Tag: Social Media

Consumers More Likely To Pay For Professional Online Content

Not surprisingly, the majority (85%) of online consumers prefer free content, but some categories they would be willing to consider paying for access, according to a new survey from Nielsen.

Nielsen asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries about what types of online content they would be willing to pay for. The survey found consumers are most likely to pay for online content they would pay for offline including movies, music, games, and television shows.

Consumers are least likely to pay for content on social networks, podcasts, consumer-generated videos and blogs.

The survey found consumers worldwide generally agree that online content will have to meet certain guidelines before they spend money to access it:

    *Better than three out of every four survey participants (78%) believe if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.


*At the same time, 71% of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.


*Nearly eight out of every ten (79%) would no longer use a web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost.


*As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it-34% think so while 30% do not; and the remaining 36% have no firm opinion.


*But they are far more united (62%) in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share with whomever they want.

February 16, 2010
TuneWiki Lands Investment From Motorola

Social media music player TuneWiki has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Motorola Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Motorola.

Other new investors of TuneWiki include Intellect Capital Ventures, a venture fund initiative of TeliaSonera, HillsVen Capital, and Novel TMT. TuneWiki’s previous venture capital investor, Benchmark Israel, also participated in the round.

"Teaming up with a global company like Motorola is very exciting for us," said Rani Cohen, CEO of TuneWiki.

"We are passionate about connecting people through music, and having our applications running in many countries with different languages will allow our users to explore the world of music and better understand its meaning as part of a vibrant and engaged community."

TuneWiki said it will use the investment to expand and improve its product offerings fro mobile platforms and the Internet. The company says it plans to focus on new features found in recently released smartphones, including stronger CPUs, larger displays and high-resolution screens. TuneWiki said it will also continue to focus on the use of song lyrics in new ways that connect music fans with new products, including an upcoming mobile game.

"Music is rapidly emerging as a key feature for smartphones, and TuneWiki is changing the experience of listening to music from a solitary experience to a social one," said Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures.

Related Articles:

> Motorola Offers Baidu Search To China Mobile Users

> Motorola Slates 20-30 Android Phones For 2010 Release

> More Than Half Of Holiday Shoppers Relied On Cell Phones

February 8, 2010
More Than Just a Redesign Going on with Facebook This Week

It’s been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook’s potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.

The Birthday and 400 Million Users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed it in a blog post last night. "Today we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected."

"Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better." he added. "We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about."

Facebook hosted a celebration and announced some releases at the Facebook headquarters last night. This was followed by a hackathon where Facebook staff stayed up all night coding and building new ideas for products.

Do you like the direction Facebook’s gone in for the past six years? Let us know.

Design Changes

Facebook announced some new changes to the design of its homepage. Users can find their newest notifications, requests, and messages in the top menu. When a user receives a notification, they will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner by the search bar. When the icon is clicked, a drop-down menu appears with the most recent notifications. The Home/Profile links are in the top-right corner with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the log out link.

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen has been completely reworked. "The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed," says Facebook’s Jing Chen. "With the Photos dashboard you can browse recent photos of your friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending. The Friends dashboard will help you find friends, see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you may have already created."

Chat has also been made more prominent with a list of online friends displayed on the left. The new apps and games dashboards, which have been discussed lately, can be accessed from the menu as well. The dashboards feature personalized updates from the apps, and they have launched with new privacy settings.

The changes are still rolling out, so it’s possible that you do not have them yet, but you will soon enough.

What do you think about Facebook’s design changes? Good Move or bad? Tell us what you think.

The Webmail Product

Michael Arrington is reporting that a "source with knowledge of the product" says Facebook is launching a webmail product. If MySpace can do it, surely Facebook can too. It’s being referred to right now as "Project Titan", although the name will likely change.

Facebook’s messages as they stand right now, lend to email notifications. When you check your email, you find that someone has sent you a message on Facebook. If Facebook gets you using its own email service, it’s cutting out the middle man, and that means…you guessed it – more time spent on Facebook.

Would you use Facebook for email if they offered a full webmail product? Tell us why or why not.

Facebook As the Web’s Top News Source?

I’ve already written on this topic this week, but basically, the more time people spend on Facebook, the more convenient they may find it to simply get their news feeds there. If Facebook enters the email game, that’s only going to get people using Facebook that much more, and even open up yet another way for them to get their news on Facebook, through email newsletters and news alerts.

Do you see people increasingly getting their news on Facebook? Share your thoughts.

Update: Microsoft has announced some changes to its partnership with Facebook. Facebook will now be taking over its own display advertising, and will get a more feature-rich version of Bing search for its web search.

Related Articles:

> Respond to Facebook Comments From Your Email

> Pingdom Names Facebook "Most Engaging Social Network"

> Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily with Facebook

February 5, 2010
TurboTax Taps Twitter To Offer Tax Help

TurboTax said today taxpayers on Twitter can tweet questions to @TeamTurboTax and get free answers from a team of tax, tech and product experts to help make tax time easier.

TurboTax said it created @TurboTax in response to the growing use of Twitter by its customers.

@TeamTurboTax will cover everything from tax matters to product questions and technical support, the team will answer product questions, troubleshoot problems, and resolve customer service issues.

"People are increasingly going online to file their taxes. Now they can just as easily go online to get answers from @TeamTurboTax on Twitter," said Scott Gulbransen, lead for @TeamTurboTax.

