Wikipedia Blackout Wednesday

Wednesday will see Wikipedia, joined by a host of other websites including search giant Google, ‘blackout’ or protest against SOPA, the anti-priacy bill that is currently going through the US legislative system.

The aim of the exercise is to highlight how the bill will hinder consumers online.

Interestingly though, Twitter will not be taking part in the initiative.

Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO said:

@digiphile @jayrosen_nyu that's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.

—
dick costolo (@dickc) January 16, 2012

However, he later clarified that it would be foolish of Twitter to blackout, rather than the likes of Wikipedia who will be doing so readily.

It is interesting that Twitter, as a real-time ‘active’ communication platform, has taken the decision to allow information to continue flowing freely, whereas Wikipedia, for all intents and purposes a ‘static’ online media, has the opportunity to vent the opinion of a community with one single action and ceasing an information transaction.

Wikipedia is, to my mind, the embodiment of social culture and is one of the most important evolutionary devices that the Internet age has delivered.

The main comparison, and I am sure there are many, that jumps to mind is that of the Ancient Library of Alexandria.

Alexandria, an Egyptian wonder, was destroyed by Julius Caesar, and knowledge was lost, because of an accidental fire.

We must not allow the same to happen to our Internet through the intended action of a small group of individuals who do not see the benefits of freely shareable, accessible and consumable information.

How To Create The Perfect Foursquare List

Elliot Pearson was recently featured on Foursquare’s Follow Friday for his list of London’s indepdendent coffee shops. Here, he shares his advice on how to make the perfect Foursquare List.

The much-requested list feature is now rolled out across the Foursquare platform and has opened up much of what Foursquare aims to encourage and provide. While there are many uses for which this feature excels, from recommending places you’ve visited to friends right through to ordered guided tours and treasure hunts, it is easy to neglect key aspects that make a list a worthwhile experience for those following it, depending on what purpose the list aims to serve.

Focused Recommendations For Convenience
Followers want the convenience of having a ready-made list of places they can turn to in day-to-day situations without having to search a multitude of apps or browser pages. The beauty of geo-location services means that a number of steps can be removed in between a need surfacing, locating and gaining directions to, and finally arriving at, a suitable venue to satiate that need. For this they need lists that are comprehensive enough, yet sufficiently focussed, that they can be anywhere in their area and still be within a reasonable distance of a recommended venue that helps with what they are looking for. Too many inappropriate venues and they’re straight back to searching and sifting.

Lists as a guide book
Covering a specific area, whether a neighbourhood, city or country, can serve as a great way to help people visiting make the most of the time when they arrive. These guides can often be more general than those mentioned above, as the length of time they are required is limited to the duration of the visit. Rather than information that needs to stay fresh with day-to-day options, it is more useful as a single reference point for everything that person may require while they are there. Including in a list the key places of interest (with a tip explaining the background of why it is of interest, or indeed an unknown fact that other guides may not cover), recommended places to eat and drink, as well as key transport links or information points, helps the user to feel they can turn to it for any eventuality as they would if they were walking around with a local.

Use your expertise
It is surprisingly easy to tell when a list is constructed by someone with a passion for what they are listing. Rather than merely populating a list with various places from the local vicinity, users want venues recommended by someone who knows a sufficient amount to be able to hand-pick the right places, and Foursquare acts as a replacement for a word of mouth recommendation from a local who knows. If someone has turned to a Foursquare list, they are looking to find what they would not normally have found or considered alone, so a list of preferred local restaurants populated with fast food chains is somewhat defeating the object. With Foursquare’s inclusion of expertise levels on badges, list authors are accredited to some extent by proof of their experience of a sufficient number of places within a category.

That extra insider guide
Foursquare is built around the premise of discovery, and regular users are often looking for those hidden gems that are either worthy of being an ‘off-the-beaten-path’ destination, or highlight undiscovered treasures that they may pass every day. People have always found pleasure in visiting places that the masses are unaware of, so helping people discover such locations adds an extra edge to your lists. This can range from a lesser-known but trendy nightlife spot, to a point of interesting local history, or tucked away art exhibit.

