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| Hey, Facebook, Isn’t It Time To Fix Some Bugs? Posted: 04 Oct 2008 03:41 AM PDT
The Live Feed is laggy. Most of the time it’s not up to date - and we’re not talking seconds or minutes here, we’re talking hours late, after which it suddenly gets updated all at once. Sure, I can still use the News Feed, but I prefer to see all of my friends’ activity, not only what Facebook’s algorithms chose as relevant. Perhaps I’m alone here, but the Live Feed is basically the most important part of my Facebook experience, and in its current state it’s nearly unusable. The chat is even worse. Frequent dropouts, undelivered messages, notifications that your chat buddy has gone offline (and he/she hasn’t), and yes, the occasional complete blackout with the message that the Facebook chat is not available at the moment - all of these make the chatting experience quite painful. The thing about chat is that it must be reliable. You can exchange hundreds of messages without problems, but if even one of those gets dropped you’ll be annoyed. Just like with web hosting, there’s very little margin for error here; if the chat is not 99.99% reliable people are going to get angry. And currently, Facebook’s chat is nowhere near that stage as far as reliability goes. Hopefully the folks at Facebook will wake up and start working on improving their quality of service, because this is getting slightly annoying. If you’ve had bad (or good) experiences with the reliability of Live Feed and Chat, please let us know in the comments. --- Facebook Implements Bug Tracking System |
| Interview with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Partner (Video) Posted: 03 Oct 2008 04:51 PM PDT If you’ve heard about Berlin, Germany a lot recently, it’s because it’s a growing technology hub in Europe that many people are calling Europe’s next “Silicon Valley.” There are a lot of web companies opening offices all over Berlin, like eBay, Nokia, and Wikimedia, and they already have their own “Facebook,” the social networking site studiVZ. Berlin is certainly Germany’s internet capital and quickly rising in the ranks as Europe’s top technology-oriented city (behind only London and Paris). In order to attract American and global companies to Germany, Berlin Partner, a business development agency, partners with companies looking to expand to Europe and offers them reimbursement grants of up to 50% of a company’s investment. At New York City’s Web 2.0 Expo I sat down with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Partner to talk about why Berlin is so hot, what exactly is going on in Europe in terms of social media, and how Berlin plans to host their own European Web 2.0 Expo in October. You can watch via the embed below or download the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! --- Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007: 100€ Off for Mashable Readers This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Reason #823 You Should Be Producing Video Content Posted: 03 Oct 2008 04:43 PM PDT Rather than key in on the fact that the amount of money in the pool for producers will be increasing by a factor of fourteen, many editorialists are keying in on the fact that ad rates on a CPM are likely to decrease over time. There was a single sentence that has been used all over the place (I first saw it at Wired today):
Master videographer Nalts weighed in with a few pieces of advice for the people in the various parts of the online video equation (viewers, amateur creators, advertisers, online studios, and heritage media nuts). Almost all of it is indispensible, but most interesting to me is the advice he gives for producers:
It’s important to note that Nalts is entrenched in the YouTube culture (but not at all ignorant of the rest of the online video world). According to the eMarketer report (and fleshed out by my own experience), there are many online publishers (Mashable included) that are spending a good deal of effort growing their online video offerings because quite simply, you can monetize it at much higher rates than the rest of the content. The average video CPM amongst the seven Web publishers surveyed by eMarketer were about three times higher than the average display ad’s value at $43. The rest of the same publishers’ content averaged at about a $15 CPM. Certainly CPMs will be driven down by lack of scarcity by 2013, which is the reason why now is the time to jump into video (or any time that’s sooner rather than later). The real money in video is the ability to move beyond CPM ads an into brand advertising and other forms of sponsorship. The return for both advertiser and producer tends to be a lot greater, but these relationships are generally only available for those who’ve established a track record and reputation in their content production. --- Google Stock Price Soars at $560.70 |
| 9 Audio Ad Networks for Websites, Blogs, and Beyond Posted: 03 Oct 2008 04:12 PM PDT
Tell us how you feel about audio ad networks in the comments.
