Google+ Revamping Again

Google+ Collections

It looks like Google+ is giving it another shot, revamping the current service to better reflect what its users were requesting.

And what did they want? The most asked-for features were Communities and Collections, which the service is now emphasizing, making it easier for people to share their passions.

It looks like Communities is indeed going to be popular, with an average of 1.2 million new joins per day. Collections is still so new that most users haven't gotten their arms around it yet (see the graphic on the left to see what it looks like).

The new G+ has streamlined other functions too, making it easier to post, search and connect as well.

The new UI change can be a shock to users, so it's possible to toggle back to the "classic" design, although it will be eventually phased out.

To get started with the new Google+, just click on the "Let's go" prompt when you first log in.

Let me know if you think this is a good idea and if you'll use it more now.

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What Is Pinterest?

You may have heard about a new social site called Pinterest, which has exploded from 1.2 million to 4 million users in about 6 months. Pinterest is a place to organize and share online images that you find interesting. Once they're uploaded or shared on Pinterest, these images become known as Pins, which the user can place on customized themed Boards, which can be for any topic imaginable, from cats to classic cars to cats driving classic cars.

While most people will use this for their main topic of interest, artists and bands might use it as a place for fans to pin pictures of a tour, or for behind-the-scenes pictures when in the studio, or as a place to gather artwork for an album.

Pinning is easy with the official Pin It Button, which is a simple drag-and-drop browser extension. When you come across an image you like, just click the button and select the corresponding picture, then assign the pin to a Board and add some identifying text. If the Pin is something you want to buy, include the price in the description and it will attach to the Pin for easy reference. You can also take a picture with your iPhone and add it to your Boards with the mobile app (there's no Android support yet).

The social part of Pinterest is that you can share pins on Facebook to help expand your network, and you can check out the Popular button to see what pins are trending at the moment, which is a way to find new content or Pinners who share your interests. Share a Pin with another Pinner by using an @mention in the description, just like you do on other social sites and they’ll get an email to let them know they’ve been mentioned. While most Pins are photos, you can also pin videos by hitting the Videos button at the top of the page, which allows you to see all the available videos as well.

One of the problems with Pinterest is that it's currently not open to everyone so you have to be invited. You can sign up on their website, or get an invite to someone who's already a Pinner. Either way, Pinterest looks like it might be the next hot social network.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Top 10 US Social Networks

Here are the top 10 social networks in the US. Some you already know, but there are a few that might surprise you. Most of this info is thanks to IB Times.

10. Live Journal: LiveJournal was launched in April 15, 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as an online journal where users are able to post, share, and interact with other users. It is possible to join for free, but a paid account ($19.95/year) provides additional features. It has about 4.9 million monthly visitors according to Quantcast, but seems to be shedding users.

9. Tagged: Tagged is a San Francisco-based social network website that was created in 2004 that links people based on shared interests. Unlike other popular social networking sites where they are trying to keep in touch with their old friends, Tagged is interested in helping people to find new friends. It has 5.9 million monthly visitors, but is shedding users.

8. Flickr: Flickr started out as an online photo uploading and managing website, but the site has become popular for bloggers and users to integrate their postings, evolving into something that is more like a social networking site. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and now owned by Yahoo! ("Where start-ups go to die" according to my friend Tom Kozik, a former Yahoo executive). It has 18.8 million monthly visitors but is shedding users.

7. MySpace: MySpace was once the #1 social networking site until Facebook took over the throne in 2008. The company has been recently purchased at $35 million by Specific Media, with Grammy award winning artist Justin Timberlake also taking some ownership role. It still has over 19 million monthly users, but its traffic is down over 50% from last year.

6. Tumblr: Tumblr was founded in 2007 by David Karp and quickly became a popular micro-blogging service on the web, similar to Twitter. This new rising site boasts of clean design, easy usability, and large user base. PCWorld has listed Tumblr as President Obama’s top 5 tech tools. It has 36 million monthly visitors, but is growing at a rapid pace with traffic up over 72% from last year.

5. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a social networking site mostly geared towards professionals. It helps people to find jobs, find people, and hire people. The account is free to create, but there are fees involved with some of the activities. It has over 40 million monthly visitors with traffic up by nearly 50% from last year.

4. Twitter: Twitter was created in 2006, with the name meaning “a short burst of inconsequential information.” The users can “tweet” their posts in short segments, with a maximum of 140 characters. Users can also “follow” others of their choice. Twitter has a Quantcast ranking of #5 with over 94 million monthly visitors, but its traffic has increased only slightly more than 1% over last year.

3. YouTube: As virtually everyone already knows, YouTube is a website where people can upload, manage, and share videos online. Similar to Flickr, YouTube has evolved from a simple video-sharing site to one that is similar to a social networking site with user interactive features. It has a Quantcast ranking of #3 with over 137 million monthly users. It is also up 22% in users over last year.

2. Facebook: The new social networking giant was birthed in a Harvard dormitory by its undergraduate student Mark Zuckerberg with his fellow friends. It originally served only Harvard students, quickly expanding to the Ivy League, and was followed by the rest of America’s colleges and universities. Now over 750 million users, or 10 percent of the world’s population, connect over Facebook. It's number #2 in Quantcast's ranking with 139 million visitors a month, with visits up more than 15% over last year.

