(* Source: PopSop *)



For a brand like Puma, surviving and getting its second wind in a crowded market among such strong competitors as Nike and Adidas might mean actually thinking outside the market, i.e. turning from a sports sector with its tough competition to a more tolerant lifestyle clothing and apparel market. This idea was first discussed in Bloomberg Businessweekarticle dedicated to the dynamics of Puma sales over the last ten years.

Since 1998, after Puma had unveiled sneakers as the fruit of its collaboration with Pele and the revenue had soared eight times, things were no longer looking bright for the most elegant of all the sports brands.

In 2007, Puma was acquired by a French luxury house PPR, but during the economic recession it saw only 3.1% increase in sales. François-Henri Pinault, CEO of PPR, intends to help Puma blossom by expanding its product portfolio so it will become a brand offering sports and lifestyle products. This strategy was previously applied by PPR with regard to its other brands, and has proved to be a success.

“The sports and lifestyle segment shares common characteristics with the luxury segment, growing fast in the same regions of the world,” Mr. Pinault told Bloomberg Businessweek. He assured such brand-portfolio model “has been proven in the last 10 years—it was a winning choice.”

Switching from sports to a lifestyle category for a brand might mean appealing to a wider audience without limiting itself to catering for the more specific needs of spotsmen. That’s why Puma pursues an ambitious goal of increasing its sales by 50% so it will near $6 billion by 2015.  PPR is supplying the German sports brand with everything that will foster sales growth. So, this year, according to Pinault, Puma that owns Cobra Golf and Tretorn brands will be focusing on product development and marketing revolving around the lifestyle theme.

In 2010, the Puma kicked off its “After Hours Athletes” campaign during which it hosts parties offering its participants sports games one can play with a drink in their hand. More than that, Puma has signed on three-time Olympic gold medalist and sprint world-record holder Usain Bolt and Formula 1 motor-racing world champion Sebastian Vettel to endorse its products in a series of events for general public, not just sportsmen.

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(* Source: Stephanie Buck *)



Google+ hit the news feeds like a strategic and popular ton of bricks. But we haven’t stopped there. In addition to breaking news, Mashable has provided how-tos and tools for maximizing your Google+ experience. We’ve sourced reviews from some of the network’s early adopters, and we’ve also welcomed your input as you navigate one of the most buzzworthy social outlets of the year.

Read on for Mashable‘s roundup of all resources Google+. Gather tips, analyze reviews, participate in polls and, as always, voice your thoughts in the comments below.

Google+ Tips, Tools and Talk

• Google+: The Pros & Cons

Here are some pros and cons of Google+, from the social network’s early users.

• Google+: First Impressions
  
  Mashable’s Ben Parr takes Google’s new social network, Google+, for a spin. Check out his review.

• The Google+ Cheat Sheet [PIC]

This Google+ cheat sheet includes most of the common syntax, hotkeys and tips you need to know to use Google+ like a pro.

• 5 Chrome Extensions That Improve Google+

Whether you want to get better notifications, enjoy improved sharing options, or scroll through your stream faster, there’s a free Chrome Extension to help.

• Make Google+ Look More Like Facebook

A new userscript turns Google+ into a Facebook clone.

• HOW TO: Make a Google+ Desktop App

Want an easy way to access Google+ while using Google Apps accounts? Here’s how to create a Google+ desktop app.

• HOW TO: Upload iPhone Photos to Google+

Who says Android phone users get to have all the fun uploading photos to Google+? Here’s how to do that with an iPhone, too.

• HOW TO: Get Your Own Google+ Vanity URL

Gplus.to lets you create a vanity URL for your Google+ Profile.

• HOW TO: Import Your Facebook Contacts on Google+

A new Google Chrome extension makes extracting Facebook contacts a lot easier, helping new Google+ users more easily reconstruct their respective social graphs.

• 10 Top Google+ Users Weigh In on the Web’s Newest Social Network

We’ve scoured the profiles, Twitter feeds and blogs of the top Google+ users. You might be surprised to hear their reviews of the recent social networking phenomenon.

• What MySpace’s Tom Anderson Thinks of Google+

Google+, the search giant’s social network, has just received a strong endorsement from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

• Can Google+ Sustain Growth Beyond Early Adopters?

Google+ is getting rave reviews in the tech press and from early adopters, but we’ve seen that with social networks before. Does Plus have what it takes to succeed long term?

• What’s In a Name: Google+ Is Your Plus One

Ever wonder why Google picked a search-unfriendly and clumsy name for its ambitious new social network? The answer may be right in front of you.

• Get Ready for Google+ Games

It looks like Google has some big features planned for Google+, including a much rumored Google Games product.

• 5 Hilarious Google+ Parodies [VIDEOS]

We’ve found five funny videos that offer a comedic look at the new service, including some classic memes updated for the occasion and some spoof walkthroughs that will make you smile.

• Video Chat Faceoff: Google+ Hangouts vs. Facebook [POLL]

Now that Facebook has unveiled its video chat service, we have to ask: how does it compare to Google+ Hangouts?

• What Do You Think of Google+? [POLL]

Will Google+ give Facebook a run for its money, or will it fall flat like some of Google’s previous attempts at social?

• What Features Do You Want Google to Add to Google+? [OPEN THREAD]

We’d like to open this question to our readers: what features do you think Google should add to Google+ next?

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



Can a website really initiate an actual party? Perhaps in Argentina it can, where this particular slice of music-based marketing stems from – courtesy of ‘once you pop you can’t stop’ chip brand, Pringles.

The Home Party idea is based on the concept that Pringles offers the ability to “Organise a Party Right Now” and the website attempts to convey the party package in a one-stop shop by teaming up with a number of DJs to produce a unique party soundtrack.

Pringles teamed up with 12 international DJs (Carlos Belatti & Joy Marquez; Christian Berger; Felipe Valenzuela, etc) and invited them to compose a set of 12 exclusive tracks, with the whole process curated and produced by internationally renowned DJ, Jimmy Van M.

This exclusive music was then made accessible online, requiring people to sign in with their friends and via social networks in order to utilise the soundtrack for their own party.  The site also features accompanying visuals and VJ tools to aid with the overall atmosphere of the shared dance event experience.

Although the concept can feel a little caged in by its website constraints (it seems to beg for an actual live activation accompaniment) the premise of the ‘party where you’re at’ concept is one that works well for the brand’s regional markets, with the curation and exclusivity angle providing the draw of a big dance event in a compact package, echoing the ‘party in can’ message that underlies the brand itself.

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(* Source: Mark Terry *)



The web is dying and Facebook is thriving. In 2001, the 10 most-visited sites online accounted for 31% of US page views, in 2006 it was 40% – now it’s 75%, which suggests the medium- and long-tail of the web is decreasing in importance, according to L2’s Digital IQ Index: Travel report.

And travel brands are aiming to make that count. “Facebook alone accounts for 12.3% of all consumer time on the Internet,” says L2. “Facebook usage is nearly ubiquitous across the travel category, and all but four brands [in the Index] feature at least one dedicated page. During the first-quarter 2011 measurement period, travel brand Facebook communities grew an average of 20%.”

“Your customers already spend their time on Facebook, so targeting them there is more efficient and effective than driving them to custom-built social networking portals,” says Melissa Dowler, CMO of travel and lifestyle marketing agency ISM. “Facebook continues to enhance its flexibility for custom fan page and application development, making the social networking site an increasingly attractive option for brands.”

And travel brands take a variety of approaches when it comes to managing social media across properties and geographies. Almost 50% of hotel brands have more than one account on Facebook and Twitter, while Four Seasons maintains accounts on both social media platforms for each of its properties. Norwegian Cruise Line boasts separate pages by region, including specific ones for Argentinean and Brazilian passengers.

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(* Source: Brenna Ehlrich *)



“Cryosphere” is a relatively simple game that lets you navigate through a colorful, geometric plane as the statue of David encased in a spinning rectangle. The song — a soaring, spinny jam reminiscent of a slightly more shrill, tinny (in a good way) Phantogram — carries you through the landscape.

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(* Source: Steve Mullins *)



For artists looking to sell songs, the answer might the fan pack. The latest album from Blondie, Panic Of Girls, has been given the merchandise marketing treatment from magazine publisher Future in the form of a 132-page mag featuring the band, together with a cover mount of the CD, plus a couple of bonus tracks, a poster, postcards and badges.

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(* Source: Lauren Indvik *)



Fashion editors and department store buyers have long had the biggest say in what parts of designer collections make it to market.

“Customers need to be part of a personal experience,” Weng says. “More and more websites will try to build direct connections with their customers to directly engage them.”

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



Brands have a long historical association with the arts and there is much to be gained from forming strategic allegiances with both high art and street culture when it comes to artistic expression.

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(* Source:  Dan Gould *)

 “OK Go really got the best of both worlds: they were able to be on a major label and get that support,” says Rosenthal. “That was huge. They had a lot of marketing campaigns and support from Capitol Records that helped people focus on them, but now they can pursue whatever projects come into their heads instead of having to think about how you drive it back to the sale of recorded media. I don’t think the band would consider ever signing another record deal – or if that would even be an option. They’re just too interested in other things. Especially now that it doesn’t all have to culminate in the release of a piece of plastic that has their music on it. That model is dead for good.”

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(* Source: Tim Stevens *)



They're a growing threat, these simple games with their simple designs, simple controls, and simple graphics. They don't offer the full, premium experience that the real gamers want. They aren't hardcore enough. They aren't serious enough. They're just too... casual.

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(* Source: Maria Statdmeuller *)

“Replying to fan comments and wall posts is the one-to-one relationship companies should be eager to embrace, and fans are certainly looking for that level of attentiveness. Devote resources to your social media programme and start talking to your consumers in a direct two-way dialogue.”

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(* Source: Mark Terry *) 

“As access to music has become more universal for even less fanatical musical listeners, music consumption is less stringently defined by genres as consumers cherry pick their journey through music from a much broader selection.”

