Ajax Girl

Facebook just got a whole lot friendlier for music artists. With the launch of Facebook Ads, it is welcoming bands and musicians to set up their own public Facebook pages where members can sign up as fans. Alas, there will be no standalone Facebook Music service. Instead, Facebook is treating music artists just like any other brands, which can also set up their own Facebook pages, collect fans, and market to them directly.

Yet, when it comes to music artists, one of Facebook’s most popular application developers, iLike, is now doing the exact same thing. Starting today, any band or musician can create an iLike artist page on Facebook that includes their most popular songs (filtered by what your friends like), upcoming concert dates (click on a date and see if any of your friends are going), an artist blog called iCast, related artists, and a Fan Wall where Facebook members can leave notes. In fact, iLike has already created these marketing pages for them. Right out of the gate, it now has 160,000 pre-populated artists pages that the musicians or the labels themselves can modify, or leave as is.

So if you are a music artist, you now have to make a decision: Do you go with the iLike page as your main Facebook page (and take advantage of the nearly 10 million members who use the iLike app), or do you go with your own advertiser page on Facebook? Case in point: the new Facebook page for 50 Cent (shown left) had only three fans when it first went up just after midnight, compared to 1.2 million fans on his iLike page on Facebook.

Well, it turns out that iLike does not care which page artists choose to call their home. Any widget on the iLike artist page—popular songs, upcoming concerts, the iCast blog, even the iLike button—can be plopped into a Facebook artist page (also known as a canvas page). And every link in each of those widgets takes you back to the Facebook application pages that iLike controls.

This is not an unintended consequence. I asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday about the potential here for Facebook to be competing with its own app developers. He responded, “What is the effect on app developers if we are making it possible for bands to have music pages? It increases distribution because your app can be on that page.”

Fair enough. But where does that leave Facebook in the fight for the hearts and marketing dollars of the struggling music industry? Already, I like iLike’s chances in this battle. But it doesn’t end within the confines of Facebook.

On Monday, I met with iLike CEO Ali Partovi at the swank Fifth Avenue offices of the investment bank Allen & Co. (Partovi went to high school with Herb Allen III, who lets him use the office for meetings when he is in New York. And, of course, who did we run into in the lobby downstairs, but Ron Conway. That guy is everywhere. But I digress.). Partovi wants iLike to become a one-stop-shop for artists to manage their own profiles and communicate with their fans, whether on Facebook or elsewhere.

To make it easy for them to do that, iLike is also introducing today the Universal Artist Dashboard. From one place, a music artist or record label can set up an artist page on Facebook and iLike.com, as well as information that pops up in iLike plug-ins for iTunes and and Windows Media Player. And since iLike has also joined Google’s OpenSocial effort, these artist pages will soon be exportable to other social networks as well, such as MySpace, Bebo, Ning, Hi5, Orkut, and in iGoogle Web widgets. Instead of having to manage their profiles in all of these places, artists will be able to upload all of their songs, concert dates, and blog posts once to the Universal Artist Dashboard and then spread it all over the Web. They will be able to manage all the messages coming from those artist pages from the dashboard as well.

That is the power of being a widget company—you can insert yourself anywhere. Explains Partovi: “A syndicated effort is always stronger. Rather than try to bottle up everything in one place, push it out to where people are. That is why YouTube is so successful, because it is pasted all over the Internet.”

Take Avril Lavigne as an example. Her record label could create a Facebook page for her at http://www.facebook.com/Avril+Lavigne, which it hasn’t. But she does have an iLike page at
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/Avril+Lavigne:

Here is what her page, built from the same widgets, looks like on iLike.com. (Now, just imagine similar pages for MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and all the other social networks participating in OpenSocial):

And here is what iTunes looks like with the iLike sidebar when playing an Avril Lavigne song (also built from the same underlying data):

ilike

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Facebook

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Google is testing a new home page for Google.cn that completely abandons Google’s clean uncluttered look for something that looks more like Yahoo.

Google Blogscoped notes that this may just be a test and might not become the main Google portal in the worlds second largest internet market, but even as a test it’s a big change. Google has struggled to gain marketshare in China against the homegrown but NASDAQ listed Baidu.

If you’re wondering what all the content in the shot above means, a translated version can be found here.

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Microsoft has fired chief information officer Stuart Scott for “violation of company policies.”

Microsoft refused requests for further information from multiple sites, saying only that “We can confirm that Stuart Scott’s employment with Microsoft was terminated after an investigation for violation of company policies.”

Scott joined Microsoft in 2005 after 17 years at GE, where according to his Microsoft bio page he was recognized by CIO Magazine as one of the top 100 CIOs in 2003.

In a Q&A on Microsoft Presspass in December 2005, Scott described his role in two parts: “to help the company think through and define its strategic priorities, then deliver the business-process capabilities and solutions to achieve them….[and to] lead the Microsoft IT organizations in designing, building and running the IT systems that we use to run the company.”

