TechAddress

What’s Your Favorite Music Site?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:34:35 +0000

SocialMedian was barely a thought for people back in February, but it has gained a solid following in the 9 months

of its existence. Many people would ask why this startup has gained any traction. It is yet another social news site with voting and commenting. Did we really need another? Given the amount of traffic that socialmedian is getting, it is obvious that they are onto something.

With this in mind, I figured it was time to chat with SocialMedian Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg and find out if things were actually as good as they sounded.

A look Back

During the summer, there was rapid growth as SocialMedian added Google Reader and other service integration, as well as replize. These features were added because of user feedback. Goldberg has stated several times, “Our model at SocialMedian has been: small, fast, and listen to users.” You have probably noticed that you do not see any advertising or many press releases plastered all over the major news sites. Essentially, SocialMedian has been built through its user base. The only “press coverage” you tend to see are reviews from various blogs, including here on Mashable.

Almost a month ago, SocialMedian integrated with Facebook and users saw a large amount of traffic coming from the popular social network. Also, in the weeks leading up to the election, socialmedian announced partnerships with the Washington Post and The Guardian. Their election widget was gaining adoption, and Goldberg stated that the few days following the widget release had seen a 300% increase in traffic. Why? It is probably due to the partnerships created through the Election Talk widget.

A chat with SocialMedian

Rob: How big of a traffic boost did the Facebook integration give you?

Jason: We got a nice initial boost when we launched our Facebook integration as our existing members were suddenly easily able to find and follow their Facebook friends and to invite new friends to check out SocialMedian. Since then, Facebook has been a steady boost for us as our users have amplified their SocialMedian activities to their Facebook friends and new users have also taken to our Facebook features. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of overall impact to our growth and engagement, I’d say Facebook integration has been about a 7, but has the potential to be a 10 with some new developments we have planned to even better leverage the Facebook platform.

One thing the Facebook integration launch did though was it really went a long way towards starting to mainstream SocialMedian. I used to measure our growth entirely on new registrations. It taught me that awareness comes first then adoption. The Facebook integration made a whole bunch of new people suddenly aware of SocialMedian via their Facebook friends. After seeing SocialMedian postings on their friends’ Facebook pages for the 5th, 10th, 50th time, you start to see adoption. The second thing it did was really up the engagement level on SocialMedian. Suddenly it was really easy to follow people via Facebook. That hit our currently active users with a slew of new follow messages, which ignited them.

Rob: Obviously, the Washington Post and Guardian partnerships are a big deal. Do you see SocialMedian making several partnerships like this?

Jason: YES! It took us two weeks to put together the micro-site election.socialmedian.com for the Washington Post and then 1 phone call to get The Guardian excited about taking the widget. Now we know how to do it fast and know better to get ahead on working with more partners to include them. We also built this in a way in which we can replicate it again and again and again with only 2 days to get a micro-site up and running for any topical SocialMedian news network.

We’ll do our second one next week for the Monaco Media Forum event in Monaco November 12th, where the Prince of Monaco brings together 300 leaders in the transformation of media. It’s a closed event but SocialMedian will enable people to follow every blog post, video, picture, and tweet from home. You heard that here first. The page for that will be http://mmf.socialmedian.com.

Rob: Do you see any scalability problems with the micro-site idea? Meaning how often can you do these without affecting how much staff you must maintain?

Jason: No. It basically builds right on top of our “news network” concept in which anyone can create a news network to gather and discuss news about a particular topic. For these microsites like election.socialmedian.com or mmf.socialmedian.com, all we really do now is apply a template created for the election site which adds some additional views like “rising fast” in addition to “popular” and “recent” and which enables anyone to grab and embed a widget for the news network. We can do hundreds of these without any negative resource impact.

Rob: At the beginning of November Quantcast showed SocialMedian at just over 160K page views, what is the real traffic? I saw the email regarding the 300% increase over 3 days. Does that give you over 475K pageviews?

Jason: Conservative estimates had socialmedian at 500K pageviews (rolling 30 days). October ended consistently above 20K per day. Overall, there were 225K pageviews in September, 280K in October, and 120K the first week of November with traffic rapidly increasing as we got closer to the election. Quantcast has significantly more conservative numbers.

Rob: So how do you measure user engagement?