1. Google+: OK, it's so new that there's not a great number of users yet, but with a Quantcast ranking of #1 and a huge user base, we predict that it won't take long for Google+ to overtake the others on this list. Check back next year to see if this prediction holds true or not.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

The Interesting Features Of Google+

Google just opened up their new social network called "Google+," and it has a number of interesting features that could be enough to make users of other social networks to seriously consider it. These features  promise to change the way we interact, socialize and connect to others, and given the huge existing user footprint that Google already has, it could spell trouble for Facebook et al. Here's a look at them, thanks to International Business Times:

1) Circles - The Circles concept more closely follows the way you organize your contacts in real life. We meet different kinds of people everyday and interact with them in many different ways. Circles offers a simple means of organizing one's social network by grouping contacts into anything you can possibly imagine - family, friends, co-workers, etc. The groups can be formed by dragging the contact's picture/photo over a circle that represents the group (a group of people can also be dragged over a circle!)

2) Stream – Stream helps you receive instant updates from your friends and other contacts in your Circles list. It helps you decide and choose which circles and individuals you want to share your information with.

3) Sparks – Sparks pulls in stories, videos and other cool content relating to your specific interest. According to Google, the content in Sparks stream is different from the results you'd get if you put the same term into the search engine. Through Sparks, you can get an instant fountain of relevant information to share with friends. After you are asked to choose from a list of possible interests (biking, sailing, etc.), or to put your own specific interest, Google+ goes out and searches almost completely on-topic content from all over the Web.

4) Hangouts - Hangouts is a group video chat feature that allows up to ten people in a group to come together and video chat. Hangouts allow the person nearest to the mic and loudest to speak out.

5) Huddle - Huddle is a group SMS conversation feature where mobile phone numbers of members will be visible to all.

6) Instant Upload – Instant Upload allows the user to upload pictures and videos directly from the phone

Google+ also has amazing privacy features which will put Facebook to crying shame. It allows you choose which Circles you want to share that content with. Also, it lets you know clearly that the information you contribute to Google+ will be used to help refine search results.

Another advantage Google+ has over Facebook is their "data liberation," which allows you to pack up and take your data away from Google+ should you decide to leave the service.

This is a big plus for Google as privacy has always been Facebook’s Achilles’ heel as users have complained how difficult it is to leave Facebook and take their stuff with them.

It looks as though the invitations Google+ are now open again (they were closed due to technical issues shortly after it was launched), so let the social fun begin.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Turn Your "Likes" Into Gigs

Wouldn't it be great if you could harness the power of your fans to score some gigs? Now you can with an interesting fan management platform called WHOOZNXT, which rewards performance opportunities to the artists that amass the most fans during any given time period.

WHOOZNXT is part of a new platform from NXTM, a service responsible for the digital presence of acts such as Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake that was founded by former MTV executive Jeff Yapp. It debuted at this years SXSW, offering bands the chance to play on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as well as slots at Rachael Ray’s SXSW events.

According to an article on Mashable, bands can sign up for free and connect their WHOOZNXT profile to all their social network pages and profiles. The site then presents the band with analytics, courtesy of PeopleBrowsr, showing how many fans they have, how that number has changed over time and the band’s sentiment score. Artists can also see their most influential fans so as to connect with them accordingly.

Bands are then assigned a bracket based on how many fans they have, which determines what kind of opportunities they might receive. The top Platinum Tier includes artists with a total fan count more than 25,000 fans; the Gold Tier fan count is 5,000 to 25,000; and the Silver Tier is for artists who have fewer than 5,000 fans. Each month, artists are entered into a pool of opportunities and those who amass the most fans during that period are eligible for said gig opportunity. Just because you amass a lot of fans doesn't necessarily mean that you automatically get booked, since the venue involved has the final selection.

The site also provides artists with tools to help grow and manage their fanbase, including a band website builder, an e-store builder, a “publish everywhere” tool for all your content and a widget builder to create media players.

WHOOZNXT certainly has good intentions, and if it works as stated than it could be a boon to artists that are really increasing their social footprint. That said, ideas like this have a way of getting sidetracked along the way. Let's see how it works out.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Current State Of Social Networks

Here's a very interesting info-graphic from Ignite as sourced from Google Insights that describes the current state of social networks. As you can see, interest in social networking seems to have flattened out somewhat. It's also interesting how many of the most visited networks are not in the US. And finally, I don't think any of the 5 biggest losers are a surprise (especially MySpace), but the winners are (especially the Chinese Weibo).

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Don't Depend On Your Social Network

It's too easy for today's artist who only dabbles in social networking to get complacent and comfortable with the abilities of a single social network, but that can spell disaster for maintaining your fan base if you're not careful. As those artists who formerly depended upon MySpace now know, what's hot today can be ice cold tomorrow. But other negative scenarios also exist that can be far worse than the network falling out of favor.

Scenario #1 - Let's say that you've cultivated a huge following on Facebook. What would happen if Facebook was purchased by Google, who decides that all it wants is the underlying technology of the network, and shuts the rest down? If you didn't capture the email addresses of all your followers, you'd lose them to the nothingness of cyberspace. Don't laugh - it could happen.

Scenario #2 - What would happen if Facebook (I'm picking on them because they're the big dog on the social block) changes its terms of service, and now charges you $.25 for every fan past 100? So now you're lucky enough to have 80,000 fans, but it's going to cost you 20 grand to continue. Or they decided to limit everyone's fan connections to 100? Both unlikely, but something similar could happen, where suddenly you were unable to access that large fan base that you've worked so hard to develop.

That's why it's imperative that you harvest as many email addresses as you can for your own mailing list so you can keep your social communication under your control. If you rely on an external network, sooner or later you're going to get burnt. It's the nature of the Internet to constantly change, and it's too early to get a feel for the life span of even of the largest sites and networks. So play it safe - develop that mailing list.

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Follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.