Update: We're now hearing that Fan Video might not actually be the start of a massive Facebook Connect implementation on MySpace, but rather a one-off marketing activity for MySpace Music. We will have to keep an eye on how this develops.
MySpace's new Fan Video page allows users to login with either Facebook or MySpaceID.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)MySpace's rumored adoption of Facebook Connect may be coming to fruition with the first implementation, called "Fan Video" being launched.
Once logged into Facebook on the Fan Video page, the app allows you to mashup a selection of eight music videos that prominently feature your Facebook profile picture. Once you make your mashup, you can either share it with your friends on Facebook or select one of your friends to be featured in the videos and share it with them.
While this is hardly an impressive or meaningful implementation of Facebook Connect, this is hard evidence that MySpace is committed to using the technology on its site. As expected and reported in December, the first implementations of Connect on MySpace are leveraging MySpace's media content. Facebook Connect implementations have been shown to dramatically increase page views on sites with potentially viral content, so MySpace's media content, including MySpace Music is a perfect candidate for this. The extent of MySpace's Facebook Connect implementation should be interesting to watch as it rolls out over the course of the year.
Via Inside Facebook.
My profile picture is integrated into Alicia Keys' Distance and Time music video.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)Pandora's model of determining what you might like to listen to with an algorithm is being challenged by companies like Slacker, who use human music experts to build and fine-tune playlists. Songza Sets is another company that is trying to combine the human touch with an on-demand, streaming distribution model. Songza Sets presents daily, hand-picked, 12-song playlists that follow a certain theme. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience that lets users discover great new music.
A Songza Set containing indie songs that have been used in commercials.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)The themes for Songza Sets are fairly creative to this point. For example, one set is made up of indie songs that have been featured in commercials, so listeners are treated to Phoenix's "1901," featured in a Cadillac commercial, as well as The Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" from the trailer for "Where the Wild Things Are." Each song is accompanied by a short description, explaining why it was included. Every week, Songza Sets also features a set containing a selection of songs from the Hot 100 from the past week.
Songza's design works really well and a great looking graphic accompanies every set it puts out. They have also set up a Twitter account that tweets when new sets are posted. However, an RSS feed on the Songza Sets site is conspicuously absent.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
While I am a big fan of automated music services like Pandora, I do think that there is something to be said for a human touch when dealing with music. While it isn't a total streaming music replacement and won't kill Pandora or Slacker, Songza Sets is a nice, once-a-day exploration of a hand-picked, thematic playlist.
Via VentureBeat
Facebook for iPhone 3.1 allows users to add profile pictures and links from Facebook to their iPhone contacts.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)Facebook's iPhone app is one of the most popular apps for the device. Version 3.1 brings some killer features to an already strong offering. Push notifications and address book sync, new in this version, are welcome additions.
Push notifications are a very logical addition. They have become Apple's compromise for not allowing apps to run in the background. Instead of having to fire up the Facebook app all the time to see if anything is new, you can now opt to get push notifications for new messages, wall posts, friend requests, friend confirmations, photo tags, events, and comments. This is way more efficient and allows you to only access the app when there is something new to check out, if you choose.
Facebook's new contact sync for the iPhone is particularly interesting. At first, I was a bit hesitant to try out the feature, worrying that it would overwrite the data that I had or add a lot of new friends on Facebook that I didn't really want as contacts on my phone. But it didn't cause any of the problems that I had imagined. Rather, it examines the contacts that you already have on your iPhone, trying to match it to a Facebook user. If it finds a match, it pulls down that person's profile picture, making it that his or her photo on your iPhone. It also adds other information, such as a link that takes you to that person's profile in Facebook's app. The feature doesn't seem to cause any data integrity issues, it just makes your iPhone contact information more robust. Even more interestingly, if one of your phone contacts is not your Facebook friend, it will (in most cases) still pull down their info from Facebook if it finds a match.
Version 3.0 was a big jump forward for Facebook's iPhone app. Even though its creator, Joe Hewitt, has since left the project and started boycotting iPhone app development, version 3.1 delivers some really cool features that round out Facebook's offering on the iPhone nicely.
An iPhone contact, post-Facebook sync, with profile picture and Facebook link added.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
Facebook for iPhone 3.1's push notification options.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
Flixster has acquired movie review site Rotten Tomatoes from the IGN division of News Corp., according to a statement released Monday.
For those who aren't familiar with it, Flixster is a user-generated movie review site. They also feature a robust mobile offering, which includes the most popular movie app for the iPhone, as well as apps for Android, Palm Pre, and Blackberry. The combination of Flixster's user-written reviews and Rotten Tomatoes' critic reviews are likely to complement each other well. Given that Rotten Tomatoes' scores are already incorporated into Flixster's offerings on the Web and on mobile devices, it should be interesting to see what else Flixster can accomplish with this new acquisition.