Podtrac is a popular ad network for podcasters. It basically acts as a sales representative for podcasters to advertisers. It also provides demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, and multiple advertising delivery options. Podtrac boasts of hundreds of top podcasts in its network including many from the iTunes Top 100 list. Kiptronic
Kiptronic positions itself as “the first and only provider of downloadable media ad insertion to offer built-in support for DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and Microsoft’s Atlas Publisher Suite.” It insert audio and video ads on podcasts, which work online as well as offline on iPods, smartphones, Internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and more. RadioTail
RadioTail is another podcast advertising network that provides podcast stats through its service called Ripple. Some of the features RadioTail provides to publishers include insertion of ads at specific times during the day, automatic insertion and rotation of ads, customized podcast statistics reporting, and more. VoloMedia
VoloMedia boasts of some of the largest media houses as its clients, such as MSNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fox News, etc. VoloMedia adds ads on video and audio content online and on portable devices while providing statistics on the consumption of media. Ad targeting can be done geographically, demographically, and by time of day. It also provides publisher plugins for the iTunes Media Player and Adobe Flash to capture usage metrics. VoodooVox
VoodooVox says phone calls are the new page views. What it does is insert short audio ads in phone calls generated by its network, which consists of hundreds of call publishers including calling card companies, 411 services, call centers, radio stations,VOIP providers, and Web applications. Each of these call publishers generate “approximately 300 million calls monthly.” According to VoodooVox, inserting audio ads in phone calls is better for the advertiser than Web banners since the ads are “delivered directly into the ears of the intended audience.” Audio ads are something we take for granted when we call up a company’s customer service, like our mobile phone operator, bank, satellite TV service provider, etc. But can these ads can be served without interfering much on our phone experience? NetAudioAds
NetAudioAds claims to have more than 46 million participating webpages and that seems like quite an impressive number to start with. The service’s ads are short 5 second audio ads, known as adlets, that are played whenever a visitor opens a participating webpage. Listeners can be targeted by demographic and by location. NetAudioAds also says that its ads are measurable, and audited and verified by accredited third party auditing companies. You can run the ads on your blog or on your MySpace page as well. Google Audio Ads
According to Google Audio Ads, “22% of Internet users make purchases after searching for something they learned about on the radio,” and so it might be a nice idea to run a radio ad campaign for your online business or site. Success stories include Gifts.com, which “received 23% more visits and a 34% higher conversion rate in markets which ran radio ads.” To learn more, simply login to your Google Adwords account and choose the audio ads tab. You can choose to run ads on 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the US, choose the top stations only, or choose by location or time of day. You can also search for a specialist at the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom radio ad for your campaign. TargetSpot
TargetSpot starts off where Google Audio Ads finishes. It lets you run audio ads, video ads, and banners across hundreds of Internet radio stations. You can select stations by location and format, and target your ads by time of the day, region, or specific market. Will running an ad on an Internet radio station be useful? TargetSpot quotes Arbitron and Edison Media Research that “33 million people tune into Internet radio each week, and the at-work audience has grown from 12% to 20% in one year.” Also, “57% of users reported listening to streaming radio while buying at a website, according to RAEL’s Radio and Internet: Powerful Compliments for Advertisers.” LocalVocal
LocalVocal is an audio ad network that places audio ads across free directory assistance services, radio, Web telephony, IVR systems, and calling cards. Setting up an ad campaign is very easy from the LocalVocal site and can be as low as $5. You can choose to target locally or across the US and pay only when your ad is heard or when you receive leads. --- Xanga Audio Launches |
| Live Search Cashback Increases in Popularity During Economic Downturn Posted: 03 Oct 2008 12:55 PM PDT