Jason: Clips/day is our best measure of engagement. Clips aggregate all user activities: clipping, sharing, like/dislike, and 1st comment a user makes on a story. In the past 60 days we’ve gone from averaging 1500 clips/day to more than 3500. We have seen the same sort of increase in comments as well. We attribute our replize feature, where users reply to other users vs. just leaving comments, as the key to the rapid rise in comment levels. One thing worth noting is that Mixx has probably 4-5x our traffic, but we are far higher than them on clips/story vs. their votes, and comments/story. In other words, we have more quality traffic we think and more engaged users.

Rob: Have you seen a traffic boost due to the election partnerships?

Jason: We see that our user growth has been more about the tech community suddenly all talking about SocialMedian at once vs. being all about the election. Over the past 4 days we’ve added more new registered users than in the previous 4 weeks. We’ve seen our 3 biggest traffic days yesterday (on a Sunday!) and the two prior days. It happened because users started talking publicly about how they seem to be getting value from SocialMedian. Nothing beats positive word of mouth. And we’ve worked really hard to cultivate that, while spending $0 on outbound marketing.

It’s all about satisfying users and getting them engaged in the service. Then, when they recommend the service to their friends or readers, it helps that newbies see a party going on when they get to SocialMedian (a vibrant community) that they can join in on vs. have to create. Notably, our strongest area is still tech news and we still have a very tech-oriented early user base, but at the same time our users have created more than 2000 news networks on all sorts of topics.

Rob: Will end of election season hurt traffic significantly, or are you seeing increased engagement from the new users?

Jason: So far we are holding up very nicely as new people introduced to SocialMedian because of the election and from Twit.tv seem to largely be staying around. This past Sunday was our biggest Sunday in history and Monday was better than the Monday before the election…so far so good. I think it’s fair to say that the election helped draw people in but the discussion continues around the news of the day.

Rob: What is the biggest complaint from users and how are you addressing it?

Jason: The biggest feature request we have is for us to add topical news search. We have none right now. That’s coming in just a couple of weeks. We’re also working on better filters and cleaning up the UI, which have been big user requests/complaints.

Rob: What do you see as the biggest reason for success?

Jason: The biggest reason for success is simple. We listen to users. We have done very little to focus on growth and marketing and instead focused almost entirely on helping one users at a time find value and get more engaged with the service. Our theory is that one happy user will bring 10 over time. That’s our focus.

Looking forward

Obviously, things look to be going very well for Jason and SocialMedian. It is still too early to determine whether the traffic will decrease now that the election is over, but the micro-sites give SocialMedian the ability to have focused coverage on any major event or conference. SocialMedian is maturing nicely, and I would definitely keep an eye on their future.

Source:Mashable!

This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services.

Based on the developments of the past year, the future of music may very well be free. The record labels are suddenly willing to work with Web companies on free and legal music distribution, leading to the high profile launch of MySpace Music, as well as the continued growth of startups like Imeem, iLike, and Amie Street. CBS-owned Last.fm also got on the free music bandwagon, offering up full tracks with limited free streaming.

However, those are far from the only sites that made noise in the online music scene in the past year. We recently compiled a list of more than 30 different free and legal sites where you can get free music, each of which has its own unique twists for discovering the best artists and songs. Nominate your favorite using the widget below.

Make Your Nomination

Mashable Open Web Awards

Spread the Word

Feel free to elaborate on your nomination in the comments, or try to gain more support for your favorite service by copying the widget to your blog (click the “Grab This” link in the widget above)!

Support Our Sponsors

The Open Web Awards is made possible by our sponsors. By supporting the Open Web Awards, these companies reward and encourage innovative web technologies. We can’t thank them enough for sharing our passion: building great web companies.

Platinum Partner

“PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their businesses.”

Gold Sponsors

“iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a contributor.”

“With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues”

Prize Sponsor

“Infinite and Instant, Zazzle is the only on-demand retail platform for consumers and major brands, offering billions of retail quality, one-of-a-kind products, most of which are produced within 24 hours.”

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Yoono Releases Onslaught of New Features, Finds an Interesting Business Model

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:35:26 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Those anti-monopoly laws are serious business. When Microsoft complained that Google selling ads on Yahoo’s ad space was akin to a search monopoly, they obviously consulted their army of lawyers who said that the deal has a big probability of failing.

