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Google and Facebook want in on the digital music industry now, too
Oct 29th
Google and Facebook and taking on each other in the music wars, both reportedly striking separate partnerships with online music streaming and digital store Lala.
The move puts the search and social networking giants in direct completion with the likes of Apple’s iTunes and Spotify. It seems everyone wants in on this music war.
The online music industry has been used as a bench mark for the debate on paid content – led by a very determined Rupert Murdoch.
Years ago, when Apple first announced iTunes, critics said that music lovers would never want to pay for music that they could download for free on the likes of Limewire. Now though, many years on and after iTune’s became the most popular music downloading service in the world, Spotify came up with a way to stream music for free using an ad-funded model and have recently introduced some subscription fees. Both services have experienced success.
Lala.com now offers a hybrid approach between a standard online music streaming service and an online store like iTunes.
Users can listen to any of the songs that are part of its extensive 7-million titles library for free once, after which they can opt to buy a streamed version of the song for $0.10, or pay $0.99 for an MP3 download. LaLa already counts about 5 million streamings a month.
The Facebook deal will see the social network offer the service to its users, getting 30% of revenues generated. Rumours of a second deal with Google could be announced next week. The deal would see Google searches yielding a widget in the results that lets the user stream the full song.
Google and Facebook just want to be King of everything, but music an avenue they can really go down? And will it work…we have seen in the past how brands that try and be everything to everyone often fail (Woolworths anyone?).
Google adds social media activity to search results
Oct 28th
Google has launched Social Search facility that enables users to discover publicly available web content from their social circle online.
Currently still in its experimental stage, when using Social Search users will sometimes see a special set of “results from people in your social circle” towards the bottom of the results page.
These social results include relevant websites, blogs, status updates, and other publicly-available content from users’ online friends and contacts.
So, for example, if a user was planning a trip to Cairo, and a friend of theirs happened to have listed great places to stay on their website, Google Social Search makes it much easier to find this kind of content.
“This is about making your search results even more relevant. For some searches, what your friends have published online might be exactly what you want,” said Director of Product Management at Google, Tom Stocky.
“For example, say you’re looking for movie reviews and one of your friends happened to write about that movie on his blog — you would probably want to read it, and that’s what Social Search makes it easier to find.”
Google account holders can try out the experimental tool via google.com/labs.
Social Search gives results from their friends, such as users’ Gmail chat friends as well as their contacts on the social sites they choose to list on their Google Profile.
For instance, if a user has added their Twitter account to their Google Profile page, tweets from the people they follow may be included in their social results
Facebook and MySpace partner to take on Twitter – it’s war!
Oct 28th
Traditional social networking rivals Facebook and MySpace have said they are in talks about sharing content.
Facebook has reportedly said it’d be happy to feature content from MySpace now that the two are moving in different directions.
The Telegraph newspaper quoted Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sanderberg, “Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy.
“We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.”
MySpace boss Owen Van Natta – who left Facebook in April to lead News Corp’s social network – confirmed the talks by adding that Facebook is about “core communication” while MySpace is about “congregating around popular content”.
He said that Facebook was no to be a large part of MySpace’s future.
Seems odd to me, but Facebook has more than 300 million users now, while MySpace lags behind with 124 million so it’s not surprising the site is looking at ways of appealing to more people.
In the past 12 months Facebook has extended its dominance in every territory in Europe, but that doesn’t mean it’s terminal for MySpace. The battle certainly isn’t over yet and a combination of the two would be mutually beneficial because ultimately, it would attract more advertisers and give them greater opportunities to target a wider and more diverse audience.
The question now is, I mean about this Yahoo/Microsoft style partnership, is whether it’ll come up against regulatory approval. And what does it mean for Twitter – the current social media darling? It means a while new war.
Does digital marketing really make kids turn to booze?
Oct 27th
The Portman Group, an industry body that works with drinks producers to raise standards of alcohol marketing, has published a guide that aims to stop alcohol brands targeting underage consumers or encouraging harmful drinking through their digital marketing. This is interesting to me for a number of reasons:
Firstly, please answer this question: Have you ever been encouraged to drink alcohol based on something you saw on the internet?
While there may be some out there that say yes, I suspect the vast majority would say no.
My second point is that when you are a teenager, or indeed ‘under age’, you drink whatever you can get your hands on. Brands that have enough money in the marketing budgets to advertise are often too expensive for teenagers that live of a wage of pocket money from their parents.
But I don’t want to criticize the good deed the Portman Group is doing. It is challenging companies to be socially responsible after all.
I think however, that it is interesting how the internet has led to further concerns over underage drinking.
Facebook undergoes another makeover. Will it help you?
Oct 26th
Facebook has undergone yet another homepage makeover. Last Friday the social networking site quietly rolled out some fairly significant changes to the way information is displayed on a users’ homepage.
