The Day the Music Thrived on the Social Web

The music industry shone brightly Monday on the social web with a wide variety of highlights occurring simultaneously across a diverse set of social networking sites. Perhaps these events are indications of a change in tide for the oft-beleaguered industry.

It's been a full decade since Napster changed music distribution forever. That seems like a long time to wait for a good solution, but progress is happening. Just last week, industry leaders including Amazon, Apple, Nokia and Universal Music Group signed a potentially historic online distribution agreement with the 27-nation European Union.

Ultimately success for the music industry is reliant upon its ability to deliver quality content to consumers in compelling ways. This is precisely why it is great to see such a variety of innovative music momentum across the social web today.

U2 360 Concert Broadcast Worldwide via YouTube
Sunday night in Pasadena, California, U2 performed in front of a Rose Bowl packed with 96,000 fans. Also in the stadium were four dozen cameras and the latest in video technology used to broadcast the concert live to millions of fans worldwide via YouTube. A rebroadcast of the U2 Live from the Rose Bowl concert can be seen on YouTube.


Guitar Hero is the First Videogame with a Million Fans on Facebook
Activision announced an industry first today when Guitar Hero surpassed a million fans on Facebook. Considering that The Beatles: Rock Band recently topped the heavyweight, this was good cause for celebration. It's interesting to watch how entertainment such as music and gaming can be combined to drive success.

Alice In Chains Launches Black Gives Way To Blue iPhone App
I was quite impressed with the extent of content and diverse functionality featured in the iPhone application launching tomorrow in support of the new Alice In Chains release Black Gives Way To Blue. In addition to music, photos and video, the app lets you check out tour dates, buy concert tickets and merchandise, and share via Facebook, Twitter and email. There's a nice demo of the application on the Music Ally blog.

Meanwhile, iconic rockers Metallica release a not so innovative finger-tapping music app called "Tap Tap Revenge: Metallica" Tuesday. This is a game in the style of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Developed by Tapulous, it is similar to apps previously released to promote Lady Gaga, Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails.

MySpace & Amazon used for Them Crooked Vultures Pre-Release Teaser
The much anticipated album by rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures won't be released until mid November. The band features an impressive line up including John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme.

DGC/Interscope gave fans a taste of what to expect by launching an exclusive single premiere of "New Fang" Monday on MySpace. The page includes a "Pre Order Now on Amazon.com" call to action in the main hero graphic. This pre-launch effort is presently supported with a simple web site, YouTube channel, Twitter account and Facebook page that already has over 50,000 fans.

#MusicMonday All Abuzz on Twitter
With music industry activity like the things discussed above, it's no wonder people are talking music on Twitter. The phrase #musicmonday trended in the top two spots all day long on the leading micro-blog site. People include the tag in Tweets about music they like. Some use it to identify what they are listening to at the moment, while others post links to songs or videos.

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."
~ General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

Social Keeps Pushing Innovation in Music Distribution & Sharing
Online heavy hitters Google and Facebook are making moves to enhance online search, sharing and sampling of music. They're leveraging services like Lala, iLike and Imeen to power their offerings. Keep an eye on Lala's Facebook presence over the next few months. Brad Stone covered the story for the New York Times last week "Hot on Heels of Google, Facebook to Take First Step into Music." Facebook's own Will Chen recently offered a sneak peak of their approach to gifting music in a blog entry entitled "A New Tune for Facebook Gifts."

Considering how Facebook came out of nowhere to outplay everyone in the photo sharing game over the last two years, I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on how they integrate music into the world's leading social network.

Gaming Goes Social: Farmville Thrives on Facebook

Farmville has enjoyed explosive growth since being introduced on Facebook on June 20, 2009. Currently, over 56 million people play the game each month according to an article published last week by USA Today. "For social networks, it's game on" details the killer combination of casual games and social networks. I suggest you read the article, as it offers great insights and statistics.

"An estimated 100 million people are recent devotees of social games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Sorority Life and Bejeweled." the USA Today article explains. These games are easy to play and fun; and they're free for the most part. Yet the industry is generating significant revenue via micro-transactions of game add-ons as well as ad revenue from display banners.

For marketers, this is one more example of how important Facebook is becoming as a means to reach consumers. Marketing on Facebook is fishing where the fish are.

So it's quite apparent that I am not alone in my recent effort to reclaim time in reality that was temporarily lost to social gaming: read "How do we best spend our time?" In fact, a Google search of Farmville addict returns 170,000 results. And results on YouTube are significant as well, with admissions of addiction, Farmville interventions and even an interesting take on what Hitler would do if he found out about the rotten eggplants.