Additional Insight
Filling your list with photos and tips from each venue fleshes out what is otherwise a nondescript list of locations and businesses. It gives you a chance to add character and personality to your list, and using your aforementioned specialist knowledge can enhance the experience for users. The Foursquare tips system is increasingly meritocratic, based on a person’s expertise level of the category of venue to which they are leaving the tip. With higher expertise levels you’ll find your tips prioritised on venue pages, which in turn increases awareness of yourself and your list. Always be aware that tips ‘done’ by users increases the priority of the tip, so make it worthwhile for people to acknowledge.

Top 10 Music Blogs of 2011

What are the top ten music blogs of 2011, I hear you ask?

Well, I’ve had a think about all of those that I’ve read regularly and listened music from avidly and whittled down to a little list that I hope you find time to investigate further!

Aquarium Drunkard – everything you need to know about music you’ve never heard of. Awesome.
yvynyl – simply, pick the best stuff, share. Great.
Abeano – award winning music blog, it wins awards for a reason…
Pinglewood – primarily video based, highly under rated
Off Modern – great collection of new music, intelligently picked
Gorilla vs. Bear – consistently finds new music, and it looks good too
Bear Eats Beats – into Indie & hip hop? This is the blog for you
Twenty Four Bit – amazing taste in music, a must read
Pigeons And Planes – need an introduction to a bunch of music you’ve never heard of? Pigeons And Planes does that job, spectacularly well.
Robot Pigeon – somehow the RP guys find bizarrely wonderful tracks from the most obscure of places, you’ll never leave

So, tell me, what music blogs have you discovered this year?

Kred

Kred is the latest tool designed to measure your Twitter influence, built by the good folks at Peoplebrowsr.

The Good Stuff

In the version I’ve had a play with, there are several sections choc-full of data to play with.

Overview: This is your dashboard that gives you the headline, ie, your score and recent activity; who you’ve retweeted, conversations you’ve had, who has mentioned you etc.

Activity: This is where it starts to get very cool. One of the best things about Peoplebrowsr is the ability to segregate by community – Kred has taken this technology too. This means that when you’re looking at influence, it can be broken down by interest area, such as social media, or sport.

What’s really interesting here is that you can not only see your communities, but click through to see what other communities people you’re engaging with are a part of. Neat.

Friends Activity: This outlines who has been mentioning your friends. This is incredibly useful if you’re trying to understand who potentially you should be looking to reach as a second or third contact point.

Get More Kred: This is a feature that I’m yet to see any of the influence analysts include within their offering: a solid offline meaure of influence. You can include all those speaker slots you get, your level of education (and therefore connections you might have), memberships to clubs and organisation, charity and sport involvement and how often you travel (the unspoken metric for importance is of course frequent flyer miles…).

There is also a little more analysis on your online profile too and a sample of people to consider following.

Community Kred: This section looks at the sphere of the different communities Kred is analysing, who is influential in them and where you rank (if you rank at all). This again is incredibly helpful if you’re deciphering who you need to try and engage with to raise your profile.

Analyse: “Coming Soon” is filed under this section, I wait with held breath!

How It Works

Each community is relative to itself – this, for me, is key.

Kred have have put together a Rules section, outlining how your score is calculated:

Kred Influence is the measure of what others do because of you. Influence increases when others take action because of your content. Your Influence score increases when someone retweets, @replies or follows you.

Scores range from 1 to 1,000 with higher scores representing greater influence. The score of the person with the most Influence is set at 1,000 and all others are normalized relative to it. Kred Influence is normalized for the Twitter universe and within communities, which means that someone in every community has a score of 1,000.

You receive Influence Points every time others interact with you or your content. 10 Points are assigned for the most common actions like replying to people and retweeting content. You receive more Points if someone with a large following does something for you, like having a message retweeted by someone with more than 10,000 followers.

Influence Points are then translated to your Kred Influence Score. Since Kred Influence is normalized on a scale with a maximum score of 1,000, the rate at which Influence Points convert to Kred Influence constantly changes as everyone in the social universe accrues Points. The ‘Points To Score Conversion’ curve also grows steeper as Kred Influence Score grows. The higher your Kred Influence, the more points it takes to move up.