The updates make the default feed more like it was before the last major homepage overhaul, but as usual the changes aren’t without some issues, and they have sparked more backlash among the Facebook community.
When Facebook changed the homepage earlier this year, it went to a more Twitter-like feed of real-time status updates. Basically, every status update from your network of friends is displayed in as it is entered without any filtering.
The new Facebook homepage News Feed brings relevance back to the main feed. Rather than displaying everything from everyone, the News Feed uses a Facebook magic algorithm to display only the posts and status updates that your network is interested in. The more likes, comments or interactions a post within your network has, the more likely it will appear within your News Feed.
Robert Scoble, a technology evangelist and social networking guru, described the change on his blog “This makes Facebook much more useful because you only see the items that your friends have found important enough to comment on or “touch” in some way. Overnight my news feed went from something that looked pretty cold and lame to something that has tons of ‘warmth.’”
Who does Microsoft want to be and to whom?
Oct 23rd
The battle between tech giants Microsoft and Apple has now gone far behind those rather annoying ‘I’m a Mac, I’m a PC’ ads and is in full swing.
Both companies this week launched new products. Apple came out with some interesting new innovations including a 27 inch screen (the iMac) and Microsoft launched a number of new applications – which I think is actually a very interesting move for the company.
However, Microsoft has lacked much innovation in terms of new ideas. It seems the tech giant that once ruled the world is simply playing catch-up (does anybody remember Zune…who actually has one?).
Apple on the other hand, doesn’t even have to try. Its brand advocates are so loyal and besotted with this ‘hip and trendy’ brand that it doesn’t have to launch hundred of products a year – just a few new gadgets will do.
Anything Apple does is ‘revolutionary’ and instantly cool. Microsoft is still, well, Microsoft. A little outdated and is coming across as simply being, well, a little desperate.
Its launch of Bing earlier this year signaled a new fight as it took on search engine giant Google – trying to cash in on search marketing revenues. But is it too late? What will compel internet users to switch from Google, a brand they have great affinity with and have trusted for years (probably since they first began using the internet!)? It’ll have to be huge.
As a society we have to challenge the big players. We can’t let them have a monopoly on any given market and we need other companies to offer us alternatives – not everyone is the same. But is Microsoft trying too hard to be too many things to too many people and in the process losing site of itself?
Who knows what Microsoft stands for anymore, and furthermore, why would advertisers get on board if they can’t be exactly sure about what they brand does anymore and for whom?
Be a leader not a follower on Twitter
Oct 22nd
You may have heard about big brands and advertisers employing staff to create social media strategies and I can see the value in that.
However, I don’t see why the FBI needs to be telling the world about itself in 140 characters or less.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an update on its feed this morning about an arrest it has made.
I have come to know Twitter as a ‘social network’ for the media and journalists. I see little value in it for individuals. I have all the major news services I follow in my feed, as well as industry commentators, press officers, some brands (just to see when they release new products and advertising) and a few celebrities (for fun). But do I have any actually ‘friends’ on there? Well no.
It seems to me that a lot of people and brands and organizations are on Twitter for the sake of it. There are some that I’m following that haven’t posted any updates since July. So what’s the point of being in a space you don’t use, let alone reach your actually advocates and consumers?
I think if you are going to be on Twitter, research who else is one there and really think about who you follow. If people want to follow you, for whatever reason, give them a reason to check in with you everyday.
Be compelling. I recently started following a lot more brands as I realised I probably hadn’t been making enough effort with the network.
Out of about 30 new brands I started following, only one wrote to me and said “thanks for following us” and then made me a list of promises. I will now be checking in with them throughout the working day. They made me feel like Twitter was worthwhile and they are obviously using it for all of its benefits and not just because, well, “everyone else is doing it”.
When technology researchers (and PRs) lose the plot
Oct 20th
I hate it when and decently good story and valuable piece of research is then discredited – it its very own press release.
Point in case is a new piece of research from Warwick Business School which reveals that companies are unable to manage increasing volume and complexity of customer insight.
The media release goes on to suggest that 75% of customer feedback remains unread because of the sheer volumes involved.
It’s a credible enough piece of research. Some 3,000 pieces of actual customer feedback in total from Asda, Audi and National Express were used in the study.
And Chris Worth, an associate of Warwick Business School, even comments, “Faced with a mass of data, human beings will make a rational choice: cut down the complexity to something manageable.
“When dealing with thousands of customer comments, that led to 75% of the data being tossed and the focus narrowing to a few key categories. That’s dangerous, because the most profitable opportunities are often hidden in little gems of data hidden in dark corners, which companies appear to be missing.”