Personally, I'm happy I quit Farmville. The family and I actually planted a real farm this last weekend. Well, we built and installed three above-ground gardens. It was a lot of work and a great family activity. I will share more on my real-world farming adventure soon. Until then... have fun in the digital space, but stay well grounded in the real world.

3 Free Web Metrics & Analytics Tools

Exciting new tools for measuring web traffic and analytics are constantly emerging. A great thing about them is that you don’t need a big budget or expertise as a web analytics specialist to use these tools. So don’t be intimidated by the fact that this post is about web analytics, remember that Social Made Simple is all about making the social web accessible.

Let’s say you’re a marketer at a slow-to-change company. The down economy is putting the squeeze on your budgets. You need to convince management about the importance of online marketing. In order to do so, you’d like to show some statistics about the traffic on your company’s sites. It would be ideal if you could have data such as who’s visiting your sites, how long do people stay on your site, what are the demographics, what other sites do these people frequent and the competition stacks up.

Here are some key tools that can be used to collect this kind of information quickly and all it costs is your time.

1. Quantcast – a measurement service that provides audience reports for millions of web sites. Used by media buyers, the free component of this service provides data on traffic, demographics and lifestyle. Take note of the detailed demographics broken down by this source. I've tested it against client provided data - and the alignment is impressive.

2. Compete – provides free web site data including site traffic, engagement and competitive analytics via their Site Analytics and Trust Scores tools. I particularly find the engagement metrics displayed in the second image below to be quite useful - as all the site traffic in the world won't due you any good if everyone bounces after one or two pages.

3. Forrester Groundswell Profile Tool – provides a free Technographics® profile of your target audience based upon their age, gender and location. While this tool does generalize in broad strokes, it is useful in understanding your audience and what kind of experience resonates well with them.

I encourage you to bookmark each of these sites and to begin using these tools. Try them out by inputting your company's web sites and comparing the statistics to those provided by your internal resources. See how the data aligns; as well as where descrepancies exist. Then look into your competition - or relevant examples across industries. This will certainly help you understand some strengths and weaknesses of your online properties.

I believe you'll find yourself accessing this data often - and sharing it with your associates which will help your organization make more informed decisions.

YouTube Live - The Long Tail Effect

Come Monday, November 24, 2008 bloggers worldwide were judging YouTube Live as a marginal success. Yet, truth be told, their judgements were mostly based upon antiquated perceptions of success from the broadcast industry. The real truth was yet to be told.

The Long Tail was first coined by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson circa 2004. His book of the same name taught us about a million channels for a million people. The era of the superstar had given way to the digital generation.

Perhaps that's what surprised me most about YouTube Live - the simple fact that most media types didn't get it. While the actual live event was viewed by roughly 900,000 - the event lives on via a classic expression of the Long Tail. Just take a look at the most viewed clips from the event. Just weeks after airing, dozens of these clips have six - even seven - figure viewership.

My initital response to the event is covered in detail in this posting on the BOSSdev blog. And a further discussion on the topic occurs on Mark Cuban's blog. As time passes in this case, the true impact of YouTube Live becomes more apparent.

Social Rant: I Need Twitter Channels! What’s taking so long?

My Twitter obsession started with my profession: social media. Now I’m officially connected with over 600 of the world’s most innovative social media mavericks. That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s a lot more to life than work. I want to discuss travel, entertainment, food, wine, exercise, parenting, marriage, politics and more.

The burgeoning social web brings with it expectations. Requirements even. I don’t want all of my interests and passions blended into one giant social mix that’s shared with every Tom, Dick, Harry & Sally that surfs the social web. The knowledge and technology exists today to solve this problem and damn it, I’m growing impatient. Sure a lot of people are talking about Twitter channels, but why is it taking so long?
+ People discussing Twitter channels on Twitter http://budurl.com/xpej
+ Google search on “Twitter channels” http://budurl.com/4tch

I need to be able to quickly switch between work, sports, food, news, traffic and family channels on Twitter. I’ll take main navigation tabs for a thousand Alex. Enough with birds, ratings, tracking followers, leavers and the like… give me something truly useful. Give me Twitter channels.

Social Light: Profile Photos

Profile photos are necessary all over the social web. Every time you create a profile on a web site, you will likely have an opportunity to upload a photo. Profile photos are usually displayed as small squares less than in inch in size and formatted as a .jpeg or .gif file. The most common profile images are close ups of one’s face. I keep a folder entitled “Profile Pictures” in the “My Pictures” folder on each computer. This gives me a variety of good images to choose from quickly. If you need help preparing your profile images, I suggest you either ask a friend who’s savvy with digital photos or Google “how to crop a photo online.” The results will include a variety of free online photo editing tools.