In Summary

Whilst acknowledging that influence is extremely difficult to measure, Kred is offering a different perspective to the other tools that exist.

I must admit I am a fan and I’ve been pretty excited in the build up to it going live – I’ve not been let down, it is very promising indeed and I look forward to the next iteration being rolled out.

Facebook Buys Gowalla

Facebook have bought Gowalla, according to CNN. The world’s most formidable social network has snapped up the US location based social network, for an undisclosed sum.

According to CNN:

“It’s a perfect match,” said the source, who asked not to be identified because the deal has not yet been publicly announced. “As far as the big picture, Gowalla’s vision is about people telling stories, and Facebook’s vision for Timeline is about stories about important moments in life.”

Given Gowalla’s struggle to break through in the battle against rival Foursquare, it is no surprise that the decision has been made to sell the property, and more importantly, it’s developer talent.

As Facebook looks to develop it’s location based offering, you would imagine that the tech team would slot straight into this part of their business.

However, I do not see it that way. I think Facebook have seen a team of innovative developers who can be redeployed to make other elements of Facebook better – the timeline, as cited above, would be the obvious place to start.

There is no sign of the deal being mentioned on either the Facebook or the Gowalla blog, but it will be worth keeping an eye on these two sources for official confirmation over the coming days.

It is an unsurprising yet unexpected move from Facebook – they buy good technology and integrate it in way or another, I just figured they’d look to acquire a different LBSN, someone like echoecho or Scvngr, as they are relatively smaller and would be cheaper to get a hold of.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Gowalla fits in with the Facebook family. It also leaves Foursquare’s path to domination a little clearer, don’t you think?

Spotify Apps

Spotify have confirmed the launch of their apps offering, working with 11 partners:

Billboard – they’ll provide music from the Billboard charts
Fuse – a combination of news and themed playlists
The Guardian – News and reviews
Last.fm – Music recommendations based on your scrobbles
Moodagent – How do you feel today? Pick a genre to match your mood
Pitchfork – playlist curation based on Pitchfork’s impeccable taste
Rolling Stone – tracks recommended by the world’s biggest music magazine
Songkick – finds gigs based on your playlists
Soundrop – share your playlists with your friends
Tunewiki – sees what song your playing and brings up the lyrics (Spotify karaoke!)
We Are Hunted – the best new songs from the brilliant new bands blog

Spotify Apps, despite being in it’s infancy, present us with an interesting new use of Spotify, socialising the music experience further than just sharing what you’re listening to on Facebook.

I’m genuinely excited by this development. Despite the relative simplicity of the apps on offer so far, there is great potential for content providers, curators and brands.

It presents brands with a better way to reach consumers than the standard playlist or advert. Integration with Last.fm’s app could allow you to create a bespoke playlist as a consumer browses your website or Facebook Page, for example.

We’ve seen how apps can evolve a platform experience, look at Foursquare’s ecosystem for example, and by keeping the apps integrated within the Spotify platform, the Swedish company will be able to exercise a little control over what is produced, ensuring that a certain level of quality is maintained.

Have you tried out the new apps yet? What do you think of them and the offering itself?

6 Things Bands Should Do Online

6 Things Bands Should Do Online… 6 simple things bands and artists can do to maximise their digital communications potential.

Spotify Royalties: Some Real Statistics

Spotify this week has once again been the focus of artists’ ire, as more than 200 labels chose to withdraw music from the service.

A post on Digital Music News revelaed research from NPD Group and NARM that claimed:

“access has been deemed ‘most detrimental’ to monetization across nearly all demographic categories”

What is lacking is a transparency from music streaming services that will allow people to decide fro themselves.

So, in a (small) attempt to make the money you receive for a ‘stream’ of one of your tracks a little less hidden, here’s a very basic breakdown from some first hand experience.

I signed up with Routenote, a digital music distribution service, a couple of years ago. It has been in the last few months that I’ve used Routenote to it’s potential, managing to get some of my old band’s tracks on Spotify (you can listen here if you like!).

