't such a great deal if there's nothing on the buffet line. I kept hoping they'd add more labels, but the service was stagnating. Three or four years ago (I forget when) Emusic introduced the first version of their current tiered membership system. At the time, it was upsetting, and I briefly went on a subscription hiatus. For three or four months, perhaps longer, I didn't pay the monthly fee and didn't download anything. But I visited occasionally, to see if any more artists were being added. In fact, the new tiered system and more favorable revenue split invited an explosion of new Pitchfork-friendly indie labels (e.g., Merge, Matador, Kill Rock Stars).  Eventually I became an enthusiastic premium subscriber, greedily using my 90 downloads per month as soon as I got them. And each month there were more new artists than I could fit into my monthly allotment. Suffice it to say, I've purchased many a booster pack.

Late last year, Emusic changed their subscription plans once more, so that new users can only get 75 tracks for the premium subscription. Still only 19.95, it's an exceptional deal, with each song costing a bit more than 26 cents. Old subscribers were grandfathered in, so I still get 90 tracks for my 20 bux. But the difference is only about 4 1/2 cents per song. Cynics will point out Emusic's really trying to increase booster pack sales. I think that's probably true. The price of a "booster" track is now about double the price of subscription tracks: roughly 53 cents per track if you purchase the "best value" booster (30 tracks for $15.99). But that price is still favorable when you compare with iTunes (99 cents!).

The bottom line: I still think Emusic is an enormously good deal. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.

Emusic ignores social media

I've always been an huge evangelist for Emusic. I invite people to join and happily answer questions about the service. But it wasn't until recently that some of my good friends actually took me up on my offer to join. When they did, I came face to face with Emusic's most glaring flaw. "How do I add you as a friend?" they asked me. The answer is more complicated than it should be. Emusic doesn't allow users to search for other users or locate existing users by entering their email address (like Netflix). In order to "friend" someone, you have to actually encounter your pal somewhere on the site. For example, my friend Elissa created a list of Houston artists available on Emusic. Then she posted on the HandsUpHouston message board with instructions on how to find the list and add her. Because she was the author of the list, I clicked on her name and added her to my friends. It should not be that hard.

The difficulty of adding friends is symptomatic of Emusic's larger failure to fully embrace social media. Emusic was initially a pioneer in "social" networking. Their innovative "neighbor" feature, which identifies other users who have similar music tastes to your own, actually predated sites like MySpace and Friendster. Like Netflix, Emusic was also an early adopter of user-generated reviews and playlists (including the "star" rating system). Encouraging users to learn about new music by meeting strangers with similar music tastes isn't a bad idea. Sites like Mog.com and Last.fm have validated the approach. But both of those sites also allow users to network the old fashioned way, by using the connections they've already made in real life (IRL). Emusic, meanwhile, has simply ignored the features which are now required to build user loyalty in the new age of startups.

The Netflix Example

Again, Netflix (which was actually an early partner with Emusic) is a valuable example. Netflix users aren't simply customers waiting for their movies to arrive. Nor do they merely write reviews or create insular lists of their favorite movies. Netflix is built around a central wellspring of customer information: their queue. Not only does Netflix track every movie in your future, they track your past too. But the real innovation is sharing. You can see the movies in your pal's queue and they can see yours. And you have access to your friends' recent ratings and recommendations. In fact, Netflix actively encourages users to interact with one another. Every time you visit your personal page, Netflix is giving you information about your friends. They even quiz you about which user liked this movie or hated that movie.

So what does Netflix get out of all that complicated programming work? Two things. First, any marketer will tell you that user queues, recommendations, and reviews are incredibly valuable. Research using a data set this large used to be nearly impossible, even if you paid for a massive survey. Now, Netflix gets this information for free. Better yet, they get paid instead! But the second benefit is even greater. By encouraging users to build their own movie clubs, Netflix ensures that users will be reluctant to leave the service for competitors. Once you've rated 500 movies, written a few reviews and added 20 or so friends, Blockbuster's nearly identical service doesn't look so attractive. Who wants to do all that work over again? Network effects in the house.

Tips for Emusic

So here, finally, are a few suggestions for how Emusic might further embrace social networking.

1. Make it easy to add friends. This is head-thumpingly obvious, and every other suggestion here depends on it. That being said, I can name a couple of other successful sites that still make it frustratingly difficult to connect with your pals in the simplest way possible. Who are your iTunes pals? What about your Amazon friends? Yeah, Emusic isn't the only site ignoring social media. But they're going to have to change their tune soon. Because iTunes showing signs of incorporating more "social" functions. And Amazon may soon (as early as March) open their own digital music store (free of DRM, just like Emusic). 
   
2. Leverage user data and set it free. Emusic already allows users to build their own Netflix-style queue. The Save for Later list allows users to make a note of albums and artists they want to download in the future. Emusic also tracks each user's download history. In fact, you can access anyone's download history whether you know them or not. The problem is that this information isn't easily accessible or shareable. Not only should you be able to add your friends, you've got to be able to see what they're downloading (subject to some reasonable privacy controls, of course). I want to see what my friends are downloading this month, and what they're saving for later. And vice versa! And I don't want to have to go looking for it either. Like netflix, I want Emusic to shove that info in my face every time I visit. While they're at it, Emusic should encourage users to share their lists on Myspace and other blogs. An Emusic widget that could be pasted anywhere would absolutely rock. Finally, let users download their history in .xls or .xml (I know I'm dreaming now).
   
3. Give labels and artists their own pages. One of the best things about Emusic is that they invite prominent music critics and artists to write reviews and create their own playlists. The Emusic Dozens list is a goldmine of information for anyone who wants new music recommendations from trusted sources. They should follow the Myspace example and take it one step further. Give artists and labels a platform from which they can communicate with users about new releases, tours, and other information. Let users "friend" their favorite musicians and labels. Those kind of two-way interactions create exactly the kind of connections people can't easily abandon for the next new service.
4. Embrace the amateur musician. With recording equipment and software so cheap, people aren't just consumers anymore. They're making music and sharing it in all kinds of ways. Emusic should be one of those ways. Emusic should create a separate, but integrated community of amateur and small-ish musicians who can upload their own songs and promote their free downloads through the site. Again, why let sites like Last.fm, Mog.com and Myspace get all the traffic? Emusic is named for online, downloadable music. They're practically synonymous with high-quality, DRM-free tracks. They should use that respected brand to reach out for more of the market; to transform the market into a real community of invested users.

Well, those are my ideas for a site I truly love. With pundits predicting that the major labels will soon embrace DRM-free music, Emusic will be under pressure from increasingly sophisticated competition. As I pointed out above, Amazon is one of the heavyweights rumored to be preparing a digital download site. I don't think for a minute that Amazon, in building a new service from the ground up, is going to ignore the social media innovations of the last few Web 2.0 crazed years. Emusic has a limited window to put their house in order.