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(* Source: PopSop *) 

 

Display Advertising

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(* Source: Lauren Sherman *)

If you were thinking about this in the early 2000s, you obviously have a lot of foresight into what’s happening next. What do you think is the next big thing in fashion? Whether it’s trend-driven or it’s technology-driven?
The one thing that I like–Donna Karan with Urban Zen. She was kind of fooling around with it because of her commitment to yoga, but I think that…comfort, I think the color, I It’s pioneer-ish, actually. And in a very subtle way. She’s bringing clothing into lifestyle. But not yoga-clothes–it’s not like tights and a t-shirt. There’s some really–it’s elegant, cool stuff. I think the trend has to do with integrating style and fashion into lifestyle. I think the next big thing is even further blurring of the lines. Which is a good thing. And I like that. Because it’s what we’re doing at Stylesight, right? It’s, you know, it’s natural. I think–there’s a new natural, let’s put it that way. The new natural that has to do with the embracing of technology as a natural, not an unnatural, thing. We’re bringing it to us and then using it in a way that is enhancing our life, rather than saying, “I don’t use email.” You don’t hear that often nowadays. Everybody is using it and having fun with it and it’s folded into their lifestyle. So it’s kind of a new natural. I’d love to use that on the site. The new natural.

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(* Source: POPSOP *)

Colourful M&M‘s candies have lost their dear fellow, Red, In Canada and are now asking residents of this country to help spot him in the City of Toronto (its digital version). The character got into the virtual space on November 4 (the sad story of how Red jumped into the digital dimension is told in a video), and the volunteers of 13 years of age or older are challenged with a task to drag him back within a month.

His friends are sending clues to the ‘rescuers’ through a range of social media channels—first 6 hints are provided in the spot, which explains the whole situation. By visiting the dedicated hub www.findred.ca, consumers can access Google Maps Street View to scour the digital city, looking for Red’s three different locations. Once Red is spotted, the lucky player pushes the button and continues the search until she or he finds all the three places. For every 30 virtual kilometers each ‘tracker’ covers on the digital map, the brand gives one new clue to find Red at the location closest at the time.

Each one who registers on the website automatically enters into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a new red smart fortwo coupé—if a participant manages to find the Red M&M’s character, he or she receives additional entries and increases the chances to win the ultimate prize as well as a range of other gifts.

Here are social media channels and platforms, where the hints are be given by Yellow, Orange, Green and Blue spokecandies, who desperately want to return their unlucky buddy:

Twitter—users of the micro-blogging webservice can discuss their achievements using the hashtag #FindRed;

Stickybits—with the help of barcodes, which can be found on participating M&M’s products, players can receive new clues;

Foursquare—users of this network can follow Red as he checks into various locations around Toronto;

QR codes—the brand will put real-world posters featuring 18 QR codes with hints;

Facebook—the new M&M’s Canada page provides users with links to other hubs and also serves as a platform for active discussions on the theme.

This hilarious geo-locating Find Red campaign was developed by Toronto-based Proximity Canada.

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(* Source:  Paloma Vazquez *)

A recent piece at The Next Web highlights key trends that we’ve already begun to see influence the collective discussion of how social media and its related applications – geo-location targeting, tagging physical objects, etc. – will evolve over the next couple of years.

These key trends have implications for brands looking to reach consumers where and when it is most contextually relevant – and should be carefully considered as brands strike the balance between engaging consumers with a truly valuable, differentiated and interesting proposition or suggestion – and not just with an onslaught of promotional offers they will subsequently tune out.

1. Identity will become embedded in devices: Our social media identities (Twitter username, Facebook profile, etc.) will be entered as part of the initial process of setting up our devices, and will be propagated into all applications. This will eliminate the need to enter your Twitter or Facebook credentials to access related functionality on mobile apps – instead, they will seamlessly access your profile. The recently rumored Facebook phone offers an example application.
2. Online sharing will become embedded in media life: With social identity embedded into the devices we use daily, social sharing will become an integral part of the way we enjoy media on our regular TV’s, DVD players and music players. These devices will evolve towards all being Internet enabled and allow us to share likes, links and personal commentary. Remote controls may include “like” buttons which autopost to Facebook, while music players will sync preferences to preferred identity.
3. Location will be embedded into all activities: Location aware devices will employ pre-emptive use of location to alert the user to things or people nearby that may be of interest. Users won’t have to check-in to a place to see if their friends are nearby, as their device will automatically alert them. This trend bears particular implications for marketers, whom will have to be particularly careful to provide consumers with value in that message and offer – and not just another annoying discount offer that they will eventually tune out if it becomes an onslaught.
4. Smart devices and web apps will automatically check-in and post updates: Identity aware devices, empowered by embeddable RFID tags, will allow this type of technology to spread beyond the mobile phone. A smart coffee thermos, for example, could enable auto-checkins and send coupons to your phone as you enter your favorite coffee shop.
5. Social networking will redefine how large organizations communicate: Social media inspired design patterns applied to existing enterprise software and/or intranets increase opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration will no longer be limited to sharing documents and version control, but will expand to the ability to find colleagues by shared interest and collaborate seamlessly in a multi-channel environment.

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(* Source: PSFK *)

Click here to view full size.

COLOURlovers has created a revealing infographic that shows the distribution of colors across the top 100 brands of the web.

They explain:

Turns out the blue-berry doesn’t fall far from the bush. The web landscape is dominated by a large number of blue brands… but Red occupies a large amount of space as well. What’s driving this? You might want to say that carefully organized branding research and market tests were done to choose the perfect colors to make you spend your money, but a lot of the brands that have grown to be global web powerhouses, started as small web startups… and while large corporate giants with branding departments spend quite a lot on market research, user testing, branding, etc. Lots of the sites listed above got started with brands created by the founders themselves with little to no research into the impact their color choice would have. I once asked Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook why he chose blue for his site design… “I’m color blind, it’s the only color I can see.” …and now 500 Million people around the world stare at a mostly blue website for hours each week.

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(* Source: PSFK *)

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(* Source: Jennifer Van Grove *)

It has become standard practice for big brands and businesses to setup shop on Twitter and Facebook and use the social mediums to connect with customers.

That’s all yesterday’s news now. But the early adopter brands who paved the way for the rest to follow suit have become the success stories that the media, the public and the web companies in the limelight turn to first.

Zappos, Ford, Starbucks, Bravo, Tasti D-Lite and Best Buy are all names that come to mind. There’s no real secret to their success. Each did something innovative and identified a future trend just as the press cycle was heating up. Now they’re all riding the wave of rewards earned from their original risk.

In some ways, though, we’re still in the early days of understanding the relationship between businesses and social media. It’s now more crucial than ever to understand why it’s important to be an early adopter brand.

Good Press That Lasts

Early last year we profiled 40 of the best brands on Twitter and some of those brands have gone on to become media darlings continually featured in press coverage on the web/tech space. It was each company’s individual savvy or willingness to experiment that originally caught our eye, but it’s their ongoing tenacity that kept them front-and-center in the public’s mind.

Those brands with a genuine interest in customer engagement and a commitment to push beyond the expected have maintained a high profile social media presence that continually nets them advantages the rest don’t get.

One key advantage is that they’ve developed important media relationships. These relationships open doors for both parties. The press have immediate access to standby contacts anytime they need an extra quote or example for their upcoming piece. In return, the brands get an instant audience responsive to pitches on innovative social media use cases or quirky marketing campaigns. The cycle repeats itself until a particular story becomes saturated or eclipsed by a newer trend.

Right now there’s no brand mastering the press better than Starbucks. Their relationship with Twitter in the initial rollout of Promoted Tweets has ensured that Starbucks gets a major mention in every mainstream and new media article on Promoted Tweets. It is especially fortuitous for them that their sample Promoted Tweets screenshot served as the only visual representation of the official Twitter ad format when the news first broke. The company has managed to maintain this social media favor with the press for years now, also recently making a huge splash with their loyalty program partnership with Foursquare ().

Case Study Standbys

Ever sit through a conference session or keynote on social media where the presenter or panel did not use brand case studies to supplement their talk? Probably not.

The unwritten rule of public speaking is to always back up points with case studies as proof. For example, a few years ago Zappos’ approach to Twitter was so fresh that the company’s story became the case study on everybody lips. You may also recall that Ford’s social presence during the American car company’s financial struggles was also headliner material.

While Zappos and Ford are still no stranger to the social media limelight — their original successes will always guarantee consideration — the new names cropping up in case studies are the brands experimenting with trends happening right now. Take location-sharing services like Foursquare.

The fact of the matter is that Foursquare is still foreign to most, which means the Foursquare brand marketing from Starbucks, Lucky Magazine and the City of Chicago make for interesting material. Each case study can demonstrate the business potential of Foursquare’s experimental platform. It’s this cutting edge material that piques our curiosity and makes for a captive audience.

Now, should Travelocity find a way to translate their mascot’s Chatroulette activities into business sense, we could see a whole new crop of case-study worthy business uses emerge.

Favor From the Flavor of the Week

Brands open to social media innovation have found favor in the eyes of the most influential people on the web: The minds behind today’s hot startups.

Brand partnerships are crucial for these fledgling startups to maintain their edge over competitors, but it’s much safer for them to favor the friends they’ve made on their way up the ladder. Twitter (with Square by association), Facebook, Foursquare and even Chatroulette are all on fire right now. Each of them — with the exception of Chatroulette — have managed to find brand buddies they trust enough to include in their new feature testing phases. These brands get invited into a private fold that then translates into press coverage on launch and introductions to more people in the circle. Rinse, repeat.

Brands that are in Twitter’s good graces have been grandfathered in to Foursquare’s elite fold of trusted businesses. Just look at Starbucks, a Twitter-forward company now trying Foursquare, as a perfect an example. Another example is Bravo. The cable network has consistently taken an avant-garde approach to television and social media, but it wasn’t until their media deal with Foursquare that the network found its way into Twitter’s public graces. Now they’re a launch partner for Twitter’s long-anticipated ad platform.

This isn’t a coincidence or the result of one serendipitous moment. In fact, many of the top startups share the same investors, the same friends and the same brand relationships. Ultimately the inner circle at the top of the startup food chain has become a safe haven for sharing brands and ideas. Find yourself in this circle and you’ll find yourself amongst the elite of early adopter brands.

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(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

What do you get when you combine music with frantic, all night hour coding sessions?  An event called Music Hack Day, where developers have 24 hours to hack together a new music-related app, which they then show off to their peers at event’s conclusion. Music Hack Day has previously been held in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, and Stockhold; this is the first time it’s coming to the Bay Area. The event runs May 15-16, and is being held at the Automattic offices at Pier 38 in San Francisco.