According to Hitwise reports, Live Search Cashback was at a 3.75% share of the total traffic to Live.com about eleven weeks ago, but had grown to 6.29% of the total traffic just seven days ago. The statistics delivered by Hitwise also track gender and note that many of these frugal shoppers are female with an income under $100,000 a year. Live Search Cashback is growing its market share in a tough economic climate, and that alone says a lot about the program, but how does it work? Basically, it requires you to sign up for it, giving it some tracking information so it can follow your shopping and credit your cash back correctly. Once you have the Live Search set up with a Live Search Cashback account, you just remember to do all of your online shopping through the Live Search interface. As you go about your normal bargain hunting, Cashback via Live Search will list products rated by price and participation in addition to shopping category. As long as you purchase items with the Live Search Cashback indicator logo on them (shown above), your cash back rebates and rewards get credited to your Cashback account. Users of the program can expect to see most rebates and rewards in their account within 60 days, a similar time frame to sites like MyPoints and other points, rewards and cash back programs. With at least several months of economic crunch ahead of us, if not longer, every penny counts. If you haven’t already signed up for a shopping rewards program, you may want to check out Live Search Cashback and use it to save as many of your hard earned pennies as possible while you buy the items you need. Every penny counts these days, after all. --- Cashback Facebook App Pays You to Shop |
| JamsBio Lets You Share, Interact With, and Discuss Music (The Startup Review) Posted: 03 Oct 2008 12:21 PM PDT
Company20-Word DescriptionA new online social community where people connect with each other by sharing the music and moments that shape their lives. CEO’s PitchMusic is a part of everyone’s life, helps to define us and has power to unite us. This is the inspiration behind JamsBio. JamsBio offers a rich platform on top of a database of over 5 million songs to:
Mashable’s TakeJamsBio looks and smells just like another social music sharing service at first, but a look under the covers reveals something different, which is refreshing these days. Yes, you can share music on the site but there’s more to it than that. Think of it more as a musical blog platform mixed with a music review service. You can express your thoughts and feeling with a post about music in three different ways: 1. Memory - Share what you think about a specific song, when and where you heard it 2. Music Review - Write a review of a song, album or artist. 3. Concert Review - Review the actual live performance that you attended. Here’s a music Review I did about a song from Foreigner. Notice how it includes your rating, review and even an embedded player that allows the reader to listen to the track:
There are several fun things to do on the service, such as games. For example, there’s SongBlitz which is like Name That Tune, where you try to guess the name of the song and artist. There’s also JamsMatch where you try to match classic album covers with the right artists. There’s a leaderboard that tracks all players and results.
They have a Facebook app called Memory Explorer that lets you show your latest JamsBio memories in your Facebook profile, as well as widgets that you can embed on your other social networking profiles, blogs or websites. Another fun area is the Top 5 lists feature where members share their favorite five songs, artists or albums in countless categories. This can generate a great deal of debate and arguments, which is cool. Just as in music posts, the songs in your list can be played right from there. As with just about everything else on the site, you can easily embed your list as a widget or share it on other social networks with friends.
JamsBio does offer a different way to express yourself through your musical tastes. They present many interesting tools to accumplish this too. Their MusicFinder database seems to do a good job finding tracks. They claim that their database contains millions of songs which might be true judging from the results of all the searches that I conducted, including very rare and obscure tunes and artists. I know the last thing any of us need is yet another social music sharing site, but this one serves up an original soundtrack worth a listen and a look. Editor's Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials  |
| Exploring Best Practices for Building and Monetizing Mobile Social Networks Posted: 03 Oct 2008 11:28 AM PDT This is a guest post written by Dave Sloan, Marketing Director of Avot Media. Avot Media is the innovator behind tipMotion, the high performance video transcoding and near-real-time streaming appliance enabling video delivery to Web-enabled mobile devices. Social networking is quickly taking hold among mobile users. Juniper Research believes there will be as many as 54 million mobile social networkers worldwide by the end of 2008 and forecasts adoption to rise to 730 million users in 2013. That's a lot of mobile friendships!