According to the School 1,000 pieces represents the minimum average amount of feedback a national high street company can expect per month. When companies are running special promotions actively asking for feedback, the number can even reach 100,000 pieces of feedback per month.
In a major company, the feedback would need to be analysed, and used as the basis of concrete recommendations to remedy any issues raised within the feedback. The analysis is then further collated to provide information which is critical to improving the overall customer experience from the company.
OK so all fair enough. But where these findings then go wrong is in the next steps.
The research team pitted three human analysts against Rant & Rave, a sophisticated text analysis technology, which has been developed by Rapide Communication in association with The University of Birmingham, to analyse customer feedback.
In the Tech Vs Human data breakdown and analysis showdown there was an obvious winner – the Rant & Rave system.
Now I’m not discrediting the merits of Rant & Rave but when the researchers had invested so much time in investigating the human element, it’s a shame they didn’t invest the same in the tech competitors.
How about three humans Vs three data systems. While the findings make clear tech champions man in analysing huge quantities of data, what we’re left up with is a piece of advertorial for Rant & Rave. And as we all know readers, advertorial discredits any objective findings.
I appreciate budgets might be tight, but when they’ve managed to scape together a few more coffers and enlist a few more tech systems, then maybe there’ll be more to talk about. Until then…
How CGI technology took the truth and fun out of advertising
Oct 13th
“Truth in advertising is becoming a misnomer because of the rise of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in TV commercials” says a new report out today.
This may seem like news from the ‘bleeding obvious’, but it’s actually astonishing to know how often we are fooled by technology. At least 80 to 90% of ads actually contain some CGI, especially car ads (which unfortunately means that Citroen doesn’t actually make a dancing robot car).
Computers have been used for years to create fantasy images and improve landscapes in ads, creating generic cityscapes and inserting well-known landmarks into the background. But the question on the consumer’s lips now is “why use trickery”?
Last April, it was revealed that magazines could be banned from using airbrushed photographs of celebrities that make them look slimmer over fears that they were promoting unrealistic body images.
Editors from glossy publications including Vogue, Hello! and Elle had a meeting, the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) was there too, but what was the result? Nothing.
Perhaps the real truth hit consumers in the face when Dove revolutionised beauty advertising with its ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, showing consumers what really went on. But consumers can’t tell us now that they are actually shocked by the use of CGI?
The thing is that CGI (and those geeks that sit in dark rooms creating it for hours) has become so life-like that car manufacturers can avoid the cost of building prototypes of new models and shipping them to other countries to be filmed. Instead, entire vehicles are being rendered in 3D to create commercials where nothing is real. Nothing. Is this deceit?
CGI is not always obvious; but that is kind of the point.
Advertisers can obviously achieve more interesting effects in CGI. And let’s face it, ads that ‘wow’ us, are the ones that tend to work.
So how many ads are fully computer-generated? Up to 20% at the most, according to one expert, as CGI can be more “convenient”.
A lot of the time CGI is used to achieve “fantastic”, but more and more it’s becoming simply an easier way of working – sitting in that dark room as opposed to being on location, paying actors, cameramen etc.
And as brands continue to have more of a global reach, CGI is often used to adapt ads from elsewhere. So if you’re taking an ad from another market, you can replace the pack shot in it with the local pack shot using nothing but CGI.
But in the end, CGI won’t replace a good original idea and if you want something to be warm and emotional, CGI probably doesn’t cut it. Consumers want the truth, and it just happens to be the only way to trust.
The next ‘holy grail’ of search advertising?
Oct 9th
Micro-blogging site Twitter is in advanced talks with Google and Microsoft about licensing its data feed to the companies’ search engines!
This is very exciting news for all those brands and advertisers that currently use Twitter to release information about upcoming products and company news.
I personally think this is a brilliant idea, and if you’ve ever used Twitter Search you’ll know why – it’s a great way to follow trends, get the news straight from the horse’s mouth and find out what people are saying about you.
The ability to cull through the flood of tweets as they are posted is gaining popularity as an important new way to search the internet for up-to-the-minute information on the latest news events and happenings on.
Twitter’s discussions with Microsoft and Google are being conducted separately and would allow each company to incorporate the 140-character messages, or ‘tweets’, that Twitter is known for into their internet search results.
The AllThingsDigital blog (part of the Wall Street Journal) quoted unidentified sources as saying the companies are discussing several types of deals.
Details could include Twitter receiving a payment of several million dollars and various types of revenue-sharing agreements to allow Twitter to benefit from the ad revenue that Microsoft and Google generate from search results.
Twitter has emerged as one of the fastest-growing internet social media services due to the amount of businesses that use it to promote themselves and stay in touch in ‘real time’, however the company has yet to generate any significant revenue from its free service. Could this be the micro-blogging site’s ‘holy grail’ of revenues?
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