"This expands the options people have to get answers – whether it’s on Twitter, on the Web or on the phone."
Twitter users can also follow the site to see what questions have previously been asked and answered.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

> Stone Makes "Several Billion Tweets Per Hour" Prediction

> Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

February 1, 2010
15 Million People Have MySpace Mail Accounts

Back in the summer MySpace launched its own email service called MySpace Mail. The company has now announced that it has surpassed 15 million accounts for that service.

"Adoption by our users has experienced phenomenal growth, well exceeding initial expectations," says MySpace’s Rajit Marwah. "At launch we set a goal of 10 million accounts created within a year – we knew we were on to something when we surpassed this goal in less than a quarter."

"What really makes MySpace Mail unique, and one reason why we think it has resonated so well with our users, is that it builds on your existing MySpace identity," he says. "We decided early on to automatically reserve our users’ vanity URLs for use as their MySpace Mail address. For example, since I had the URL myspace.com/rajit, the address [email protected] was already waiting for me when I created my MySpace Mail account. With an adoption rate upwards of 70%, vanity URLs were already one of the most popular features on MySpace, and leveraging them allowed users to maintain their identity on MySpace while enhancing this footprint beyond the MySpace network."

MySpace Mail

MySpace Mail | MySpace Video

The ability to send and receive music and videos as attachments with MySpace Mail could be one of the main attractions to users. Music and videos are certainly a huge part of what draws many users to MySpace in the first place.

MySpace’s foray into email drew plenty of criticism, but with better than expected growth, MySpace doesn’t appear to have any regrets about it.

MySpace has also announced the beta launch of My Music 2.0, a hub where users can build and manage social playlists. More details about that can be read here.

Related Articles:

> 10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email

> MySpace Mail Arrives

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

January 26, 2010
Canada Gets its New Yahoo Home Page

Yahoo has announced the launch of a new homepage for its Canadian users (an effort the company says will bring together the "best of the web with the best of Yahoo”). The home page lets users add apps, much like the current US version.

"The Web is an indispensable part of Canadians’ lives, it’s where they socialize, stay in touch with family and friends, buy products and services and share their photos and memories," says Matt Idema, Yahoo! vice president and country manager, Canada. "Whether for their PC or mobile device, Yahoo! Canada is bringing greater simplicity and relevance to the way Canadians experience the Web. Our new homepage is designed to help Canadians stay on top of what is going on in their world, and around the world no matter where they are."

Features of the new page include:

– My Favourites
– App Maker
– Social Updates
– News, For you
– PC to Mobile Sync

Of course the Olympic Games are coming up in Canada, and Yahoo is getting this page launched just in time for that. The company says it will offer coverage in the following capacities:

    *   Yahoo.ca will feature expert commentary from well-known Canadian athletes including Elvis Stojko (figure skating), Ken Daneyko (hockey), and Jennifer Jones (curling), who will bring a uniquely Canadian perspective to their coverage.

    * Yahoo! Canada has expanded its sports editorial team at home to include former Globe and Mail staffers Steve McAllister and Ian Denomme.

    * Yahoo!’s coverage of the Games via its mobile site, scheduled to launch on February 9, will enable fans on the go to keep up with the latest happenings, including medal counts, news and expert coverage, live results, athlete profiles and more.

    * You’ll also be able to follow Yahoo! Canada’s Games coverage on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/YahooSportsCA/

The new Yahoo home page in Canada becomes available tomorrow. A preview is available here.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Upgrades Yahoo Finance Search

> Yahoo Adds Ernst & Young Veteran To Board

> Yahoo Sponsored Search Getting New Features

January 25, 2010
NASA Astronaut Sends First Real Tweet From Space

NASA said today astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have received a special software upgrade that allows access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the "ultimate wireless connection."

Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro-TJ, from the space station. Previous tweets from space had to be emailed to the ground where support personnel posted them to the astronaut’s Twitter account.

The personal web access, called the Crew Support LAN, uses existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and surf the web.

When the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard touchpad.

Related Articles:

> NASA Invites Twitter Followers To Space Shuttle Launch

> Microsoft Parnters With NASA To Put Images Online

> Schmidt Speaks At NASA Celebration

January 22, 2010
Click Fraud Rate Spikes In Q4
The average attempted click fraud rate increased from 18.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009, to 25.7 percent in the fourth quarter according to a new report from Anchor Intelligence.

The jump in the attempted click fraud rate in Q4 was due to more activity by click fraudsters looking to take advantage of the increase in holiday ad spend online. The spread of botnets, which are used for automating traffic and coordinating click fraud activity, spiked late in the quarter.

"As botnets become more flexible and resilient, click fraud will be increasingly difficult to identify without a collaborative and systematic, network-based approach," said Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence.

"By releasing this report, we hope to provide a barometer by which the industry can assess the level of threats to online advertising while also conveying the importance of advertising with ad networks and search engines that partner with third-parties to certify their traffic quality."

Highlights from the report include:
- In Q4 2009, the attempted click fraud rate peaked at 25.7%.
- The 5 countries with the highest attempted click fraud rates in 2009 were Vietnam, U.S., Egypt, Canada, and Australia. In particular, the U.S. and Canada accounted for the vast majority of traffic volume, making these two countries the largest sources of attempted click fraud by volume.
- Anchor predicts that click fraud attempts will increase in 2010 as cybercriminals increasingly exploit the growth and adoption of social networks such as Facebook and tools such as Twitter.
Related Articles:

> How Search Engines Manage Click Fraud

> Botnets Driving Click fraud Traffic

> Massive Click Fraud Ring Shut Down
January 19, 2010