*click the image to see a bigger version

In August we had 61 plays and earned $0.35016
In September we had 52 plays and earned $0.30396

So for just over 100 plays, we earned ourselves two-thirds of a dollar.

Now that might not seem like much to you, but that 100 plays as 100 more than we would have had otherwise.

To put it another way, the 100 plays is the equivalent of us selling 20 CDs at £3 each that are then only listened to once, straight from the disc.

That would net us £60 profit (our overheads from making the CD were covered years ago), a lot more than half a dollar.

It would seem to make NO SENSE to an outside figure who is interested only in the money at hand.

Why would you spend months creating something, only for its potential value to be made obsolete by uploading it to the Internet and making it publicly available for free?? ARE YOU NUTS?

Perhaps.

The presence on Spotify helps, in my mind, to establish your footprint digitally. If you don’t get on the platform, someone else will, and they make take your potential audience with them.

It makes sharing your music with others easier too. Back in the day, you’d carry 100′s of CDs to gigs, that nobody would buy; now they can listen to you on Spotify and you save your back.

You might end up on a playlist of similar artists, stumbled across randomly by a Spotify user who happened to like your tracks.

Like many elements of our digital lives, there is an element of luck involved, if you are to succeed.

Think of ‘viral’ videos for example. The brands and people involved were lucky that they caught a wave of cultural phenomenon that their content played so well into.

Similarly, that job you got through Twitter? You wouldn’t have it if you’d made a cup of tea and watched the TV instead of checking your stream.

That half dollar may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it is half a dollar that has meant the band’s music has been listened to 100 times more than it would have otherwise been.

It has yet to lead to a sale or download, that much is true. But, if it does, that simple 5 minute process of uploading some tracks will have been made worthwhile.

Foursquare Expertise

Foursquare have announced the latest update to their offering: Expertise.

Expertise is a reflection of how often you check in at particular types of venues and rewards you with levels according to how many times you visit a particular type of place.

You can see from my ‘Fresh Brew’ badge the data is already being rolled out.

We’ve already got all this great data on your expertise from your past check-ins, so the exciting part now is identifying the ways we can use it to help people make decisions in the real world. For instance, if you’re at a wine bar, it’s much more useful to see a Tip from a Level 8 wine expert. Or, if a karaoke buff always goes to a specific place, we can make sure that it comes up first when you’re looking to sing your heart out. There are lots of ways to use the community’s expertise to make the world more interesting, and foursquare will keep getting more useful the more you and your friends use it.

This added tweak is very GetGlue, which rewards users similarly according to how many times they check-in to a TV show or artist profile with different ‘levels’ of fan sticker.

What’s cool here is that Foursquare adds another layer of usefulness to their product. A tip is no longer just a random piece of advice from a user who went to that bar once, it’s now quantifiable by the amount of times the same person has been to that bar and really knows the best table, most appropriate wine and tastiest food.

It’s a simple, yet effective, way for Foursquare to add an extra little bit of value to their product and continue to drive for that stickiness that all social networks are looking for.

Retweet.co.uk

Retweet.co.uk is a new tool from the creator of Spotify’s best playlist sharing service ShareMyPlaylists.

Retweet’s aim is to measure the reach of your tweets so that you can find out how many people may have seen the content you’ve created.

This is a question we’ve been asked by brands since Twitter’s evolution as a digital marketing tool: “So, how many people actually saw that tweet?”. Of course it’s much more meaningful to track click throughs, via bit.ly for example, but regardless, it’s a way of working out how well your community reacts to certain types of content being shared.

A very simple interface makes this extremely easy to understand, and the pulling in of data seems pretty seamless.

It shows you the content of the tweet, the users who retweeted it, the total number of potential impressions and each user’s percentage share of that total, as well as each user’s number of followers.

A neat function is the ability to see your most retweeted tweets, again a great way of seeing what content flies, and likewise, who you most retweet can tell you what content you’re finding useful, funny or informative.

Of course, Retweet doesn’t replace the total number of clicks as the better form of measurement of impact, but it is useful to demonstrate how just one or two retweets from the right people can share your content much wider than just your own network.