From a mobile device, users can perform a subset of social networking functions like updating their status, sharing pictures, viewing pictures, reading mini-feeds, finding their friends contact information, even instant messaging. Limited functionality in a mobile environment is sufficient to keep us engaged, as long as our favorite features are accessible. A new advertising medium Social networking has changed the way we keep in touch, communicate, and share information with friends and acquaintances. Within the social network we can message each other, share photos, and stay up to date without email, without picture sharing Web sites, without instant messaging clients and now, without necessarily using a desktop computer. As we spend more time on social networks, invite our friends to join, and post content, we are increasing the size and value of the network, making the social network more attractive as an engaging advertising medium. Artists who host fan sites, record companies who want to promote their artists, and the social networks themselves will benefit from making video available via mobile social networks. Artists can post videos and make them available on their Facebook or MySpace sites and can expect a healthy portion of these projected millions of users to watch them. For artists, record companies, and advertisers there is a huge opportunity to sponsor the delivery of the video. There are really two opportunities here; brand impressions and conversion. Simply offering free premium content would promote the brand and encourage users to purchase CDs or merchandise at a later time. Or, there may be a more targeted approach where the user is prompted to buy ringtones, wallpaper, or tracks directly from the mobile social network. A short pre-roll video ad may be a good user experience, as long as the user does not feel over-exposed to ads. Viral growth and sales Social networks are inherently built to share and spread content virally. As more users view mobile video, the more likely they are to share content within their network, recommend artists, and promote music. Great experiences will spread brand awareness and lead to sales. As an example, the new pop artist Colbie Callait posted a couple of her tracks on her MySpace page in 2006. Her songs were streamed over 42 million times, and seen on Youtube over 25 million times. Her debut album "Coco" has since gone platinum with nearly 2 million albums sold. Social networks spread her music virally, leading to commercial success. The next big unsigned artist could have even greater appeal with mobile video. The mobile device is incredibly personal and targeted. Content owners will need to experiment with different use case models to see what creates the best user experience, and which has the biggest return on investment. Above all, the social network must extend and enhance its user experience in its mobile context. Any user experience that requires too many steps, infringes privacy, or annoys the user with overcommercialization will turn users away quickly. User Experience Posting, tagging, and sharing pictures is a great experience from a mobile social network. On an iPhone, for example, users can scroll through high-res pictures of their friends as easily as they can browse digital pictures on their own mobile phone. The next logical step is to shoot, upload, share, and comment on video. Users will be able to shoot a video from their device and quickly post it to their profile. Youtube already offers this feature, but mobile video playback on the most popular social networks is not yet possible. Video playback will enhance the richness of user-generated content and drive engagement and lock-in to the network. Just like picture viewing, the mobile video sharing experience has to be rich and simple. Social networks can ensure a smooth video playback experience by using a robust video formatting and delivery engine on the backend. The right mobile video delivery tool can support various device formats, hundreds of phone types, all network conditions, and the scale and volume of their mobile user base. The user should be able to browse their friends' videos and their fan page videos without being slowed down by slow download times and image break up. Mobile video is best streamed directly to the mobile device's native media player. This means that a social network application would need to pass the video request to the video streaming engine on the backend, have the video stream to the device's media player, then pass the user back to the social networking app. Embedding the video inside the application won't work as the native media player needs to take the entire screen, maximizing the quality of the video. However, it will be easy to design an experience that smoothly passes the user back to the application. Obviously, social networks are intent on keeping the user engaged and active on their network. Best practices: Adding mobile video Of course, social networks will want to be careful not to simply make video available via one channel, like on the iPhone over a 3G network. The best approach would be to invest in mobile video delivery tools that support all devices on all networks, especially popular lower speed networks like EDGE and popular phones like Motorola RAZR. The trick to designing to a great mobile experience is to make content easily discoverable. Asking users to click 10 levels down in an on-deck feature phone application is messy. And, asking users to open a mobile browser and use a search engine is equally as painful. Mobile social networks have an opportunity to streamline the discovery of Web content. Content is shared, presented by friends, and presented in a mini-feed. No search required. No clunky WAP site. Users are already accustomed to content feeds on the desktop. Presenting content in the context of a social network via a mobile application is the logical next step. Social networks could, by virtue of presenting a great user experience, be the tipping point of mobile video. Who benefits? As data plans get cheaper, network connections get faster, and Web video explodes in popularity, delivering mobile video to social networking applications will benefit everyone.
