SocialTimes.com

New Social Times Server Posted: 26 Nov 2008 10:31 AM PST You may have noticed that the site has been down this morning. There has also been connection issues over the past few months. I’ve now shifted Social Times to a new server and we will be back on a regular posting schedule. Let us know if you run into any problems with accessing the site.

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MySpace Music Gets New Leadership to Match New Direction Posted: 25 Nov 2008 05:43 PM PST MySpace Music just “officially” launched earlier this year in September, and it has unsurprisingly become an integral part in MySpace’s overall product map moving forward. To help steer that product map in the right direction is Courtney Holt, the newly appointed President of MySpace Music. As a former Executive Vice President of Digital Music for the MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, Holt has worked with the music and the web-based aspects of both industries. Specifically, Holt has worked on several initiatives for engaging audiences online and offline–something he’ll likely bring to his new position as the MySpace Music President. Prior to working at MTV Networks, Holt was the Senior Vice President of New Media, Creative and Strategic Marketing at Interscope, where he also had the opportunity of working with MySpace on a number of projects for artists such as Weezer and Black Eyed Peas. It’s pretty clear that Holt has an affinity for technology-based solutions regarding music marketing and branding practices, and with MySpace Music having just launched as a highly integrated project for combining aspects of the traditional music industry with online social networking. Holt will begin his position as the President of MySpace Music on January 5, 2009.

MySpace Begins Giving Developers Access to the News Feed Posted: 25 Nov 2008 01:17 PM PST If MySpace could help developers promote their applications to get more distribution, activity notifications in friends’ news feeds would be a great way to do it. Last night the company announced that they are rolling out the beta version of “application activities”. Currently these application activities will only be viewable to developers until at least “after the holidays”. Once fully rolled out this will give developers on the MySpace platform, much greater promotional visibility. This is excellent news for developers but as Chris, a social application developer states in the MySpace forum, “I want to have my activities code ready to go the instant this goes live on the main site, but also I have a lot of urgent work to get done on other platforms which have much higher traffic.” That response is similar to the response many other developers have personally told me. As the social application space becomes spread across limitless platforms, it becomes essential to prioritize and focus development activities on those platforms providing the greatest return. Right now the platform which provides the most growth opportunity remains to be Facebook. Not only does Facebook already provide a number of viral distribution channels but the company also remains to be the fastest growing social network in terms of absolute members. This has made it a challenging environment for other social platforms despite OpenSocial’s much larger reach. It’s clear that MySpace isn’t slowing down though despite the challenging environment. Today’s news of a new distribution channel for developers is one sign of MySpace’s continued effort to attract developer attention.

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BuddyPress Still Not Ready for Primetime Posted: 25 Nov 2008 06:00 AM PST Over the past month I’ve been doing a significant amount of development as I was rolling out the new Facebook application statistics service over at AllFacebook. Everything has been pretty smooth and I think I’ve created a pretty nice platform for building new tools on top of it in the near future. The only problem has been my hosting. Over the past month or two, my blogs have been overloading my server. It’s really not a ridiculous amount of load for a large hosting environment but my host couldn’t handle it and I was overloading other sites that were sharing my server. After much consideration I’ve decided to go with a dedicated server and one thing which I wanted to include was a new instance of Wordpress MU. What is Wordpress MU? If you’ve registered for Wordpress.com then you’ve already interacted with it. It’s a simple system for launching a practically limitless network of blogs. The only problem with it is that there is practically no documentation. I spent 6 hours trying to get things configured this afternoon on my new Media Temple server so I could import all my blogs into a single Wordpress MU installation. The other reason I’m trying to make this shift a little more complicated than it should be is because I wanted to install BuddyPress. I previously wrote about BuddyPress, the custom social network for blogs recently acquired by Automattic. The service looks pretty slick and I figured it would at a minimum be a good platform for handling a large network of users. Unfortunately, BuddyPress only runs on Wordpress MU. The main point of this whole rambling is that I can’t figure out why on earth the guys at Automattic would require people to use Wordpress MU to get BuddyPress working. I completely understand why they would want the two systems to work together, but individual blogs should be able to install the plugin as well. For most readers, I’m probably losing you but trust me when I say that BuddyPress, the system which was going to turn all blogs into social networks, still has a ways to go before it goes mainstream.

Universal Music Still Believes in Chat, Partners with Meebo Posted: 24 Nov 2008 08:27 PM PST Meebo, the online chat service that lets you log into all your instant messenger clients from a central location, has announced its agreement with Universal Music Group as its latest partner. This deal signifies a branding opportunity for both Meebo and UMG, as the music company will be able to distribute premium content through Meebo’s various services and enable users to share it with their friends from there. This isn’t the first time Meebo has been used as a branding platform for an entertainment company, especially as Meebo has launched a number of different products that can be used by brands for direct marketing purposes. Meebo Rooms, for instance, can be branded for the purpose of disseminating information and products directly to users. And for companies like UMG, such a platform is ideal as it provides an easy way to share music, videos, and other premium content such as interviews or a listening party, where a group of users can gather and subsequently share media with their friends. As Meebo has also spent the past year building services that allow the Meebo service to be spread across the Internet, the potential for a brand’s message to permeate through the social web is increased. From embeddable chat rooms to Facebook apps to its recently announced Community IM, Meebo is hoping to make its chat service as adaptable as possible. As part of the deal, UMG will embed Meebo Rooms on official artist pages for real-time engaging of fans and site visitors. UMG will also be taking advantage of Meebo’s Syndication Program, which will reach out to fans across affiliate sites. Sometimes it seems strange to have such a media-centric sharing program syndicated across a chat platform, but Meebo has done a pretty good job of making itself accessible across web and mobile devices in order to align with the directions other social networking trends move towards. As chat can still be a powerful and effective form of direct communication, the furthered integration Meebo has with the larger web makes it more progressive than other instant messaging clients out there, and better able to become a platform that’s monetized through branding and syndication services.