The main goal Music Hack Day, according to its homepage, is “to explore and build the next generation of music applications”. Aside from that, anything goes — it just has to do with music. Space is limited, so you’ll want to register here (it’s based on a first-come first-served basis, and the organizers will also be looking to ensure the people attending are planning to actually help make something).

Music Hack Day is run by an interesting group of guys with experience in both music and tech: Dave Haynes (of SoundCloud), Paul Lamere (of Echonest) and Daniel Raffel (Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, used to run some record labels). Also attending the event will be representatives from music companies like SongKick, Pandora, SonicLiving, Songbird, and Last.fm.

The timing is also good for developers: Muisc Hack Day is taking place the weekend before Google I/O and the SF MusicTech summit, so developers from out of the town can hit up multiple events on the same trip. So rock on. And try not to think too hard about the pain some earlier music startups have suffered through — things are finally looking up for a few of them.

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(* Source: PSFK *)

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(* Source: InsideFacebook *)

Eric says...

Over the last few weeks, was all of a sudden getting popular on Facebook. Instead of just gaining a couple hundred users a day, he was gaining tens of thousands. But recently, .

Why? Well, first, we recognize that Slash is a great guitarist, and that people just want to be fans of him because they love him. Second, we recognize that he has a very active page — he’s constantly updating via text messages, even automatically sending his updates to Twitter via his page.

But we also recognize that he’s been active on Facebook for months, yet only recently saw a spike in new fans. So there is likely another cause, or two. We asked readers, and a few people responded to say they’d seen actual ads for Slash’s page on Facebook — apparently ads being run by Facebook itself. Slash may be benefiting from a larger effort by Facebook to promote celebrities.

“A few weeks ago, I noticed that Facebook replaced ads with fan page solicitations,” as commenter Jason F. told us. “I think Slash was one of them. I wonder if that helped seed the audience more diversely than organic growth ala Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolvers’ fan pages would have.”

What does Jason mean by “seeding?” Facebook fan page advertising is not itself necessarily the main explanation for the new growth. Jeff Widman, a Facebook marketing consultant who helps big clients grow pages, has more:

“The Highlight section of Facebook means if you can get a page rolling along at a good clip, you can keep picking up more fans. It’s a solid way for him to basically capture on Facebook all the people who already like him (and are friends with him). I’ve seen some major spikes with my clients when we try to push something hard all at once rather than dribble a little at a time. If they want to spend $1K on ads every month, I tell ‘em to blow it in one week every month.”

In other words, a little bit of growth can snowball into a lot of growth. So the answer to the riddle of Slash’s page growth could really be “all of the above.” First: He is already popular with the general public. Second: He has an active page. Third: He had ads running that apparently were seen by a lot of people. Fourth: Facebook’s viral loops — its highlights, as well as its activity stream — may have allowed the first three conditions to exponentially increase the results.

For page owners looking to grow, this is maybe another reason to buy those Facebook ads, and to think more strategically about ad spending patterns. Or, of course, to figure out who within Facebook decides to promote particular celebrities, as that person now appears to be the equivalent of whoever is in charge of the Suggested User List over at Twitter.

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(* Source: Arun *)

* Advertisers, Consumers Disagree on Ad Effectiveness (MarketingCharts)
* MySpace Music Showing Strong Growth (Hypebot)
* Teen Spending Shifts To Value; Electronics Hold Firm (MarketingCharts)
* 22% - Latino Children in America (Pewresearch)
* How the Old, the Young and Everyone in Between Uses Social Networks (eMarketer)
* Digital Music Market Singing that Old Ad Song (eMarketer)
* Facebook Brands with Fans: Starbucks Tops Coke (MarketingCharts)
* 79% - Talkin’ ’bout my Generation (Pewresearch)
* Insurance Marketers Ignore Gen X, Gen Y (MarketingCharts)
* Twitter is for Losers (eMarketer)
* Word-of-Mouth Spending to Reach $3 Billion by 2013 (MarketingCharts)
* Parents Not Hip to Teen SocNet Secrets (MarketingCharts)
* What Women Want from Social Sites (eMarketer)
* 9 Of 10 In U.S. Don’t Listen To Music On Cell (Hypebot)

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(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *)

The founders of gadget news blogs Gizmodo and Engadget have teamed to launch GDGT, a gadget-focused online social network.

The site was launched on Wednesday by Pete Rojas, the founder of Gizmodo and co-founder of Engadget, and Ryan Block, the editor of Engadget.

The site will not produce original news content or reviews, as do Gizmodo and Engadget, but instead aggregate news and reviews, and allow users to post their own gadget reviews.

Users can also create profiles and list their stable of gadgets, as well as wish lists.

Block told The New York Times that the gadget blogs focus on only 5% of a device's lifecycyle, the "lust phase," while GDGT will address "the 95 percent of the time you own the product there is nowhere to go. We are building the place where you can live with your gadgets online in perpetuity." 

See site here

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What The Trend? is a personal web experiment by Matt Mayer, a Shanghai-based British web developer for RIA agency ReignDesign.   Find out what's trending on Twitter and why. For each trend, Matt will give you a quick explanation of WHY it's trending (these blurbs are edited by you!) You can also see the latest tweets, Flickr photos and news stories.

Click here to see it in action.

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(* Source: Kumegirl *)

Kumegirl says...

Several years ago a lot of pundits were discussing generation C. Jake Pearce wrote in idealog in 2006;

“Trendwatching.com says it’s C for ‘content’, meaning Gen C are defined by their production of original material. The bloggers at Digital Hive say it’s all about ‘creativity’—that Gen C want to become co-creators of their world (“Don’t just sell me a car—involve me in designing it”). Tomi Ahonen, a Swedish telco consultant and author, has another definition: C is for ‘community’. He says young consumers walk around with “a gang in their pocket”, continually txting, phoning and pxting their friends and families. “No decision is now made as individual, everything is done in community. Tom Eslinger, Saatchi & Saatchi’s worldwide interactive creative director, says it’s all the above but is also C for ‘channel’. “You can have all the digital devices and creative skills you like, but opening a channel to reach millions of customers and fans marks out Generation C.”” Whatever people thought that C stood for ( the generation that had to deal with climate change, or generation cash) - there was an acknowledged shift.

How that shift has panned out has been best expressed by Nick Gadsby of the blog Dark London in a cluetrain related post

“It seems that rather than businesses becoming more like consumers, consumers were becoming more like businesses. Thanks to the communicative and distributive tools of the internet anybody could advertise themselves and lots of people did. This trend has only accelerated – players of online games form hierarchical top-down organisations, techies develop apps in their spare time, ebay and amazon encourage people to become virtual stores. Even the less commercially minded will cumulatively spend hours updating profiles and uploading photos. If the sprawling chaos of the Myspace profile was the infomercial, Twitter is the streamlined 30 second ad where detail is less important than impact. ”

This is the dynamic that now lies behind what is being referred to as The 4 C’s. Here the 4 c’s include converation, collaboration, crowdsourcing, co-creation, or here or here content, context, continuity and connectivity. Either way, c words are current in web 2.0 discussions.

The final comment from Dark London, “I think when businesses start aiming to be the experts again that then they will be ready to have a real conversation with consumers about what they are doing and what they should be doing because they’ll have an opinion and the confidence to debate its worth.”

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(* Source: Anjali Ramachandran *)

Anjali says on PSFK...

Record labels don’t always have a smooth relationship with music artists. If a band chooses to release their music using alternative means, one of the most common assumptions is a) that their music wasn’t good enough to get them signed by a label or b) that they were difficult for labels to get along with. For established 20-year music veterans De La Soul, neither was the case. Releasing on iTunes tomorrow, De La Soul has partnered with Nike to bring us the “Are You in?: Nike+ Original Run,” 44-minute workout LP. This marks the return of the hip-hop trio to the music scene after a break of 5 years.

The album, part of Nike’s SportMusic range of music, is yet another example of the brand’s complete dedication to constantly reinventing themselves. Marketers have ventured into branded music before, but the SportMusic albums are different because they sell for $9.99 each, making them a revenue stream of their own accord. De La Soul have admitted to being approached by other brands, but say they went with Nike because they shared a common approach to the project. The group especially appreciated the fact that they were able to get feedback from Nike Plus runners.

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(* Source: Lee Ryan *)

Lee says...

I noticed recently that there was new material uploaded recently about youth, including youth in Asia. I am not sure about the term millenials (which may or may not have two n’s). Some things don’t change - youth consistently have the same core requirement of this lifestage - to both fit in and stand out, and as a client commented to me after a global presentation - “Youth are always bored.” Last year i was in a home in Ho Chí Minh observing a teenager take us through her media collection, and there were connections for me with Catcher in the Rye (it’s amazing what a yahoo 360 site can trigger). Yet observing youth in the same city in internet cafes playing some extraordinary blend of Karaoke and dancing games reminded me of nothing else in the world. Expressions of different needs are constantly changing, and it’s always intriguing to see what are the emergent trends and regional & country differences.

So again - i have compiled a collection of links and sites on the basis of where i would send some young qualitative researchers. It is work by people in their industry, and it ranges from global to Asia. Some of it is a bit older because i believe the site has some good thinking. I have tried to choose a range of different examples. Please comment if you can add to the list (click on post title and scroll to the end of post to add comment). If you haven’t already seen it scroll down to see the deck on slideshare about Korean B Boys and audience 2.0 (thanks Guy for this link).

Digital Youth Research is an academic research project carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California exploring how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. The research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth digital media use to date. They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. Key highlights are available on the site.

Danah Boyd has also investigated how American teenagers socialize in networked publics like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube which has caused some discussion on the net.

Flamingo is an international qualitative research consultancy and youth is one of their specialisms. They have some excellent pieces in their Thinking section.

Barking Robot by Derek Baird, was voted by mobileYouth as a top marketing youth blogger as was Paul MacGregorand Lisa Li Yi.

