6 posts tagged “social media”

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.

My pal Jac asked me to put together a list of my 25 favorite/most useful Web sites.* Of course, I agreed, being the Internet dork that I am. I had planned to put together a list of each site along with a short blurb describing the sites and explaining why I liked each one. Very quickly, I realized my planned post was quite a chore and would take me much longer than I anticipated.

In the interest of time, I've posted a quick reference list below. The sites aren't in any particular order, but I have grouped them together in a few rough categories.  In the future, I'll write about each of these sites in more detail. These posts will be tagged top sites on my Vox blog (and the sites below are tagged on Del.icio.us), so you can find them easily. Some of these services I've already written about, and I'll update the tags accordingly. I've written little or nothing about most of these, but I encourage you to check them out anyway.

Please, if you have a question, or you think there's a site better than the one I've listed, let me know. I'm interested to see what you think.

1. Google Reader
2. Netvibes
3. Yahoo! Pipes
4. Flickr
5. Snipshot
6. Meebo
7. Twitter
8. Del.icio.us
9. Scrapbook
10. Google Docs and Spreadsheets
11. Scribd
12. Digg
13. Metafilter
14. Google Calendar
15. Remember The Milk
16. Virb
17. Facebook
18. Vox
19. MeeVee
20. Emusic
21. Allmusic & Allmovie
22. Metacritic
23. Pandora
24. Last.fm
25. MediaFire

Coming Soon

These sites aren't open to the public yet, but both are pretty compelling. To see why, click on the links and view the demo videos.

• Zoho Notebook
• iScrybe

Duh

These are Web sites you should already know about. If you're smart, you're already using them.

• Gmail. The most storage, POP3 access (for both Gmail and other accounts), integrated chat, lightning fast search, filters and labels that are easy to set up. It's the best e-mail you can buy. Only it's free, even the "premium features" Yahoo! and Hotmail make you pay extra for.
• Netflix. There is no other way to rent movies. True, my account is on pause, but that's only because I don't have time to watch movies. If I did, I'd be using Netflix.
• Craigslist. Before I'd buy or sell anything on Ebay, I'd look here. I check the musical instruments listings EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
• YouTube. They're getting attacked from all sides, but this is still the best place to find online videos. Viewers who want a reliable place to find Comedy Central & VH1 clips are better served by using iFilm (Be aware that the site may soon be rebranded as the online home of Spike TV).
• Wikipedia. Andrew Morgan alerted me to the a swell Wikipedia feature the other day. Set your homepage to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random, then every time you open your browser, you'll be treated to a randomly generated entry on Wikipedia.

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.