SGN’s iBasketball Taking Wii-Like Games Too Far? Posted: 24 Nov 2008 10:01 AM PST Like to play basketball? Then you probably won’t like the new iPhone app from SGN, called iBasketball. Even though it’s a fun game, it’s Wii-like movements with your iPhone aren’t good substitutes for the real game. I know that could be said about the majority of the Wii-like games made for the iPhone, but in testing the game out myself and speaking with a few other seasoned game players, the movement of shooting a basketball with the iPhone is a little more drastic than say, bowling. Are mobile game makers over-doing the apps that require movement mimicking the real sport? Is the mobile market really the best venue for such games, seeing as there are a limited number of places in which most people will feel comfortable “throwing” their phones around in the act of playing basketball? I’d personally prefer the race car game if I were sitting on the train or in the doctor’s waiting room, while saving iBasketball for the privacy of my own home. So I do wonder if this limits the play time and user retention of movement-games such as iBasketball. But SGN has also made sure to include some social features for iBasketball, which keeps things interesting. The ability to challenge friends and play against others in real time certainly makes this game more fun and attractive to a wider audience. If you get a chance to check out iBasketball, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Facebook Thrown Out of Tree After Caught Kissing With Twitter Posted: 24 Nov 2008 07:25 AM PST At Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, John Battelle asked Mark Zuckerberg about a potential acquisition of Twitter. Zuckerberg essentially avoided the question and Caroline McCarthy, suggested such a notion was ludicrous. This morning, Kara Swisher revealed that acquisitions discussions were actually taking place but eventually ended in failure. The reason, according to Kara, was that Facebook offered a $500 million stock exchange at Microsoft’s $15 billion valuation. Twitter executives and investors suggested that such a valuation was not accurate in the current market environment. Public rumors suggesting a current stock valuation of $4 - $5 billion have supported Twitter’s position. Twitter continues to grow at an extremely fast rate: 600 percent over the past year. Unfortunately nobody has figured out an effective way to monetize the site. This morning though, Mike Arrington posted about a new service which inserts ads into Twitter. Based on my follower level, I could be earning $237.52 a month. That would definitely help cover part of my rent but probably not worth it given that I’d lose a number of followers for using the service. An acquisition of Twitter still makes sense for Facebook though given that Twitter is essentially an abstracted version of the Facebook status with the ability to create two-way conversations. Even though the deal has fallen through this time around, Facebook would benefit greatly from buying the company which owns the defacto micro-blogging platform. Do you think a merger makes sense? How much would you want for Twitter if you owned it?

Give Up Your Web Anonymity. Can Obama Do That? Posted: 24 Nov 2008 07:18 AM PST Obama was one of the first politicians to really leverage online social media to its full potential during his campaign for the presidential election, so you’ve got to admit that he knows a thing or two about maintaining an online reputation.  And now that Obama is the president elect, he expects the rest of his administration to disclose some of their online information, according to an article in the New York Times.  In a 7-page questionnaire, prospective White House employees will need to list their aliases and handles used to communicate on the Internet, among other expected questions pertaining to government new hires.  Now, communicate is a broad term, especially when it comes to the Internet.  For the questionnaire’s purpose, it even includes names used for comments posted on blogs and websites.  Not only is that a daunting task, depending on your level of online activity, but it also crosses a privacy line that has not yet been addressed on this political level.  I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised.  I’ve had friends that are required to cease all social networking activity all together once they get a job with organizations such as the FBI.  And given the need to avoid mistakes such as those seen by McCain’s or Clinton’s administration when it comes to certain members having rather embarrassing histories, an attempt for full disclosure in online activity can be viewed as a preventative measure.  But the real point of contention here is privacy.  Is it ok for the White House to require you to give up all your aliases used on the Internet–yes, the whole Internet?  In setting a precedent for so many things related to the White House, Obama has no bigger shoes than his own to fill.  And maintaining that sentiment across his entire administration is something that he’ll need to do throughout his entire presidency and beyond.  This is more than just Obama covering his bases–it’s a measure taken to avoid having his administration look bad.  Nevertheless, it seems to be a rather extreme precedent to take.  While there will always be an aspect of anonymity when it comes to communications on the web, the requirement for prospective White House employees seems to be a decided move against any and all potential anonymity.  And perhaps the real issues will begin once we find out what the White House administration will be doing with this information once it knows its employees’ aliases used on the web.

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