The exact terms of the acquisition have yet to be revealed, but equity played a role, as News Corp. will receive a minority stake in Flixster. Rumors were swirling about this deal in December, when Kara Swisher broke the news about the coming acquisition. However, Flixster's integration with MySpace, as outlined by Swisher at the time, has yet to materialize. Flixster has previously raised $7 million in funding from venture and angel investors. Flixster is looking very strong coming out of this acquisition, being the current leader in the mobile space and setting themselves up for a very strong future online.
Quark and other similar design programs are infamous for having a very tough learning curve, making it extremely difficult for amateurs to pick them up and make anything of quality. The company is looking to make layout and design more accessible for the general public with the introduction of Quark Promote. The goal of Quark Promote is to allow individuals and small business owners to quickly and easily create promotional materials.
Quark Promote's online template gallery features professionally designed templates for everything ranging from business cards to letterhead. Once users pick a set that they like, the Quark Promote application quickly installs and launches. Users can then enter in their own information as well as play with the color schemes and layout.
Quark Promote features hundreds of professionally designed templates that you can customize for your needs.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)The actual Quark Promote application is very easy to use and is not intimidating. It doesn't have all of the functionality of the full blown version of Quark, but there is enough there to tweak the design to your liking.
Up to this point in the process, everything is free. Users don't need to pay for templates like they do with other services. Rather Quark thinks that you will like the design enough to want to make prints. Quark Promote gives you the option to order prints by mail or to find a neighborhood printer where you can pick them up yourself. This is where Quark makes its money--on the referral fees from printers.
When I talked with the guys behind Promote, they said they have bigger plans for the service, moving forward, which include partnering up with stock photo sites such as Getty and iStockphoto to give users more customization possibilities with images. It is also possible that they will add support for searching for Creative Commons licensed content on Flickr to the application to widen the selection of available images that users can use in their promotional materials.
Over the last few months, you may have noticed the Meebo Bar gracing the bottom of some Web sites, mostly large blogs, or other similar big content sites. That's because previously, the Meebo Bar was only available to select partners, so the little guys were mostly shut out. Now, Meebo is making the Meebo Bar available for all Web sites, with a specific focus on blogs.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Meebo Bar, it's a JavaScript plug-in that sits at the bottom of Web pages. It enables a lot of different social interaction and sharing features, such as displaying a specific stream of tweets, promoting a Facebook fan page, as well as Stumbling or Digging the page. The Meebo Bar also allows users to chat with their friends through the IM platform that made Meebo famous. Additionally, the Meebo Bar enables easy sharing of content on the page through its very slick Meebo Share Dock.
The bar is extremely easy to set up on blogs, especially TypePad, self-hosted Wordpress, Blogger, and Moveable Type, all of which have preconfigured solutions, built by Meebo. For those with other setups, the installation just consists of inserting a code snippit, something to which we have become very accustomed. Users can customize which features appear on their Meebo Bar all on Bar.meebo.com. The changes are then pushed out to the installation on your site in a matter of minutes.
Users can customize the Meebo Bar for their site with a variety of buttons.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)This version of the Meebo Bar, for everyone, includes all of the same features that it offers to its partner sites, which is something that they were really shooting for with this release, Daniel Bernstein, Meebo's director of business development tells CNET. Meebo Bar users get all of the features of the bar, as well as detailed sharing analytics to see how people are using it, all for the low, low price of...free.
The Meebo Bar is a really great way of enabling a lot of different types of sharing and content interaction very quickly and easily. The sharing that results could, potentially, be a big driver of traffic back to sites. It's really great to see this rich functionality being adapted into to a "self-serve" type of system. With so many more possible installs out there, the Meebo Bar should see a huge explosion in growth.
Meebo's Share Dock pops out when you drag a piece of content on an enabled site.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
YouTube is pushing its Facebook Connect integration further by allowing its users to see the videos that their friends share on Facebook. YouTube users had previously been able to find their Facebook friends on YouTube as well as update their Facebook profile with their various actions from the site.
While it's nice to see YouTube embracing Facebook more and more, it stops a bit short of being an impressive Connect implementation. YouTube is getting there, but seems to be lagging behind a little in this department. An implementation that shares, on Facebook, what you are watching, on YouTube, would certainly make sense, although it might clutter up users' Facebook profiles if they are a prolific YouTube watcher. For now, the addition of this new feature is a welcome inclusion and serves as a great way of getting trusted recommendations for videos to watch on YouTube.
YouTube said this feature is in "test mode" for the time being. In my testing, I was not able to get this feature to actually work. This can be sometimes be expected while YouTube irons out the kinks with new features that aren't quite ready for prime time. If anyone has better luck, let us know in the comments.
URL shortener, bit.ly, has a new service out, called bitly.tv. Bitly.tv displays a collage of the most-linked videos (through bit.ly) of the moment. Users can also sort by the top videos from the last day or the last two days.
