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Source:Mashable!

Earlier today we noted the arrival of The Karaoke Channel Online in the sing-along ventures market. Interesting enough, MySpace Karaoke too is pushing its name out into the news cloud to mark the debut of video support as well as a redesign, a new recommendation engine, and more options for users to share media.

Amy Walgenbach, MySpace’s manager of communications, says that the company believes online karaoke is analogous to music as blogging is to writing. Which can make for fairly deep or shallow analysis, depending on one’s perspective of that particular juxtaposition. But whatever the case, the features now being touted by the network, along with the statistics being flashed for the public - 4 million MySpace Karaoke users with over 500,000 recordings - are certainly ones that many karaoke fans will consider crucial to the art of jukebox heroism.

Design-wise, the new MySpace Karaoke is none too shabby. It’s uniquely MySpace-like, for sure (be that a pro or con, you decide), but give it a generous glance here and there, and chances are you’ll find it to be laid out quite well. Options are clearly represented, and jumping from place to place is easy. To be perfectly honest, I wish the well-publicized MySpace Music were as intelligently drawn as the network’s Karaoke site is. It’s that good.

Will video drive MySpace Karaoke’s usage numbers to much grander heights? I suspect not. The YouTube generation surely enjoys the limelight to significant degree, but the attraction of watching a user’s emulation of Elvis or The Beatles isn’t likely to pull a consistently big crowd. Unless of course there are to be phenomena among the mix, such as a LonelyGirl15 of harmonic allure. And since I wouldn’t put it past anyone to “break out” from the masses in such an unpredictable way, let’s just say that the new MySpace Karaoke is here and is open for goods and bads to strut their stuff. Let your voices be heard, if you dare.

Note: MySpace Karaoke recording can be heard and viewed on Windows- and Mac-based computers, but recording is only possible with Microsoft’s operating systems.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Will You Use MySpace Karaoke?SingShot’s YouTube for Karaoke - Now Free!Votigo Challenges Bix in Video ContestsBreaking: SingShot Acquired By Electronic ArtsThe Karaoke Channel Goes Online (Invites)eSnips Launches MicroPortalsYouTube Underground Contest

Source:Mashable!

Widget platform Clearspring turned some heads last month when it said that it would have reach equivalent to the “7th largest web property” following its acquisition of AddThis, a provider of widgets that enable easy social bookmarking from blogs and Web pages. Today, new data from comScore shows that while Clearspring’s reach is indeed huge, another player in the space – Gigya – is actually reaching a few million more eyeballs every month worldwide.

According to data from August 2008, Gigya reached 174 million unique widget viewers worldwide for the month, compared to 160 million for Clearspring. Slide sits in 3rd with 154 million viewers, with other competitors running significantly behind the top three (however, it should be noted that RockYou was not included in the report). In the US, Clearspring holds a slight lead over Gigya: 71.1 million viewers compared to 70.3 million, respectively. Those numbers might swing back into Clearspring’s favor soon though, since the AddThis acquisition is not yet included in the comScore report.

In any event, what’s responsible for the huge reach of the widget providers would largely seem to be the placement of widgets on social networking sites, where Gigya says that the average widget is viewed by 25 different people. While those numbers are big, the reach of widgets isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison with the page views racked up by leading Web properties like Google, Yahoo, and MSN because they aren’t nearly as easy to monetize yet.

However, Gigya (as well as other optimistic companies in the space I’ve spoke with recently) see this changing. The company cites recent Forrester research and says that “with 83 percent of people trusting a friend’s opinion of a product or service, widgets, and their ability to reach friend networks as user-endorsed content, represent an important marketing opportunity.“ Gigya launched its own ad network earlier this year to begin addressing this opportunity, while Clearspring and Widgetbox have their own offerings too.

On the other hand, a global slowdown in advertising could obviously put a major dent in these plans, especially if advertisers prove reluctant to try less proven formats like widgets. Additionally, it’s to-be-determined how users will respond to increasingly obtrusive ads being placed in their widgets – especially if the brands represented don’t necessarily mix with their personal tastes.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Feedjit Shows Arrivals & Departures of Your Site VisitorsStartMobile Launches a Widget to Sell Mobile ContentClipBlast’s Video Search Widget is Personalized TooFreewebs Holding a Contest to Find the Most Innovative Widget in the WorldGruvr’s Latest Widget Puts Your Band on the MapLemonade Launches Facebook App for Making MoneyEdgeio Offers A Paid Content Widget

Source:Mashable!

Anyone who has pried opinions out of me (or seen my eyes glaze over) knows that I admire simple, clear language and despise buzzwords and jargon. Well, at a recent New York event , the wine entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk said one of the smartest and simplest things I have heard about incorporating emerging social tools into your life: “Execute against yourself.”

Sounds strange, right? But according to Gary and the people he was sharing the stage with, Julia Allison and Loren Feldman, you must first have a core business, purpose, or mission, and only then can you enhance that core using peripheral social tools for marketing and other purposes. As Gary puts it, “Content is King. But marketing is Queen, and she rules the house.”

Execute your resume

My personal “core” is using a scientific background to devise analytical approaches to strategic problems. But in the last six months or so I have developed a modest expertise with emerging social technologies that in principle can stand on its own. And so, logically, I have been thinking about how to display this newfound experience with social tools on my resume, given that I work largely in an area where those skills are peripheral but perhaps important to the main tasks. Are they computer skills? People skills? A relevant hobby?

With traditional media gatekeepers becoming decreasingly influential, it seems like everyone who is tech savvy is laying the groundwork for online personal and business branding. And I have heard more than once that “Google is the new resume.” You are your search results as far as anyone is concerned. So, someone could reasonably argue that the resume as we know it is dead. Resume, R.I.P.

Execute against your resume

But I say, long live the resume. Because simply saying that “Google is the new resume” is not entirely true. And here I disagree with authorities like author Brian Solis. Traditional careers like doctor, lawyer, scientist, architect, and so forth are not going anywhere. Even as social software tools become pervasive in society, people in such careers will simply figure out how to best add them (or not) into their work to add value. They will not entirely restructure how they carry out their lives; they will use them to enhance their existing lives. In Gary Vaynerchuk’s terminology, they will “execute against themselves.”

Hip to be elite

My strong suspicion is that people who travel in elite circles (went to Yale, had a Fulbright, worked at McKinsey) will not rely on event attendance and microblogging to sell themselves. At the same time, this does not mean that they cannot leverage social tools for their advantage. To the contrary, I predict that hip digital immigrants will gradually develop more powerful online presences than digital natives once they maximize the effect of combining old-school strengths with new media strategies.

So, if you are a handsome chef, a starving artist, a club promoter, or a professional blogger – maybe resumes are dead and you can rely on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and other sites to entirely promote your brand. But to the rest of the world, I say: long live the resume.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow studying Social Software for Security (S3) at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. Email: markd [at] mashable.com

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:LinkedIn Resume & Scanr Note Sharing Facebook AppsPodcast: A Conversation with crowdSPRING’s Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike SamsonuBoast Brings Job Seekers, Providers, and Matchmakers Together (The Startup Review)Reddit Hacked, FixedGiggedUp Launches - YouTube for Job Interviews?Google Signs Exclusive AdSense Deal with CNNBasis Technology Wins Lawsuit Against Amazon

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 1:36 pm and is filed under web 2.0, career, web, Opinion, profession, resume. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.