Universal Mccann research into social media, uploaded to slideshare regularly provides rich sources of data on young people

Insites Consulting has some interesting updates around their work with youth including a piece about authenticity, and their explorations with netnography. Useful because of their attention to methodology

Being Young Ian Stewart has released some excellent pieces from his time at MTV, on widgets, a fundamental piece about trends in Asia from a couple of years ago, and of course on music matters..

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(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

Erik reports...

What if you could peer into the thoughts of millions of people as they were thinking those thoughts or shortly thereafter? And what if all of these thoughts were immediately available in a database that could be mined easily to tell you what people both individually and in aggregate are thinking right nowabout any imaginable subject or event? Well, then you’d have a different kind of search engine altogether. A real-time search engine. A what’s-happening-right-now search engine.

In fact, the crude beginnings of this “now” search engine already exists. It is called Twitter, and it is a big reason why new investors poured another $35 million into the two-year-old startup on Friday. Twitter is not the only company trying to solve this problem. Facebook, FriendFeed, and even Google are trying to crack it, but Twitter has a decided advantage in that it is capturing the vast majority of the real-time thought stream on the Web (because more people enter their thoughts directly into Twitter’s database than any other, and are doing so at an increasing rate).

What makes Google and other search engines so valuable is that they capture people’s intent—what they are looking for, what they desire, what they want to learn about. But they don’t do a great job at capturing what people are doing or what they are thinking about. For thoughts and events that are happening right now, searching Twitter increasingly brings up better results than searching Google.

Whether you want to know how people are mentally gearing up for this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or what they are thinking about today’s Ireland vs. Italy rugby match, searching Twitter will give you a pretty good smattering of sentiment and opinion. It is also a lot faster at getting out the essential details about breaking news, such as the Mumbai attacks or the plane that landed on the Hudson.

Twitter’s search engine is powered by Summize, a startup it acquired last July. But it also developed a feature called Track, currently disabled but coming back soon, that allowed people to follow the mention of specified keywords. John Borthwick, an investor in Summize (and thus now an investor in Twitter), explained in a blog post earlier this month ago why he thinks that “Twitter search changes everything.” Excerpt:

Imagine you are in line waiting for coffee and you hear people chattering about a plane landing on the Hudson. You go back to your desk and search Google for plane on the Hudson — today — weeks after the event, Google is replete with results — but the DAY of the incident there was nothing on the topic to be found on Google. Yet at http://search.twitter.com the conversations are right there in front of you. The same holds for any topical issues — lipstick on pig? — for real time questions, real time branding analysis, tracking a new product launch — on pretty much any subject if you want to know whats happening now, search.twitter.com will come up with a superior result set.

. . . How is real time search different? History isn’t that relevant — relevancy is driven mostly by time. . . . This reformulation of search as navigation is, I think, a step into a very new and different future. Google.com has suddenly become the source for pages — not conversations, not the real time web. What comes next? I think context is the next hurdle. Social context and page based context. . . . Twitter search today is crude — but so was Google.com once upon a not so long time ago.

Twitter may just be a collection of inane thoughts, but in aggregate that is a valuable thing. In aggregate, what you get is a direct view into consumer sentiment, political sentiment, any kind of sentiment. For companies trying to figure out what people are thinking about their brands, searching Twitter is a good place to start. To get a sense of what I’m talking about, try searching for “iPhone,” “Zune,” or “Volvo wagon”.

Why can’t Google simply index Twitter? It does, but its search results give more weight to links than to time. It could create a new search product along the lines of Blog Search or News search that is geared more towards Micro-messaging services such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and the rest. But what it really needs to go beyond simply indexing Twitter after the fact. IVP partner, and Twitter investor, Todd Chaffee, suggests:

If they were really smart they could partner with Twitter and make Twitter their real-time feed.

Doing that would require Google to “affirm Twitter’s dominance in this category and the importance of the Twitter data stream,” contends Borthwick. But so far, Google has pretty much flubbed this opportunity to open up real-time search. It bought Twitter competitor Jaiku, only to shut it down. And now it is hoping to create a counterweight to Twitter’s growing strength in real-time data by open-sourcing Jaiku. Good luck with that one.

Listening to Twitter’s investors gives a good sense of how they think Twitter can become a game-changer in real-time search. While it is instructive, it is also important to note that much of this vision has yet to materialize. Twitter’s current search is extremely crude, as Borthwick readily admits. It simply brings up the most recent Tweets with the keyword you are looking for. There is no ranking or clustering beyond that.

An undifferentiated thought stream of the masses at some point becomes unwieldy. In order to truly mine that data, Twitter needs to figure out how to extract the common sentiments from the noise (something which Summize was originally designed to do, by the way, but it was putting the cart before the horse—you need to be able to do simple searches before you start looking for patterns). But what is the best way to rank real-time search results—by number of followers, retweets, some other variable? It is not exactly clear. But if Twitter doesn’t solve this problem, someone else will and they will make a lot of money if they do it right.

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(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

I’m not going to discuss the economic meltdown and its devastating effect on technology companies and internet startups in this post, but rather something that crossed my mind earlier this morning: “Web 2.0″ seems to become more and more a void (and an avoided) term. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely apparent.

So why do I say it’s fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that’s a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That’s not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.

Judging by Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world (and in various languages), the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started - with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0″ by the way - and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0″ by 2011.

Also noteworthy: take a look at the geographic regions that have generated the highest volumes of worldwide search traffic for the term over the years - it’s Asia, with the top 5 regions being India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia (in that order). Furthermore, Google Trends pegs the number one language in which people search for stuff related to the topic of Web 2.0 to be Russian before English.

And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0″ doesn’t seem to picking up much.
Let’s all rejoice.

Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered - relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time - gives an even better overview:

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(* Source: trendwatching *)

"Captures the growing importance of 'generosity' as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy—and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care—the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.

In fact, for many, sharing a passion and receiving recognition have replaced 'taking' as the new status symbol. Businesses should follow this societal/behavioral shift, however much it may oppose their decades-old devotion to me, myself and I.”

Read more on the 3 trend-drivers for GENERATION G here:

Download GENERATION G as PDF

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(* Source: Morgan Stanley *)

Mary Meeker shares the below presentation on tech trends at the State of the Technology Industry November 2008 Web 2.0 Summit.

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(* Source: Marta Strickland *)

Martha says...

It's hard to pay attention to the news of the web industry this week. I've seen digests on other blogs become shorter and shorter. Right now, everything else going on in the world seems more interesting, scary, captivating, devastating...

But if you were paying attention this week, you would have seen an underlying trend, and that is this... social media is growing up.

What's Been Happening This Week?

The Playful But Powerful Google
Google had a few unserious moments this week. It introduced two joke features, an audio preview for YouTube comments and "mail goggles" for G-mail that prevent users from drunk e-mailing by forcing them to do math problems.

But as an ongoing trend, Google continues to be an innovator and a magnifying glass into online culture. They are implementing high-definition imagery and textual advertising into Google Maps. And, ReadWriteWeb had a great article on how one can use Google trends to analyze America's reaction to the debates. Popular campaign words, such as "maverick", saw a huge spike during the debates, as viewers at home everywhere in this nation turned to Google for a true definition.

The Social Network War Is Coming To An End, Or Is It?
It may happen in the next month folks. A battle that has been raging for more than a year might come to a close. As for the first time in US history, Facebook is set to overtake MySpace in traffic numbers. What could this mean? Will Facebook become MySpace like everyone fears?

Better question.. do we even need Facebook? The up-and-comer, Ning, just announced that it has hit the half a million mark with over 500,000 niche social networks. Maybe Facebook and MySpace are they the Netscape and AOL of the 2.0 world? They started the trend, but will fail to innovate quickly enough, as more nimble companies grow in popularity.

Enterprise Embraces Social While Everything Else Falls
Despite reports that half of social media campaigns will flop, there is more and more enterprise dollars being invested in the space. As risky as it may seem, it is far more risky to do nothing. We have 93% of consumers saying they want brands to join them in the space. And we also have compelling statistics to show that their purchase behavior and brand opinion is being shaped by social media experiences.

This space is evolving at intense speeds. We've moved passed the time of "my top 8 friends" and superpokes. Best Buy is building an enterprise Twitter for employees. Digg is flushing out those who are trying to scam the system. YouTube is building in e-commerce options into their site.

The good times are over. RIP. Things are about to get a lot more serious.

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(* Source: Dan Taylor *) 

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(* Source: Henry Jenkins *)

Some takeaways comments from Henry Jenkins from a recent report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project offers some valuable new data about the place video games play in the lives of American young people.

At the most basic level, game playing has become more or less universal.

• Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games. 50% of teens played games "yesterday." 

The Pew research may also force us to rethink once again the assumption that there is a gender gap in terms of who plays games:

• "99% of boys and 94% of girls report playing video games. Younger teen boys are the most likely to play games, followed by younger girls and older boys. Older girls are the least "enthusiastic" players of video games, though more than half of them play.
  
• Some 65% of daily gamers are male; 35% are female. Girls play an average of 6 different game genres; boys average 8 different types."

The Pew Data complicates easy generalizations about the place of violent entertainment in the lives of American teens.

• The five most popular among young Americans are Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution. Of these, only Halo 3 would qualify as a violent game. Over all, non-violent genres were the most popular.
  
• But, 50% of boys name a game with an M or A/O rating as one of their current top three favorites, compared with 14% of girls. (0ne of those places where gender really does make a difference in how people relate to games.) 32% of gaming teens report that at least one of their three favorite games is rated Mature or Adults Only.
  
• 12- to 14-year-olds are equally as likely to play M- or AO-rated games as their 15- to 17-year-old counterparts.

The Pew Data further challenges the idea that game playing is a socially isolating activity.

• The researchers found "65% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them. 27% play games with people who they connect with through the internet. 82% play games alone, although 71% of this group also plays with others. And nearly 3 in 5 teens (59%) play games in multiple ways -- with others in the same room, with others online, or alone."

More here

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(* Source: Helge Tennø *)

Helge says... 

Demonstrating the great potential of digital opportunities, and moving dollars and minds from the rather ineffective – and way to ominous – interruption marketing.

The angle I decided on was not saying that this is THE new thing, but rather finding the reasons why this is happening right now, and showing that this is a natural consequence of a larger set of trends and ideas.