Bitly.tv displays the most buzzed about videos linked through bit.ly.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)The site looks really slick and is well presented. When you click on a video, a light box pops out, which plays the video as well as displays a variety of sharing options (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail) and shows a live stream of tweets about that piece of content. The live stream is especially compelling since you can see what other people are saying about the video as you formulate your own opinion.
The URL shortener space is getting increasingly crowded, with a ton of new and existing companies bringing their offerings to the table. Google is the most recent example of this. Bit.ly is trying to stay ahead of the competition with products like bitly.tv and bit.ly Pro, which currently allows a limited set of beta users to create their own branded short URLs. They have a really strong beta user base for that service already, which includes The New York Times (nyturl.com) and foursquare (4sq.com).
The pop-up video lightboxes play the video as well as feature sharing options and a live stream of tweets about the video.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)One of the hottest use cases for Twitter, as you well know, is businesses communicating with their customers or potential customers. Up to this point, Twitter really has not introduced any new features to support these business users, but as a part of an initiative to roll out more business-specific features, Twitter on Monday introduced "Contributors." Contributors allows business accounts to designate other Twitter users, usually employees or PR, to tweet on their behalf. Twitter is currently testing this with "a limited subset of folks."
The screenshot above is what this new feature will look like, according to Twitter's blog. Tweets will still appear as coming from the business' Twitter account but will have a byline that credits the author of the tweet. This will help to put some more personal faces behind the generally faceless business Twitter accounts.
As far as we can tell, however, this will not be required for Twitter business accounts, so if you run a business that wants to keep its tweeters anonymous, you can still do that. Twitter does note that this feature is "not ready for prime time" yet, so the functionality could change around a little, but expect it to stay generally the same.
It's worth mentioning that there are a couple of business and power user-oriented Twitter apps out there right now, specifically CoTweet and HootSuite. This added Contributor functionality will be incorporated into Twitter's API, so these third-party apps should be able to support it as well. This new feature should play nicely with CoTweet and HootSuite's current offerings.
Up to this point, Twitter business accounts have had the same functionality as personal accounts. While it's not clear whether personal accounts will get the new Contributor feature, the release of this and the other business-oriented features that Twitter currently has in development might be a sign that the release of Twitter business accounts is imminent.
In August, Biz Stone said that Twitter would be offering business or "pro" accounts by the end of the year. Paid accounts for businesses has long been a rumored business model for Twitter and it looks like we are on the verge of seeing that come to fruition. While Twitter is running out of days in 2009, it appears that it is making some progress toward the eventual release of full-blown business accounts. Whether Contributors will be included in the paid offering is unknown, although some users might resent Twitter for charging for it after offering it for free initially.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post running down the best places to store your files online. Of the six that I covered, two have since closed up shop and one has changed its name.
It's a constantly changing space. Since then, we have seen a lot of new entrants into the online file storage and backup game. Norton Online Backup is a fairly new product that is getting a very strong upgrade Wednesday with version 2.0 of its product. The new version includes support for Mac and Windows, 90-day file versioning, and the ability to send file download links via e-mail.
Norton Online Backup's home page allows the user to see the status of every machine on their account.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)Norton has put together a very solid offering with version 2.0 of Norton Online Backup. It is introducing support for Intel-based Mac for the first time with this release. This is huge, especially when the company is trying to offer a solution for the whole household. Where most other online storage or backup services focus on serving one user, Norton has placed the focus on protecting the whole family or household. When you buy a year of the service, you are allowed to manage and back up up to five computers on your account. Jeff Kyle, a group product manager for the product, said that support for Ubuntu should be coming around March.
File versioning is a welcome addition to Norton Online Backup. This allows you to see previous versions of backed-up files for up to 90 days. This means that if you accidentally make changes that you don't want anymore, then you can just go back to the previous version. This is similar to the functionality that Apple offers with Time Machine.
Additionally, Norton Online Backup 2.0 allows you to send files via e-mails. You can select multiple files to be sent, and they will be presented to the recipient on an easy-to-use landing page. You can even password protect these files or control how long they are available for download.
Norton Online Backup's landing page for files sent via e-mail.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)My current solution for file storage and backup is Live Mesh, which continually monitors your machine for changes in backed-up files and automatically uploads them. While this feature is great, it can sometimes result in your machine slowing down since the application tends to use a lot of resources. Norton Online Backup's client is fairly lightweight and works on a scheduled backup system, which means that it checks for changes in your backed-up files at a designated time and does everything at once. This results in less overhead for your system.
Other, more minor features included in this release are open file backup, which backs up a file even if it is in use on your computer, file purging, and a simplified set-up/user interface.
Norton Online Backup has a 30-day trial and the full version costs $50 for one year, which gives you 25GB of storage and allows up to five computers on your account.
This is what the recipient see when you send them a file via e-mail.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