According to WSJ (link behind a paywall), this probability is very high right now, and the companies might walk away from the deal by the middle of next week. You can’t really go around the fact that Google and Yahoo own over 80 percent of the web search market, and it seems that Google and Yahoo can’t convince the U.S. Department of Justice that it’s not a monopoly.

Yahoo spokesman Tracy Schmaler has given Reuters the usual PR drizzle; Yahoo, as she says, believes strongly “that this agreement will strengthen Yahoo’s competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for their advertisers, publishers and users.”

Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said even less: “We are confident that the arrangement is beneficial to competition, but we are not going to discuss the details of the process.”

Therefore, the deal may not yet be completely dead yet, but the Wall Street Journal claims that the talks both companies had with the Department of Justice on Thursday weren’t going too well.

If the deal doesn’t go through, it will only be a minor nuisance for Google. As far as Yahoo goes, the company is still nowhere: they’re looking at the possibility of merging with Time-Warner; this search deal with Google was part of the tactic to scare Microsoft away from trying a hostile takeover, so it’s doubtful that it’s a good idea in the first place, and their stock has been pretty much free falling ever since Microsoft said that the takeover offer is off the table. Things aren’t looking too bright for Yahoo shareholders.

Source:Mashable!

A while ago I laid down a theory that a significant number of users are using YouTube to share data that isn’t videos. Most often, it’s music, and therefore there are a lot of videos on YouTube that consist of a music track and some images slapped together just to make them videos. In a way, it’s untapped potential, because YouTube isn’t doing much to make it easier for users to share music that doesn’t necessarily have an (official) video attached to it.

Enter StreamDrag, a simple music search engine that draws its collection from YouTube’s massive database, although it’s not really transparent - or important - to the end user, who doesn’t see the video at all, he just listens to the song. Titles of songs such as “Tool - Sober (HQ Fullscreen)” can be a bit misleading, but it’s a minor point as long as you’re in it just to hear the music.

A nice option is the playlist; stack a bunch of tracks together and you’ve got yourself a party. This can be done in YouTube and other third party tools, but it’s extremely simple in StreamDrag; click on the “+” icon next to the song and it’s added to the playlist (to return to the search results, just click on “playlist” again). Everything else on the site is very straightforward: you’ve got play/pause, stop, rwd and ffwd buttons, as well as a repeat and sound on/off switches. I like it: by removing everything else and focusing on the music, StreamDrag is actually much more enjoyable (and faster) to use than many other similar services (including YouTube itself).

StreamDrag is a direct competitor to services such as Songza. The developer behind StreamDrag, David Lorenz, claims that the simplicity of his application is the key difference here, as well as some features that enhance the user experience such as looping a single track. I’m not convinced that this is enough to beat the competition, but I do admit that using StreamDrag could not be simpler, which is always a good thing.

Source:Mashable!

Yoono, the browser-based social aggregator, has announced a new release that includes features such as support for Internet Explorer, MySpace and imeem integration, and the biggest news of all, a shopping widget.

This new shopping widget for social aggregation will generate product recommendations and pricing comparisons based on the products displayed during a browsing session. The widget will work with some of the largest ecommerce sites such as eBay, Buy.com, Amazon.com and Shopping.com. While you search for products, Yoono will make recommendations for similar items with better pricing. These products can be bookmarked and shared with friends and purchased. The widget is scheduled to be released around Thanksgiving, just in time for the holiday season.

“This is a major change in the way the industry thinks about social aggregation,” said Pascal Josselin, CEO of Yoono. “We listened to our users and they want to do more than just watch and occasionally contribute to social networks. They want to have two-way interaction in a way that matches the things they are doing on the Web. With this launch we achieve more than watching the stream. We give users a way to get what they want, whether that is a conversation, a video, music or a new product.”

Yoono’s 1.8 millon users will now be able to connect to their friends on imeem and MySpace, in addition to those on Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter, Gmail, Piczo and several IM clients, all through a single sidebar. Yoono has also enhanced their User Interface to improve functionality.