The six important ideas/trends for Content Marketers are:

1. Culture
2. Technology
3. Mobility
4. Activity
5. Ineffective
6. Emotional Research

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(* Source: Erick Schonfeld *)

Erick says..

Founded by Tekin Tatar and Kemal Ozisikcilar, BeFunky offers two services: The Cartoonizer and Uvatar. The Cartoonizer lets you upload photos and give them a cartoon effect. Uvatar lets you create a more realistic avatar based on a photo. The startup is releasing a newly designed Website today, and upgrading its Uvatar service to make it more automated.

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(* Source: b-side *)

I've been watch this social networking meets music space for some time (nearly 2 years now) and been on the side experimenting with blogs (blogger), various social networks (myspace, facebook) and now have launched our very own RightClicka widget.

Have a listen and drop us a few comments... enjoy the music.

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(* Source: Gavin O'Malley *)

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(* Source: Aki Spicer *)

Aki gives a a good perspective on this topic. Read on...

| View | Upload your own

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(* Source: PSFK *) 

Christine Huang say... 

Last week, outspoken network-theory scientist Duncan Watts brought to life his argument against Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point at the offices of Fast Company. Watts, who’s currently working with Yahoo in lieu of his regular gig at Columbia, argues that the “influencers” whom Gladwell claims, in essence, make our world go ’round, are no more influential than ordinary, non-node individuals. Anthropologist (and PSFK Conference speaker) Grant McCracken was at the talk and offers some interesting commentary in response to the case presented by Watts, whose anti-tipping point theory was featured in Fast Company’s February issue. McCracken’s thoughts:

[Watts] argues that news travels as readily through ordinary people as influential ones. This means that our world is not “hub and spoke”… No, as Thompson put it, networks are democratic. We are just as likely to “get the news” from a friend as we are from a networking paragon.

Even in this narrow form, the Watts-Thompson argument has revolutionary implications for the world of marketing. If their argument is true, it feels like we are looking at a turning point, not a tipping one. Many marketers thought that Gladwell’s model gave them a way to “game” the diffusion effect. All we had to do was influence the influencers and entire markets will fall before our approach…

If marketing learned anything in the 20th century, it is that consumers are smarter than this, that there are no tricks in any case, that the world is not about process, it is stubbornly about content. If the marketer wants influence, the solution remains what it has always been. The answer is to build great products, brands and messages. It is these, and not “memes” or “viruses,” that capture attention and prompt choice.

Grant McCracken on CultureBy: Marketing reimagined: revolutionary implications of the Watts-Thompson reply to Gladwell

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(* Source : NextGreatThing *)

Allison says :

Artists and labels have been exploring different ways to market and monetize their music beyond MySpace. We just heard that Sony BMG is going to be selling J Lo’s latest album, Brave, on a fancy wooden flash drive (for $70!!) Meanwhile, artists are dropping their labels like bad habits. AmieStreet, MOG, Pure Volume, Indistr, Sellaband, Navio, Roadsound, iFanz, RCRDLBL, iMeem, Popfolio… These are just a few sites out of hundreds they can use to do promotion, distribution, and sales. In addition to the bands we mentioned last week, even the Oldies are going new media; the Eagles, Joni Mitchell and now Aretha Franklin have all dropped their labels to try the digital model.

The next frontier is the handset. Mozes has taken a step there by enabling bands to text fans updates and messages. The real application, though, will be mobile social networking sites, like the newly launched KylieKonnect for Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The dot mobi site (www.kyliekonnect.com redirects to ourtribe.mobi) lets fans blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video all via mobile phone. There is a Kylie’s own blog, a newsfeed and place to buy Monogued-up wallpapers and ringtones. The site, set up by New Visions Mobile, will allow Kylie’s fans to establish a closer connection with her (or the illusion of one), and she will likely profit off it through site sales. Unfortunately for fans, Mashable reports that you seem to need a European-based mobile number to register, just going to show that this sort of technology not as widely embraced (and developed) in the U.S. as it is in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

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(* Source : Virtual World News *)

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(* Source : NYTimes *)

Louise Story says :

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

Joggers in the Nike Running Club in Manhattan last month. Nike is spending more of its advertising dollars on services for consumers like workout advice, online communities and races.

Since April, Mr. Saenz, 53, has been running with a Nike+, a small sensor in his running shoes that tracks his progress on an Apple iPod he carries. After each run near his home in Louisville, Ky., he docks the iPod into his computer and posts details of his run on the Nike+ Web site. There, he has made friends with other runners around the world who post running routes, meet up in the real world and encourage one another on the site.

Nike’s famous swoosh is there all along. For Nike, this is advertising.

“It’s a very different way to connect with consumers,” says Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management. “People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we’re not having to go to them.”

The success of Nike+ is bad news for the traditional media companies that have long made money from Nike’s television commercials and glossy magazine ads.

Last year, Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age.

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Mr. Edwards may be more blunt than most. But many large marketers are taking huge chunks of money out of their budgets for traditional media and using the funds to develop new, more direct interactions with consumers — not only on the Internet, but also through in-person events.

Adventurous companies like Nike have been experimenting with these alternatives since the 1990s. But now, even the most conventional marketers are making these alternatives a permanent — and ever bigger — part of their advertising budgets.

Last year, Johnson & Johnson decided to boycott the so-called upfronts, an annual event when advertisers get together with television executives to negotiate for commercial time. In August, General Motors said that 2008 would be the last year for its longtime sponsorship of the Olympics. In May, A. G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, told financial analysts that the company would spend less on traditional media and more on its Web site, in-store advertising and promotional events.

“If you step back and look at our mix across most of the major brands,” Mr. Lafley said, “it is clearly shifting.”

More here 

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(* Source : Jordan Chark *)

Avatar creator Meez is back in the news this week, but there are dozens more avatar creation tools gunning for this market. Today we attempt an overview of that market: please add more suggestions in the comment section.

Weblin- Create an avatar and use it as your virtual self within web pages in real-time, interacting with other Weblin users who share the same interests.

Meez.com- Create a 3D animated avatar for export directly to most web profiles, blogs, etc.

Second Life- Use this extremely popular virtual world to do just about anything, but first, you have to create your avatar. Here, avatars can be customized almost entirely, with plenty of room to create a most accurate likeness of yourself.

Mypictr- Use any image and resize, crop, customize, and export it to many other web 2.0 social networking sites and profiles, like Facebook, and Digg.

Gizmoz- Create, animate, and share photorealistic, great looking avatars, and even video clips featuring them. The animation and overall look of the avatar is sourced from a real picture, actually ending up almost like a personal CGI generator.

Mii Editor- Create your own “Mii”, the avatars characteristic of the Nintendo Wii.

Simpsons Avatar Maker- “Simpsonize yourself” by creating an avatar in the classic style of the Simpsons.

Gickr- Instantaneously create an animate gif file by either uploading your own pictures, or sourcing from Flickr.

Gravatar- Create an 80×80 pixel avatar by uploading an image which is then associated with your email address, appearing on Gravatar enabled websites and blogs without additional effort.

IMVU- Create and dress up your personal avatar which can then be used in their virtual chat-rooms or with their visual messenger client.

fix8- Create, animate, and dress up your avatar primarily through interfacing with your webcam in order to capture real movement and look.

Zwinky- Customize your personal cartoon avatar and share it across the web.

Digibody’s Caricature Maker- Use the components of a caricature to create your unique caricature avatar.

Faketown- A pixel-art, avatar based, MMORPG, similar to second life, but much less realistically.

DoppelMe- Simply assemble an apparently “hand drawn” avatar image for use anywhere.

SitePal- A pay-based 3D, animated avatar creation service aimed towards business looking to create a personal presence on their website.

Gaia- Another avatar-based MMORPG, this one, anime-styled.

imbee- The social network for young people includes an avatar creator featuring images of animals from the National Geographic Kids library.

Myrl- A social network based on avatars in the “metaverse”, supposedly using avatars to connect with the web by virtue of collaboration. Close to it’s beta launch, this definitely looks like something to keep an eye out for.

Kaneva- Yet another avatar-based virtual world, Kaneva looks like a valid Second Life alternative.

Blogscoped- Chat with others in this virtual, visual, chatroom, which makes efficient use of user avatars. While it may not appear to be that “web 2.0″ it uses PHP, MySQL, Ajax, and the Google API, which effectively categorize it as so.

MojiKan- A somewhat odd MMORPG for customizable 3D pet avatars.

Frenzoo- Customize and use one of their well-designed avatars in chats as well as a variety of other environments.

Clickbeurs (Dutch)- Create an avatar and apply for a job through virtually chatting with potential employers, a somewhat odd idea.

Mr. Picassohead- Create stunning, Picasso-like paintings which are easily transformed into avatars.

Whyrobbierocks- Create a “stereotypical” avatar for use on various social networking sites, IMs, etc.

Weeworld- Interact with some quite uniquely designed avatars in a virtual world primarily based on chats and mini-games.

Voki- Create an avatar, record your voice, and share. A possible alternative to something like Sitepal, but geared more towards a less-business-oriented audience.

Honorable Mention

While all of the sites (except for a couple, added for their significantly customizable avatars and creation engines) above are primarily based upon the principle of avatar creation and customization, I’d like to quickly mention the importance of your “avatar”, or probably more aptly named character in many popular MMORPGs. The likes of which are probably most easily recognized in games like World of Warcraft.

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(* Source : Rachel Konrad *)

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Your favorite pants are fraying? You may soon be able to order replacements directly from the factory where they were made, according to the chief scientist of an ambitious Chinese Internet project.

China's government is building a vast virtual world dubbed Beijing Cyber Recreation District, which founders say will help the manufacturing superpower evolve into an e-commerce juggernaut.

Some supply-chain experts say the project is impossibly grandiose in its goal to provide direct links between tens of thousands of Chinese manufacturers and millions of individual customers around the world. But every "Made in China" label eventually could include a Web site where customers could order more — and Chinese factories would produce custom-made goods and send them directly to consumers' homes, mused Chi Tau Robert Lai, chief scientist of the virtual world.

The 3D world is supposed to be the online counterpart to the China Recreation District, a theme park, mall and playground being built in a former steel plant in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

Some Chinese-language Web sites of the CRD are already up, but most of it — including the first direct links to manufacturers — won't come until the second half of next year at the earliest, Lai said.