As social networks expand into the mobile arena, they have been careful not to cram too many features into the mobile experience. Naturally, the mobile version should be a "lite" version that is easy to navigate on the go. Some features are best left out of the mobile version, but others, like mobile video, are perfectly appropriate as mobile devices become more media-centric and backend mobile video delivery tools become more robust. As long as the experience is well designed and the delivery tools are scalable and robust, there is a mobile game changer on the horizon. --- Hear Steve Wozniak Speak at the Social Networking Conference |
| Steve Jobs Health Scare: Citizen Journalist Costs Apple Shareholders Billions Posted: 03 Oct 2008 08:51 AM PDT  A rumor purporting that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, published on CNN's citizen journalism site iReport, briefly sent shares of Apple in a freefall this morning. While Apple quickly moved to quell the rumor, telling Silicon Alley Insider that the news was simply "not true," in light of the recent concerns over Steve Jobs' health, the news was enough to spark a rapid sell-off of the company's stock. While it will remain to be seen whether or not this was a deliberate attempt to manipulate Apple stock and make money on the part of the citizen journalist who posted the news, it should be noted that Internet rumors concerning the stock market have existed long before we started calling anonymous Web posters "citizen journalists." During the dotcom boom in the late 90s, stocks routinely made aggressive moves based on comments made in chat rooms and on online message boards, known as "pump and dump" scams. In any event, today's case is a bit different because iReport carries the branding of CNN, a respected mainstream media organization. As such, the rumor seemed more credible, and investors obviously made the decision to sell Apple stock based on it. Nonetheless, I think this is mainly a special circumstance – concerns about Jobs' health have been in the news for months, and any indication that it is moving in one direction or the other has had implications for Apple's shares. Further, the premise of iReport is that the best news makes it on-air to CNN (presumably after being verified by professional journalists) – that didn't seem to happen here. News about public companies is obviously a delicate subject, but I would hardly call this blunder the beginning of the end for citizen journalism. Media companies are learning as they go – citizen journalism for the moment is simply a compliment to the traditional tenants of reporting – and so long as the credibility of the parent organization isn't compromised, there really isn't much to worry about. --- The Daily Poll: How Did You Follow the Steve Jobs Keynote? |
| Loren Feldman, Julia Allison, and GaryVee Speak About Personal Branding: Will You Attend? Posted: 03 Oct 2008 07:35 AM PDT
The power of the web has created the golden age of the individual. Social Media tools provide us with more opportunities than ever to shine. But these days it takes much more than a website and a business card to get attention. It’s all about creating a strategic plan for the most important brand around: YOU. How do you want your audience to think about you? Are you going to dive in right in, fly by the seat of your pants, and deal with potential backlash as it comes? Or will you carefully plot out your meteoric rise to stardom? Whichever path you choose, personal branding has two essential requirements: passion and authenticity. Join mediabistro.com to talk about the art of personal branding with three mavericks of the DIY branding revolution:
Twitter or Email mediabistro.com with questions for Julia, Loren, Gary or Suzie! Twitter.com/mediabistro or email: events@mediabistro.com, subject: brand yourself Get $25 off through October 6th with code MASH25. --- 1938Media Doesn’t Acquire CNet |
| Posted: 03 Oct 2008 02:30 AM PDT
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I’m an avid 
A new 
While some have slammed Internet audio ads as annoying, some marketers admit that having a bit of sound can be a good way to bring readers’ attention to one ad amongst half a dozen banners. Do you like audio ads? Would you consider putting one on your site or blog? Or would you prefer using an audio ad for your online ad campaign? Below are 9 audio ad networks for websites, podcasts, and beyond. 
Mobile social networking has gained traction mostly due to well-built mobile applications. The Facebook application for 
Save the date for Personal Branding Redefined with Julia Allison, Gary Vaynerchuk & Loren Feldman on October 7 from 6:30-8:30pm at 92YTribeca / 54 Varick Street, NY, NY 10013. The panel starts sharply at 7pm, and the cash bar cocktail reception will be from 8:30-9:30.
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