The social aggregation space is extremely crowded with players like Friendfeed, Plaxo Pulse, Profilactic, socialthing and many more. By incorporating shopping cart technology and an intelligent recommendation system, Yoono might start a new trend. We might see others following suit if they are successful in their efforts to monetize social aggregation. In the long run, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing because everyone wins if this experiment works. We the users benefit from improved shopping experience, the vendors selling merchandise benefit from the sales as does the mediator, the social aggregator, in this case, Yoono. We shall soon find out.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

19,683 Tech Layoffs And Counting

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:30:06 +0000

Source:TechCrunch

This has been a brutal month or so for tech layoffs. According to our Layoff Tracker, there have been 19,683 job eliminations at tech companies announced since mid-September, and we’re not even counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who are being eliminated as a result of its merger with EDS.

But only five big companies make up more than 90 percent of the layoffs: Xerox (3,000), Dell (8,900), Yahoo (1,500), eBay (1,500), and German chipmaker Qimonda (3,000). The other 33 companies are mostly startups, and collectively account for 1,683 layoffs. Although three more companies (Sony Ericsson, Nvidia, and TicketMaster) account for an additional 1,110 job losses.

After stripping those out, you get closer to a pure number of layoffs at tech startups: 573

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Imeem Cuts Quarter of Staff, Might Be Looking for Buyer

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:30:45 +0000

Source:TechCrunch

As some of you know, I am a strong advocate of an evolution from the “walled garden” model of social networking toward an open Social Web, characterized by interoperability and data portability. Along the way, I have been both a cheerleader for all of the building blocks of the new “open stack” (including OpenID, OAuth, XRDS-Simple, microformats, Portable Contacts, and OpenSocial) and one of the most vocal critics of Facebook. Over the past two years, I have never missed a chance to point out Facebook’s absence from any key event or announcement around the “open” movement. And I’ve tried many different techniques to encourage Facebook down the open path, some more controversial than others.Source:TechCrunch

Starting a high tech company often means going at it alone, but eventually every start-up needs some outside help - whether from lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, or special types of vendors. And other times, a company just needs to sell things.

Unfortunately, startups don’t always know where to find help or list items for sale. To help them in these regards, we’ve added services and sales directories to CrunchBoard’s existing jobs directory. These new directories are intended to make it easier for high tech start-ups to find the professional services they need and sell the things that they no longer want or need. Conversely, the services directory in particular provides a door for professional services organizations into the high tech startup community.Source:TechCrunch

We’ve confirmed PaidContent’s report from earlier today that music startup Imeem has laid off 20 employees, or 25% of its total staff.

PR representative Matt Graves gave a now-familiar explanation for the cuts:

Given the current economic climate, we decided to be proactive in cutting costs - before we needed to - for the long-term benefit of the business.

The company did not confirm reports that Montgomery & Co. has been hired to find it a buyer. That wouldn’t be terribly surprising, however, given the direction Imeem’s US traffic has been heading:

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Imeem Brings Streaming Music to Android and Google G1

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:34:28 +0000

Source:Mashable!

With the first Android-powered handset, the Google G1, expected to go on-sale this week, the race is on amongst developers to get applications built and gain a first mover advantage. Tonight, Imeem is unveiling their app, which brings the company’s streaming music catalog to the Android Market – the Google equivalent of the iPhone app store.

I had a chance to speak with Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell earlier today about the company’s application and some of the unique opportunities the Android platform presents. For Imeem, the application is actually the company’s first foray into mobile, and has been designed to sync seamlessly with a user’s account on the Imeem website. For example, if you are a “fan” of a certain artist on Imeem, when you first access the new mobile app, you will automatically have radio stations for each of those artists (essentially a mix of songs) waiting for you when you check it out.

Beyond the artist stations, you can also listen to music in some of the same ways you can on the recently re-designed website. For example, you can listen to a sampling of the most popular tracks, or you can listen to a sampling based on recommendations made by analyzing your listening habits. As users listen to music on the G1, they can become fans of artists, which will be reflected in their Web account as well. At the moment, you can’t listen to the custom playlists you’ve created on Imeem, but Caldwell says that this feature is in the works.

Asked why Imeem chose to make its mobile debut on Android as opposed to iPhone, where competitor Pandora has seen enormous success, Caldwell said that T-Mobile is actually the most popular carrier amongst its userbase. Additionally, he also notes that his users tend to prefer phones styled like the Sidekick, which, much like the G1, features a slide-out qwerty keyboard.