In addition to connecting factories with people outside China, the project will allow businesses outside China to tap the nation's burgeoning middle class, he said.

"This makes you have to think of China in a different way," Lai said Thursday evening at the Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo in San Jose. "We are stepping back and trying to blend the human and the computer to touch everything associated with people's lives."

More here 

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(* Source : Worldsinmotion.com *)

Posted by Leigh Alexander :

Looking at market penetration, Mitham opined, "I think it’s pretty fair to say that virtual growth to date has been heavily based on word of mouth and viral marketing.” Moreover, Mitham expects the trend to continue, calling on the example of companies like BMW opening Second Life islands to widespread media coverage as a driver of Second Life population growth.

Finding New Markets, Developing Existing Ones

One can't rely purely on PR for advertising, Mitham added, stating that he hopes to see traditional marketing to start happening. "We’re seeing children actively adopting Club Penguin, Whyville, Habbo... as they eventually grow out of it, they will be looking for new worlds to grow into. There’s a huge market already there, waiting to happen."

The market is developing globally, too, Mitham said, noting that European countries are also actively embracing virtual worlds. Though typically Russia and South America are slower to adapt, Mitham noted, these are large growth areas that will begin adopting virtual worlds more in the future.

"We don't see much for 'silver surfers,'" Mitham added, noting that older users are also a prime growth area. Similarly, he expects corporate adoption to broaden, as companies like IBM encourage their employees to move into virtual worlds for corporate uses, and educational institutes are using virtual worlds in the classroom for the set aged 8 to 15.

Engaging New Users

It's a matter of product development, he said -- developing new products for marketplaces that already exist. Mitham also noted that better user interfaces and new user orientation will assist in driving more widespread adoption, as will other avenues of access like web-based remote viewers.

Diversification is the other key avenue, Mitham noted -- bringing new products into untapped markets, as with category-centric "vertical worlds". One example Mitham raised is Football Superstars, a virtual world currently in development for people who play football and soccer. Half the world is for playing football, the other half is for living the life of a footballer.

Beyond this, there are platform-centric virtual worlds, such as Sony's upcoming PlayStation Home, which will be used as a convergence tool for gamers. "The reason for going in isn’t the new technology; people are going in for a specific reason,," Mitham said.

Additionally, Mitham said that avatars that can cross worlds -- the interoperability work IBM is currently involved in -- will be "a really good driving factor for getting more people engaged in virtual worlds."

Mitham offered some projections on growth in virtual worlds he believes will take place between the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. He anticipates growth of registered accounts in Second Life to increase from 10 million to 20 million, 1 million to 7 million for There, .6 to 3 million for Kaneva, from zero to 10 million for the Chinese virtual world HiPiHi, an increase from 3 million to 10 million for Whyville, and from 15 million to 30 million for Club Penguin.

More here 

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(* Source : Worldsinmotion *)

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(* Source : Mashable *)

Kristen Nicole says :

Gigya is creating an updated version of its online widget tracking service that will allow developers and web publishers to define and track any type of activity within widgets. Used in conjunction with Gigya’s Wildfire, developers can track widget performance in a more extensive manner, from its initial installation on a user’s page, to the clicking of a link within a widget and the viewing of a widget’s video.

This will, of course, enable you to better lay out your widget strategy, see how widgets are being used across platforms and social networks, and more easily respond to the market. In setting all of this up for your Gigya widgets, you can even choose your own name for various actions, so you’re tracking widgets in a way that makes the most sense for you and your distribution purposes.

Gigya’s Wildfire tool was launched in recent weeks to let developers create applications for use on Facebook. With MySpace and other networks getting ready to open their platforms as well, tracking tools for widgets and applications will become more important, especially as metrics move to become more inclusive of widget distribution, which is when advertising potential comes into play as well.

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(* Source : Marketing Vox.com *)

MyePets: So cute it's sickening

Tween marketing has undergone a bit of a golden age online in 2007, thanks to sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz which rely heavily on interactivity to keep kids coming back.

According to Advertising Age, interactive tween sites are now taking a page out of the Webkinz handbook, whereby kids purchase an offline item to either join or enhance the online experience.

To proliferate its virtual world, Webkinz relied on word-of-mouth to get youngsters buying stuffed animals that came with codes that "activated" a virtual pet online.

Mattel's Barbie Girls site will soon offer 5.5 million users the option of buying an MP3-player/flash drive that unlocks additional features on the site, where girls spend an average of 30 minutes a session.

Meanwhile, MGA Entertainment introduced Be-Bratz, a line of dolls "sold with a pet pink mouse and flash drive" that hooks users up to a virtual world online.

MyePets.com, another MGA project, has a business model slightly closer in type to Webkinz, where kids "rescue" homeless pets from the store (a la Pound Puppies, a series of despondent stuffed animals from the '80s) in exchange for access to the site.

Though it may seem the market for tween-focused virtual worlds is getting overcrowded, interactive sites now largely come stock alongside major toy launches.

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(* Source : Stefanie Olsen *)

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(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

There.com has partnered with CosmoGIRL to bring its brand into the virtual world. This will be a “physical” virtual location where users can come to a dance party, fashion shows, spa makeovers, play in photo booths, shop for clothing and accessories, and visit live events held by CosmoGIRL. The extension of branding in this way is a good format for the publication to use, considering the growing popularity of web-based virtual worlds and the niche audience of teen girls that are found on There.com.

This could prove to be a better alternative for branding than Second Life, which has a broader user base. It could also prove to be a good distribution channel for other brands looking to market to teen girls in a virtual manner, as they can offer digital goods to be doled out via CosmoGIRL without the necessity of launching a full-fledged virtual marketing effort on their own. It will be interesting to see if a virtual venue of this nature could do better than an online network like Flip, which hasn’t met company expectations for growth. CosmoGIRL’s virtual playland opens up at There.com on November 20, 2007.

In other virtual world news, SceneCaster has recently signed on Turbo Squid for the provision of 3D objects to be used in its graphic creations, and Multiverse has signed a similar deal with Google 3D Warehouse.

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(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Bands Jamiroquai and Oasis may be following Radiohead’s lead to let fans download new music from the band’s latest album for free, if they visit the site for the radio station XFM. With no contracts to labels, Jamiroquai and Oasis could be considering this move, which often gains a good amount of traction from the fans and spurs the viral growth of their content.

The success of Radiohead’s promotion is cited as the cause for people to pre-order the band’s box set, which costs about $80 and includes vinyl records, a CD and artwork. The hope is to make money on the peripherals, which still come at a premium. That means Radiohead is looking to make money from concert ticket sales, and other merchandise. We’ve already seen Throwdown’s opinion on the matter. And while the concept of giving away something for free isn’t new, it does look to be gaining steam.

[via the telegraph]

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(* Source : Fred Cavazza *)

Virtual universes are hype, that’s a sure bet. With very strong media coverage for universes like Second Life or World of Warcraft, announcers and users are discovering new spaces for playing, communicating, entertaining and even working which are in complete rupture with 2D spaces they already know.

Complete rupture? No, not exactly since most of these universes are evolution from existing services (chats, social networks, maps…). All these virtual universes bring some oxygen to sometimes unappealing concepts by providing new possibilities. But with new opportunities comes a lot of covetousness and build a very competitive environment inside which the most media covered are not the most interesting.

Did you know it?

• There are more than 150 millions of Neopets‘ users which have already created more than 217 millions of accounts (you can count again, that’s more than MySpace)
• KartRider and QQ are social platforms which generated nearly $100M in quarterly earnings (it’s quarterly earnings, not annual turnover)
• There was $1 Billion Invested in Virtual Worlds in the Last Year (again, it’s $1 billion, not $1 million)

Do these figures astonish you? Well… so they did to me! But they are real.

Four main fields

Comparing all these universes won’t make any sense. First of all because they are very different and then because they target very different audience. But if you REALLY need a comparison, then you can have a look at these two (partial) comparison charts: Virtual Worlds Comparison Chart, Casual Immersive Worlds and Virtual Worlds Platforms and User Numbers.

Let me introduce you to these universes by using a map where I positioned most of them. All of these are not vast virtual world like Second Life, but they all share common characteristics: avatars, virtual currency and virtual places where avatars can meet, chat, play and interact.

This map is divided in 4 main fields:

• Social, with universe revolving around community building
• Games, with universes relying on online games
• Entertainment, where music, videos and films related content
• Business, where selling or exchanging goods is the main motivator for users and with enterprise applications (virtual training, serious games…)

Please not that these fields overlap themselves:

A wide typology of uages

You can find on this map various groups which are related to specific usage:

• 2.5 & 3D Chats, which are an evolution to instant messaging services but with a much stronger immersion (IMVU, Taatu, Citypixel, Faketown…)
• Avatar-centric, where avatars are at the center of interactions and functionalities (Neopets, Club Penguin, Stardoll, Virtual MTV…)
• Social Platforms, universes which inherits from social networks and sharing platforms while adding some avatar management and online games (Habbo, Cyworld, QQ, Gaia, Playdo…)
• Branded Universes, which propose a total immersion inside the brand’s graphical universe and products range (Barbie Girls, Pepsi Town, MyCoke, ToonTown, T-Works, Home…)
• Virtual Worlds, where users experience nearly total freedom of action (Second Life, HiPiHi, There, Entropia Universe…)
• MOG, online gaming platforms relying on casual games for developing sociabilization (KartRider, PuzzlePirates, MapleStory…)
• MMORPG, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games which requires a stronger social involvement (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Dofus, RuneScape, Lineage II…)
• Online Sport Games, based on collective or individual sports (Football Superstars, Online Soccer Manager, Fishing Champ, Ultimate Baseball Online…)
• Adult Games, money games targeted at adults (PKR, Cameo Casino…)
• Virtual Sex, 3D dating spaces (Red Light Center, Virtual Ibiza, Naughty America…)
• Virtual City Guides, which are natural evolutions of local and mapping services (Google Earth, UpNext…)
• Serious Games, which are deploy inside enterprise to build 3D collaborative spaces, virtual training classes and augmented meeting rooms (Innov8, MPK20, Quaq…)
• World Generators, which allows 3D world creation (Active Worlds, Multiverse, Metaplace…)

Obviously, all these universes are not at the same maturity level: some are approaching the final stage of their life cycle (like Everquest), some others are crossing a turbulence area (Yankee Group Says Hype of Second Life Far Outweighs Its Ability to Impact Mainstream Interactivity), others are growing very fast (Gaia Online) and some are repositioning themselves (like IMVU which is morphing into a social network and Entropia Universe which will try to compete with video games).