Microsoft GM Shahla Aly and Corporate VP Alain Crozier will take over from Scott until a replacement is hired.

(in part via ZDNet)

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Congratulations to our friends at VEER for being acquired by Corbis.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/691-corbis-acquires-veer

It’s offical. Facebook is now an advertising network with Web-wide ambitions. Today’s announcement of Facebook Ads is the company’s play to become a major force in brand advertising online, as we reported previously. Facebook Ads is a new platform for creating and disseminating socially-aware ads on Facebook.

Facebook Ads is comprised of three parts: Ads targeted at Facebook members using their profile data such as age, gender, relationship status, work history, and stated interests (Social Ads); ad widgets that advertisers can put on their own sites that allow Facebook members to become product endorsers, and spread that endorsement to all of their friends on Facebook through their personal feeds (Beacon); and aggregated profile information that is exposed to Facebook advertisers that tells them what kind of people are getting their ads and who is clicking on them (Insight).

Facebook will be controlling the inventory for these Social Ads, not Microsoft (which continues to serve the more generic, standard ads on Facebook). It is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that these will become extremely relevant brand advertisements because they are akin to personal recommendations from your friends. So, for example, if I choose to endorse a particular movie, all my friends will see that I like that movie in the feeds that shows what everyone in their network is up to. An endorsement, in that case, is yet another action that Facebook tracks.

Whether consumers actually want to become product marketers is another question entirely. To the extent that endorsing a brand is seen as a way to express your identity or expertise rather than as a way to flog a product, people could embrace it. But advertisers have to be real careful, because if these ads seem too much like ads, people may actually lose friends over it. And those once-happy customers could turn irate quickly.

But if Facebook figures this out, we may start seeing these social ads appearing elsewhere on the Web as well. For now, though, it is a Facebook-only program that goes live tomorrow.

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DanceJam, founded by M.C. Hammer, Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young (Arone and Young come out of Flock), is opening its doors to a select few beta testers this afternoon. This is a company that I have personally invested in, so I won’t editorialize much here (I will be linking to other blogs and news sources who cover it, though).

The site, which has already had some mainstream news coverage, will be a place for users to upload videos of themselves dancing. Viewers can watch and rate the clips, and there will be a constant stream of “face-offs” between dancers to determine the top people in various dance types and locations.

In preparation for launch, the team has been traveling to various locations to film people dancing in casual settings. Much of this footage will be included as original content on the site. See the video below for some of it:

They are inviting a few people who’ve added their emails to the DanceJam home page. We are also giving away 100 invites right now - just email techcrunch@dancejam.com. The first 100 to email get in.

DanceJam has raised $1 million in angel funding from investors including Rustic Canyon, Ron Conway, Michael Arrington, Alex Algard, Michael Tanne, Geoff Ralston, Alex Welch and Ariel Poler.

Please see our About page for a full list of my conflicts.

Dancejam

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Amazon S3, il servizio di storage online offerto da Amazon, ha oggi annunciato un’importante novità di cui potremo giovare tutti noi italiani. Da oggi infatti è disponibile un nuovo data center europeo che, per chi lo desideri, consentirà di archiviare i dati in una location geograficamente più vicina e quindi, si spera, anche più veloce.
I prezzi per la versione europea sono lievemente più alti ma nulla da strapparsi i capelli fortunatamente. Speriamo che la stessa cosa avvenga a breve anche per Amazon EC2.

Source: Ajax Blog
Original Article: http://ajax.blogon.it/web-services/amazon-s3-conquista-leuropa.html

Scott asks:

Do you use formal personas when thinking about the users of a new app?

We don’t use personas. We use ourselves. I believe personas lead to a false sense of understanding at the deepest, most critical levels.

Every product we build is a product we build for ourselves to solve our own problems. We recognize our problems aren’t unique. In fact, our problems are probably a lot like your problems. So we bundle up the solutions to our problems in the form of web-based software and offer them for sale.

We recognize not everyone shares our problems, our point of view, or our opinions, but that verdict’s the same if you use personas. Making decisions based on real opinions trumps making decisions based on imaginary opinions.

I’ve never been a big believer in personas. They’re artificial, abstract, and fictitious. I don’t think you can build a great product for a person that doesn’t exist. And I definitely don’t think you can build a great product based on a composite sketch of 10 different people all rolled into one (or two or three).

Personas don’t

Personas don’t talk back. Personas can’t answer questions. Personas don’t have opinions. Personas can’t tell you when something just doesn’t feel right. Personas can’t tell you when a sentence doesn’t make sense. Personas don’t get frustrated. Personas aren’t pressed for time. Personas aren’t moody. Personas can’t click things. Personas can’t make mistakes. Personas can’t make value judgements. Personas don’t use products. Personas aren’t real.