Additionally, Caldwell thinks that Android has some attractive features for a music application. For one, the way that the operating system handles multi-tasking is great for music because you can play songs in the background while you perform other tasks and access other applications. Also, its support for WiFi makes streaming music – and buying tracks through Amazon via the device – much quicker when connected. While these features obviously aren’t exclusive to the G1, combined with the apparent appeal of T-Mobile to Imeem users, it’s a nice combination.

As for monetization, Imeem is being scant on details at this point, but obviously there will be some money to be made in the revenue driven to Amazon through MP3 sales. Additionally, Caldwell hints that sponsorships will certainly play a role, and with the G1’s GPS capabilities, it’s not a quantum leap to assume highly targeted local advertising, such as concert tickets and events based on musical tastes, will be a part of the strategy.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Imeem For Android Takes The Jukebox In The Sky And Puts It In Your Pocket

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:30:15 +0000

Source:TechCrunch

Sun is releasing a new version of client-side Java insipidly called SE 6 Update 10 that sets the groundwork for JavaFX, a major overhaul of the runtime environment set to debut before the year’s end and challenge other RIA platforms such as AIR, Silverlight, and Google Gears.

Update 10 comes with two major consumer-facing improvements: a smaller footprint and enhanced speeds. Whereas the current version of Java comes as a 14.5mb download, the newest has been slimmed down to 4.5mb. This will matter most for Windows users who don’t have high-speed internet access (since Java comes prepackaged on Macs and the difference of 10mb is inconsequential over broadband). Nevertheless, the move reflects Sun’s commitment to trimming down a technology that has been criticized for its bloat (many optional components no longer come preinstalled but must be added to the kernel after-the-fact).Source:TechCrunch

What good is an endless jukebox in the sky if you can only listen to it while you are sitting in front of your computer? Imeem answers that with what is certainly the best Android app I’ve seen (or heard) so far. It’s called Imeem Mobile, and it is the musically-oriented social network’s first foray into the mobile arena.

Imeem is one of the few music Websites with streaming licenses from all four major music labels, plus most of the independents. Imeem offers its music streams for free, supported by advertising and affiliate fees from music downloads. With Imeem Mobile, the most popular songs from its catalog are available for streaming on the Android phone. You can search for specific artists (I had no trouble finding songs from a wide spectrum of artists including David Bowie, the Beastie Boys, Vampire Weekend, and Serge Gainsbourg, for instance). Or you can just pick one artist and let imeem create a playlist of related songs that it streams radio-style.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

SearchMe Adds Music Search With Unlimited Streaming Via Imeem Widgets

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:30:21 +0000

Source:TechCrunch

Two-man startup AppLoop has added to its suite of self-service tools for iPhone developers by launching App Generator, which automatically turns any blog with an RSS feed into a native iPhone app modeled after that of the The New York Times.

To create an app, all you have to do is answer a series of questions for the App Generator’s setup wizard. These include your blog’s address, name, icon and logo, as well as how much you’d like to charge for your application (if anything) and what color scheme you’d like to use. Once you finish the form (and verify that you are indeed the owner of the domain in question), AppLoop will submit your application to Apple for approval and, once approved, you can start promoting it to your readers.Source:TechCrunch

Okay, this has to be the coolest hack of the week. Visual search engine SearchMe has just added a music search tab that brings back results with free, legal, unlimited full-song streams and cover art you can flip through. It’s CoverFlow on the Web. And it actually trumps the experience one Yahoo’s music search, which also offers free full streams through Rhapsody—but those are limited to 25 streams a month per searcher.

SearchMe instead is tapping into imeem’s vast catalog of fully licensed music. (Along with Rhapsody and MySpace Music, imeem is one of a handful of companies with comprehensive music streaming rights from all the major labels). But SearchMe is not using imeem’s API, which is limited to apps on imeem itself. Instead, it using the widget loophole in imeem’s licensing deal with the record labels. Imeem users can stream any song and create playlists on imeem itself or through imeem’s widgets which can be embedded elsewhere.

SearchMe is essentially grabbing the imeem widget for each song search result. As with all imeem music widgets, there are buttons on the bottom that will let anyone buy the song from iTunes, Amazon, or eBay.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.