A nearly saturated market?

With more than 150 active or soon-to-be-launched virtual universes, accept some numerous take over and disappearances. In this profusion, which universe is the right one? Its’ a hard guess since only two audience niches are sharply targeted: teen and adults (Virtual Worlds Are Trendy Spot for Kids and Teens).

It took 10 years to structure the internet media landscape and provide announcers with reliable communication tools (adwords, adsens…) and measure tools. How long will it takes with the virtual universes media landscape? Who will master advertising inside these new territories / markets? Is co-creation a reality? So many questions… which will find answers in the next months. Stay tuned.

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(* Businessweek *)

Olga Kharif says :

IAC/InterActiveCorp's gaming foray could revolutionize online games and hurt console makers—if it succeeds

Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) is entering yet another arena. The Web conglomerate, owner of businesses such as Ticketmaster.com and the dating site Match.com, announced Sept. 18 that it has acquired a majority interest in GarageGames.com, a game publisher and provider of programming tools for indie game developers.

The acquisition, which will lay the foundation of a new division focused on Web-based gaming, marks the latest and biggest move in IAC's bid to become a major player in that market. In the past few months, IAC has snared several video gaming executives from rivals, including Nicholas Lehman from Viacom (VIA). "We think this is an untapped $2 billion market today growing to $5 billion in three years," says Shana Fisher, IAC's senior vice-president of strategy and mergers and acquisitions. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime market opportunity, we think. And we are investing appropriately."

Viacom's Big Bet

While the acquisition's terms were not disclosed, BernsteinResearch (AB) estimates it will cost IAC between $80 million and $100 million. InterActive also says it hopes to announce a collaboration with a major gaming studio in the next week.

At first glance, IAC is arriving rather late to Web gaming, which is already the third most popular online activity after e-mail and chat, according to the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. In May, the number of unique visitors to gaming sites reached almost 217 million worldwide, a jump of 17% from a year earlier, according to traffic data tracked by comScore (SCOR). The sector attracted 28% of the total worldwide online population in May and recorded an average of nine visits per visitor.

As such, a wide array of media and Internet titans have already been staking out the positions to claim a piece of a market that, according to DFC Intelligence, is expected to swell from revenue of $3.4 billion in 2005 to more than $13 billion in 2011. Viacom's MTV Networks alone expects to dump $500 million into gaming in the next two years. Meanwhile, portals led by Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN have built up their offers to lure online players. Microsoft also offers owners of its Xbox gaming console an online portal called Xbox LIVE Arcade where they can play games, including GarageGames' own Marble Blast Ultima, where players navigate marbles through moving platforms. Similarly, the Cartoon Network (VIA) has been working to adapt its games for online play with Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii consoles.

More here 

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( Press Release via Virtual World News *)

TORONTO , ON – October 7, 2007 – SceneCaster today announced the release of the first immersive 3D Web application for Facebook - where anyone can create, transform and explore interactive 3D scenes and share them with their friends – all within Facebook. The application is available at: http://apps.facebook.com/scenecaster.

SceneCaster extends the rich visual experience of 3D on the Web to all Facebook users including consumers, creative professionals, and social media enthusiasts. Bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds, SceneCaster also connects the Facebook 3D experience to eCommerce sites such as eBay and Amazon, product catalogs from leading manufacturers and retailers and to other rich media social networks such as Flickr.

SceneCaster is breaking new ground in 3D Web applications as the first 3D immersive experience that is built to leverage the "social graph" of Facebook. The Facebook economy is growing every day that could see it achieve 200 million users next year up from over 40 million today. SceneCaster delivers new conversation opportunities to all Facebook users while also providing an innovative revenue model simultaneously with each Facebook profile.

"Facebook facilitates better communication and an easier way to share & discover meaningful content," said Rodney Rumford, Editor of FaceReviews.com, a leading Facebook application review, rating and consulting service based in Solana Beach, CA. "SceneCaster in Facebook makes communications with my real world friends much richer and efficient. SceneCaster's great 3D immersive experience is revolutionary in concept and execution to sharing and discovering the 3D Web." Rodney's review of the SceneCaster Facebook app can be found at http://facereviews.com/2007/10 /04/facebook-3d-rooms-with-scenecaster

SceneCaster was first beta launched on September 25 th at DEMOfall '07, the technology industry's leading conference for innovative and disruptive technologies. Industry media and pundits have praised SceneCaster's debut with over 250,000 pages of reviews and comments residing on the Web today.

"SceneCaster's mission is to mainstream the 3D Web by lowering the barriers to adoption for the largest possible audience," said Mark Zohar, SceneCaster founder. "We've built it from the ground up by combining the very best the Web has to offer today – search, eCommerce and Facebook – with a rich, immersive 3D experience that is accessible within a standard Web browser."

About SceneCaster

SceneCaster is a 3D Web community where anyone can visualize their ideas, share them, and make them real. SceneCaster bridges the gap between the virtual and real worlds by connecting the 3D Web experience to online storefronts, product catalogs from leading brands and retailers, social networks, and consumers' dreams. SceneCaster is a brand initiative of View22 Technology Inc., a leading provider of 3D Web commerce and media solutions used by Global 2000 companies. For more information please visit www.scenecaster.com.

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(* Source : Jason Fry *)

New Efforts Try to Make It Easy

Last week Starbucks began testing a new service letting those with iTunes on their laptop, or carrying an iPhone, identify and download songs playing in the ubiquitous coffee bars.

In recent weeks we've heard Apple tout its new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. We've seen Microsoft show off improvements to its Zune music player, talk up the player's ability to share music, and unveil Zune Social, a new community site. Cellular-service providers such as Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless (a Verizon/Vodafone joint venture) and AT&T continue to sell songs over the air and experiment with various music-related offerings. And what about services that recommend and stream music, from Pandora to Rhapsody?

There's a flurry of activity around a common theme: making digital music truly mobile, instead of contained in music players that get topped up at desktop PCs. But what will be the effect of this newfound musical mobility? Could it mark a substantive change in the digital-music experience? Or will wireless buying and sharing remain mere offshoots of the familiar PC/MP3 player ecosystem?

Currently, both buying and sharing are largely restricted to the PC. Music players with wireless capabilities – such as Sandisk's Sansa Connect -- are fairly new. Meanwhile, the cellular-service providers' efforts have largely been stillborn -- because until fairly recently they wanted to charge as much as $2.50 for a download, despite the fact that iTunes had made $1 a de facto standard. Why the high prices? A number of reasons, from the record industry's desperation for an alternative to the iTunes model to infrastructure costs that cut into already razor-thin margins on downloads. Wireless carriers were stuck with a bad choice between a low-margin business or a low-volume one.

The carriers have accepted 99-cent downloads and tried to escape the low-margin trap by expanding their musical offerings to include access to streaming music, ringtones and ringbacks, music videos, the ability to "sideload" digital music from PCs to phones and even services that "listen" to snippets of music and identify the song.

More here 

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(* Source : Virtual World News *)

CVSherman says :

"The game industry may have created the idea of online entertainment, but the days of orcs and elves ruling the online space is drawing to a close," said Christopher Sherman, Executive director of the upcoming Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo taking place October 10-11 at the San Jose Convention Center. The show is attracting big wigs from across the entertainment industry.

"There will always be a place for platforms that just want to allow users to play a game together, but now interaction is key. Community is key," said Sherman who jumped from the game industry to the virtual worlds industry late last year. "The content revolves around and facilitates the community. Treating the online environment like less of a game and more of community or virtual world is key. Major media companies are now looking at anything they do as online entertainment - with a virtual world tied to it."

Case in point: Raph Koster, the former Chief Creative Officer of Sony Online Entertainment, recently took the wraps off of his stealth startup Areae with the announcement of Metaplace. Metaplace is designed to provide an easy-to-use interface allowing users to create virtual worlds that can run anywhere and do anything.

Said Sherman of the announcement, "Whether or not Metaplace is successful, the wake-up call for the game industry has been issued."

Virtual worlds like Kaneva strive to provide activities for their users, including games. Developers like Trilogy Studios, who created a Virtual MTV environment, have a background in next-generation console games like Medal of Honor and The Chronicles of Riddick. It shows in their products. MTV's Virtual Pimp My Ride lets users build experience points while socializing.

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(* Source : PSFK *)

Alisson  Mooney says :

Kids are consumers (virtually)! That was the message on the “New School” panel at the YPulse Tween Mashup on Friday. Speakers from Stardoll, WhyVille, and Cartoon Doll Emporium all recounted that young users of their virtual worlds wanted brands brought into their online environments.

Mattias Mikshe, CEO of Stardoll, said that users were begging for real world brands (“everything from Gap to Gucci.”) This is what led them to create “StarPlaza,” an in-world mall stocked with virtual brands (they now have 9). LVMH-owned Sephora and DKNY just became the first real world brand to set up shop there (featuring the same items as the stores). Cartoon Doll Emporium, a similar “paper doll” site, is also working with offline brands.

The virtual world meets social network WhyVille has 3,000 different lines of clothing—by 3,000 different girls. CEO Jim Bower says they want to have a Whyville store with the designs from 12 year olds. But kids in WhyVille aren’t immune to brand fever: one group of kids actually created M&Ms costumes for their avatars. Over in WeeWorld, users “consistently asking for brands to better express themselves,” says Marketing and Editorial Director, Maura Welch. “By choosing to wear the assets,” she says “the users are endorsing the brands to their friends.” According to the site’s latest food and drink survey, users’ WeeMees (avatars) were jonesing for some Sprite, Gatorade and Cheerios. As it is, they can already pimp themselves out in Armani sunglasses while they pop Skittles.

According to Mikshe, the kids can “distinguish between being marketed to and adding value.” Or maybe the marketing has just done its job. The demand is there for the brand names, creating a pull rather than a push scenario. And now that these brands can provide utility online, they are becoming more and more integrated into the lives of young consumers.