People do

People talk back. People answer questions. People have opinions. People can tell you when something just doesn’t feel right. People can tell you when a sentence doesn’t make sense. People get frustrated. People are pressed for time. People are moody. People click things. People make mistakes. People make value judgements. People use products. People are real.

Get Real

So if you can’t design something for yourself, design something for someone you know. Get that person or people involved in your project early on. Basing your decisions on a matrix of personality traits isn’t what I’d recommend if you really want to build a great product.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/690-ask-37signals-personas

I am at Facebook’s social advertising announcement in New York City, where Mark Zuckerberg is about to take the stage and tell us all what we already think we know: Facebook is getting into the advertising business in a big way. Much of what will be announced today, such as projects code-named Beacon and Pandemic have already leaked out. We’ll see how much of that leaked information was correct, and what more there is to add. Facebook is certainly pulling out all the stops with this announcement, on the agenda later on is a panel with Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes that will be moderated by Charlie Rose (who charges a lot to do these things, or so I hear).

Facebook is announcing three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (messages in feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. Here are the press releases for Facebook Ads, Project Beacon, and its launch partners.

Zuckerberg just took the stage (keep in mind that he is addressing advertising executives and press in the audience). The following notes are in reverse-chronological order:

3:06 PM: “Everything you have seen here is launching tonight.” Launching with 40 partners [press release says 60] (including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, The New York Times, Sony Pictures, Verizon, Dove, and Zazzle). “This is something we have been working on for a long time. It is really good to share it with you guys.” [Zuckerberg walks off stage]

3:03: Insights. Aggregates profile data. “We look at the people your ads are reaching and break it down by age, gender, interests, and a whole lot more we are adding soon.” Says none of this will be personally identifiable. “We will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.”

2:57 PM: “Social Actions + Content = Social Ads.” They spread your message virally through the social graph. these ads will appear both in people’s feeds and as a personalized banner ad.

“Let’s talk about targeting. With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in. their location, country, city or town, interests, gender,” work history, political views [Like what they’ve already done with Facebook Flyers].

2:52 PM: Social distribution, now here is where it gets interesting. When somebody engages with your page, that os spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand, that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand. You will be able to craft the types of social actions you want to spread across the social graph.

“We have created a product called Beacon that let’s you do this. Beacon will let users send information to their page, we confirm it, and share it on Facebook. One partner is eBay.” Can share listinsg from eBay on Facebook. So usres can share social actions from other websites and share them on Facebook. “This will be completely free.”

2:48: “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain insights.”

Advertisers can build their own Facebook pages and design them any way they like: “We have photos, videos, discussion boards, any Flash content you want to bring to your page, plus any application a third party developer has made.”

2:46 PM: Messages spread virally. All you need to do is get your friends to engage with it and add it to their profiles. Gives example of how causes are spread across Facebook. Support Breast Cancer, more than 2 million members.

2:44 PM: Zuckerberg is explaining the social graph. “Where Facebook really excels is in helping you keep up with all of your connections at the same time. It is making the cost of communication so low that information can be pushed out more efficiently than it ever could from a few big companies.”

2:43 PM: Z: “More than 80 applications have more than one millions users.”

2:37 PM EST: Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.

“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.

“Have already passed 50 million users, doubling once every 6 months. only active users who have used facebook last 30 days. More than 25 million people are using Facebook every single day. Each person is viewing more than 40 pages a day, more than 65 billion page views a month.”

Notes:

Beacon Partners (Facebook advertising buttons that exist on other sites and when clicked are reflected in members’ feeds as a brand endorsements—how many of these brands would you bother to explicitly endorse to your Facebook friends, opr even identify with?):

eBay
Fandango
IAC brands (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
Travelocity
AllPosters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva,
Kongregate
LiveJournal
Live Nation
Mercantila
National Basketball Association
NYTimes.com
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
SeamlessWeb,
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
The Knot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
TypePad
viagogo
Vox
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos.com.

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Not wanting to be left behind, Netvibes is adding a slew of social-networking features and integration with other social networks to its widget start page. Netvibes already supports a variety of desktop widget platforms, has its own Universal Widget API, and is part of Google’s OpenSocial movement. It is now combining all of these efforts, Tariq Krim announced today at a conference in Berlin (TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher has the details). NetVibes widgets will work with OpenSocial, Facebook, and desktop widget platforms on the PC and Mac.

The next version of Netvibes, codenamed Ginger, will also add a feeds feature called Flow, and a Friends tab so that you can follow your friends’ feeds and widgets as well. Krim explains in an e-mail from Berlin:

We are introducing social features . . . [so you] can share and follow widgets from your
friends or have a private flow to keep up a netvibes history.

We will extend netvibes widgets to run natively on opensocial and
facebook. (By the way we are part of opensocial but we will work with
everyone else)

We will launch a private beta for our developers in couple weeks.
It’s a big step as we have work to rebuild everything. It like our
leopard

Here is our earlier Netvibes coverage. Here is a demo video of what Ginger will look like:

netvibes

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