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(* Source : MediaPost.com *)

Laurie Petersen says :

TURNER BROADCASTING SYSTEM, INC.'S NEW Products Group has signed a one-year deal with Kaneva to build and test virtual world extensions of its entertainment properties.

Each Turner Web community and corresponding virtual space inside Kaneva will contain video players for video streaming of select Turner network content.

"Our exploration with Kaneva of virtual worlds is yet another example of Turner staying at the forefront of consumer technology trends," said Blake Lewin, vice president for TBS Inc.'s New Products Group. "Through this opportunity, we hope to leverage the Kaneva platform to explore how users interact with our brands in a virtual world."

The agreement will grant Turner access to Kaneva's technology and tools to create and use Web communities and Virtual Spaces on the Kaneva Web site and in the virtual world of Kaneva.

"Turner is an ideal flagship media partner for Kaneva," said Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva. "Turner's high-quality programming and credibility is synergistic with our unique focus on delivering entertainment to the masses inside a virtual world. As a result of this partnership, we will provide entirely new ways for audiences to watch, participate and interact around their favorite TV programming."

Kaneva, which is Latin for "canvas," is a virtual entertainment world that unifies the 2D Web with a 3D experience. It integrates social networking, shared media and collaborative online communities into a modern-day, immersive 3D virtual world. Kaneva enables its members to hang out with their friends online and in 3D, share entertainment, express creativity and passions, and establish meaningful connections with others.

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(*Source : Emarketer *)

Paul Verna says :

Since the beginning of the digital music revolution, artists have taken the lead on innovative ways to deliver music directly to their fans.

Some, like Prince, have given away front-line product free. Others, like Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette, have offered up Web-only exclusives, also free.

Then there have been the famous holdouts: Metallica, which joined the fight to shut down Napster, and the Beatles, who, despite years of rumors to the contrary, are still conspicuously absent from iTunes and the rest of the legal Web.

Now comes Radiohead with potentially the most ground-breaking move of all: putting its new album, "In Rainbows," out there for fans to pay what they want.

This museum model of a "suggested donation" is entirely untested, and the industry will be watching closely to see how the experiment plays out.

That said, it is important to keep in mind that this is a niche play from a band that already has a huge, loyal audience, not to mention ownership of its own masters. Whether fans pay for this album will have little bearing on the decisions of rank-and-file artists who don't have Radiohead's clout.

Nor is this move likely to affect the labels' digital strategies. Even if the gambit is wildly successful, it will not change the fact that the industry is staring down the barrel of free-falling CD sales and insufficient digital volume to make up the slack.

Still, it will be interesting to see what happens with "In Rainbows." Some of Radiohead's legions may actually pony up some serious dough, if nothing else to reward the band for not treating its fans as if they were criminals.

While most fans will probably help themselves to the album gratis, inevitably there will be a few crackpots who will pay obscene sums for it, maybe for the attention, or maybe just because they have money to burn and can't help themselves.

It will take only a few of those to give Radiohead a much bigger and more immediate payday than it would have ever gotten from Capitol, its former label.

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(* Source : THe Guardian *)

Owen Gibson says :

• Band bypass record labels to get release out quickly

• Internet experiment lets fans put a price on art

Their music has long been praised for blurring boundaries and breaking moulds. Now Radiohead are hoping to establish a new model for the struggling record industry by inviting music buyers to decide how much they want to pay for their new album.

To their biggest fans, eagerly awaiting their first studio album for four years, it is near priceless. Those who believe Radiohead long ago descended into self-indulgence may only risk pennies. But thanks to this ground-breaking experiment, the band will bypass record labels altogether and will be able to put a fiscal value on the public's appreciation of their art.

 The release was announced with a short message from guitarist Jonny Greenwood on the band's website, revealing that the new album, In Rainbows, would be available to download from October 10. Orders started rolling in yesterday, with customers able decide how much to pay - from nothing (plus a 45p administration charge) upwards.

Radiohead's "honesty box" experiment will be closely watched by other artists, their record labels and management companies.

In Rainbows is the most high-profile attempt yet to restructure the economics of a music industry struggling with the effects of digital piracy. Despite a booming live scene, CD sales are less profitable than ever thanks to increased competition and piracy.

With the role of the internet in helping new acts from Arctic Monkeys to Enter Shikari rise to prominence already well documented, more established artists are attempting to revolutionise the way music is sold.

Prince caused uproar among music retailers by giving his latest album away with the Mail on Sunday and yesterday the Charlatans said they would give their new single and album away for nothing through the radio station Xfm.

More here 

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(* Source : Kris Graft *)

A new study from Yankee Group finds that the hype surrounding Second Life is considerably bigger than the virtual world's real-life relevance.

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(* Source : David Fishman *)

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(* Source : Reuters *)

Michele Gershberg says :

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Young girls waiting to grow into full-time fashionistas will get a chance to experiment with couture as designer Donna Karan and cosmetics chain Sephora open shop in the virtual play-dress world of Stardoll.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : Michael Estrin *)

Now that fashion designer Giorgio Armani has opened a store in Second Life, there really is no excuse for a poorly dressed avatar.

According to a Reuters report, Armani's Second Life store will allow residents to purchase virtual clothing using the site's Linden Dollar currency. Second Life residents also can purchase real clothing with U.S. dollars by going from Armani's virtual store to his website.

Armani, who will attend his store's virtual opening by sending a well-dressed avatar, joins a slew of companies that have embraced Second Life as a marketing tool. Most recently IBM opened up a customer service center in the virtual world, while HBO has mined the site for content by optioning a Second Life film.

With growing interest in virtual worlds coming from brands, Google has taken notice. Early this week, rumors surfaced that Google may be working on its on virtual world to rival Second Life.

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(* Source : IMediaconnections.com *)

Britanny Lawson says :

Get the lowdown on the five most popular Facebook widgets and what this trend means for brands and marketers.

Facebook has upped the ante in its latest effort to gain supremacy over the social network scene. The website's creators opened up the applications setting on May 25, 2007 for users and companies alike to upload widgets that can be embedded in any user's profile. Currently there are over 3,400 applications available to users, ranging from slideshows to horoscopes to personal aquariums.

The widgets are designed to engage users for longer periods of time on the Facebook website by creating activities for people with similar interests. Essentially, Facebook's profiles have changed from a place where you just read about someone to a place where people can engage in activities. This change is effective in generating traffic for Facebook, as well as for the companies creating user apps, and has been termed the Facebook Effect.  

The Facebook Effect is seen in the dramatic increase in web traffic to the top five company applications:

1.) Slide, Inc. has capitalized on the cornerstone of the social network sites -- picture sharing. With over 2.7 million active users daily, the company's Top Friends slideshow application is Facebook's most popular. Their widget, which is exceedingly simple, is available on every social network site, and reaches over 65 percent of all widget-users. Facebook is by far their largest patron and since the end of May has seen an increase of over 265 percent in daily unique visitors, according to Quantcast.

2.) Video by Facebook is the second most active application on the network. This tool comes on the heels of the success of YouTube and allows users to upload their own video content. Video has just below one million active users daily. Facebook's creators have seen the success of social media sites that employ user-generated video and harnessed this technology to generate more user activity on their site.

3.+4.) FunWall! and My Questions? are also in the top five, with a quarter of a million users daily. At a glance, they appear to be created by independent Facebook users. However, this application is funded by Slide, Inc.. The FunWall is a take on the basic wall feature in which users could post comments on each others' pages. It has replaced the basic wall because users can write graffiti and post movies or pictures, which has been a theme throughout social network sites. My Questions? allows users to ask all of their friends a generic question and see the responses on their page. Slide, Inc. has established that it is a heavyweight in the widget marketing platform by creating three out of the top five widgets.  

5.) iLike, Inc. allows users to upload their favorite music and has seen its traffic double since the end of May. This reveals another possibility for the widget platform -- the diversification of the point of sale for companies. Record labels such as SNOCAP have made it possible to sell music anywhere that HTML can be embedded into a web page. This could spell success for artists and music companies. 

The question, then, is how Facebook and companies such as Slide, Inc, and iLike plan to turn this popularity into financial success. As sites such as Nielsen have changed the way in which they rate websites by placing more emphasis on time spent on a website than on clicks, this could translate into ad success for Facebook. These applications keep users active on creators' respective pages as they take quizzes about their friends or play video games that are out of distribution. This will increase Facebook's rating on the Nielsen sale, and in turn increase the appeal for click advertisers. 

At the end of April 2007 Facebook had 20 million users; since then they have increased their user base by more than 50 percent to over 31 million in less than six months. Their daily uniques have doubled as well. This is in stark contrast to MySpace, which still has the lead over Facebook, but has remained relatively stable in the amount of unique clicks it receives each day. Is Facebook's rapid growth a result of its application platform? Perhaps. Regardless, Facebook's growth is putting the pressure on MySpace.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (*Source : Kristina Knight *)

The most recent report from online metrics firm Nielsen//Netratings indicates that marketers may have more luck targeting users who visit more than one social networking hub.

The report also found that the 12-17 demographic increased their use of the social networks more than 120% in August.

According to the report, users between the ages of 12 - 17 who visit both MySpace and Facebook, spend more time on both sites than users who visit only one or the other of the social networks. Here is the break down: in the 12-17 demographic, users who visited both sites spent 20% more time on MySpace than users who only visited MySpace. Facebook saw an even great increase (26%) from users who frequented both sites than from users who were exclusive visitors to Facebook.

"[Teens] are venturing onto multiple networks to experience new features and broaden their connections,” said Jason Lee, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. “This demographic is typically drawn to what’s new, and since they are growing up online, they are not afraid of learning the latest Web technologies.”

Though the report focuses on teen users, the trend is one that marketers should watch because the use of social networks in all age groups is growing at astonishing rates. With so many new users signing on and experienced users looking for new networks to try, it makes sense to keep a steady flow of campaigns going into the social space.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : BBC News *)

Jonathan Fieldes says :

The tool could be embedded in blogs as well as used in gaming Metaplace demo

Users of Metaplace, as it is known, can build 3D online worlds for PCs or even a mobile phone without any knowledge of complex computer languages.

The web-based program is the brainchild of Raph Koster, one of the developers of massively multiplayer online games such as Ultima Online.

Users make the v