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BBC Weds iPlayer and Social Media
Sep 8th
The much-discussed new version of the BBC’s iPlayer, which allows users to watch television shows and listen to radio programs up to a week after they’ve been broadcast, has finally been released. It’s been expected after a number of development blogs that this new version, iPlayer 3, would place greater emphasis on social interaction, and expectations have been met.
Primarily, the new iPlayer offers fairly seamless integration of Facebook and Twitter to allow users to share what they’re enjoying. This follows a growing trend towards user recommendations as tastemakers. (Apple’s Ping recently joined this fray, but Netflix dropped out of the competition.)
Furthermore, iPlayer users who register for accounts can customize their iPlayer experience and save favorite programs, which in turn can be automatically updated when new episodes air. While this is not a particularly social feature, knowing when your favorite shows are out is a way to keep up with water cooler conversation.
James Hewines, BBC iPlayer product leader, explained on his blog “The main theme here is personalisation. We wanted to connect BBC iPlayer up with the users’ online interactions with friends – to bring a social dimension to watching and listening.”
But iPlayer users should not expect a fully-featured set of Facebook and Twitter tools. While it’s possible to share content and update your statuses, you can only interact via iPlayer with friends who are also on Facebook and/or Twitter, and who also have an iPlayer user account. Since the magic of iPlayer 3′s ability to introduce you to new and interesting programs lies in peer recommendations and suggestions chosen for you based on what you’ve watched and favorited, the name of the game is to sign up for a BBC iPlayer account, period.
Read a full review of iPlayer 3′s features by Gary Marshall at techcrunch.com. For more information or to grab the iPlayer, check out the BBC’s iPlayer site.
Kidnapped Journalist Tweets After Outsmarting Captors With Their Own Phone
Sep 8th
How do you reach out to the world when you’re a Japanese journalist who has been captured in Afghanistan? If you can steal away your captors phone you simple send some Tweets letting your followers know you are still alive and well.
According to PC World the reporter, Kosuke Tsuneoka, was held for five months without contact to the outside world, however when a soldier wanted to show off his Nokia N70 Smartphone Tsuenoka took advantage of the situation, showing the soldier how to use the internet on the device via Twitter.
How dumb was the soldier? He actually allowed Tsuneoka to call tech support to activate the phones internet, then allowed him to use Twitter to show him and his fellow soldiers how to reach out to other journalists.
Tsueneoka then sent two Tweets in English:
Whether it was partly because of those Tweet’s that he was released the next day is hard to say, although various sources believe that his release was because he converted to the Muslim faith.
It looks like I finally found a GOOD reason to have location based services.
How to Write and Send a Press Release
Sep 7th
This is a guest post by Sergio da Silva, a professional SEO in London.
You have a new widget or maybe you are launching a new software on your website and now you want to tell the world. Sitting in front of your computer and already late for an appointment, you are trying to come up with unique and eloquent copy that doesn’t include the words ‘luminous,’ ‘ground-breaking,’ or ‘elegant.’
Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. The online press release is still going to have to include some gripping and persuasive copy to attract visitors to your site or blog. In fact, the online press release relies even more heavily on good language, since it doesn’t include big colored fonts, cover art or creatively inserted quotes from reputable sources.
What I can help you with is how to address the particular requirements of the online press release. Though the press release sent to online media by email or the popular free press release distribution services serves essentially the same purpose as the print press release mailed or faxed to print media, it does require some special treatment to be successful. I am a big fan of sending press releases by email instead of using free distribution services. Yes, these services are going to get you a lot of exposure but using email distribution you can cherry pick the websites that you want to target, bringing relevant traffic to your website. Here are a few tips to make writing and sending your email news release go a little more smoothly…and get a great response for your site!
Writing the Release by Email
Subject line
The two most important things in an email news release are the address of the sender and the subject line of the email. This is because these are the only two pieces of information most people see in their email in-box. Make your subject line short (so that you can see the whole thing on a small computer screen) and to-the-point so it doesn’t get instantly deleted as ‘spam.’ I favor a simple subject line that states why I’m writing, such as “Review Copy of my website’s new product” for example.
Return Address
Your sender name is changeable in the options part of your email program and should state clearly who you are. Once it’s set, you should use it consistently. For example, if you are from an established website, use the website name for credibility, or if you are well known yourself, use your full name. The online media will get to know you, and if you do send them information that is a fit for their audience or community, they will start to anticipate your emails with pleasure.
The Content
Length
Your news release for email will generally be better received if it is short. Media people will often not scroll down more than once on an email, and if you haven’t gotten your message across in two screens, then you lose.
Four paragraphs are usually adequate:
one: explain clearly why you are writing
two: establish the credibility of your service(s) mentioning for example past experience
three: outline [briefly!] how your service will help the recipient’s readers (online and offline media)
four: ask for what you want (i.e. a review).
For immediate release?
Instruct your recipient when you want the news to be published. Most professionals include the headline on the header or the footer “For Immediate Release” meaning that the story should be published immediately. Be sure to include your contact details if the journalist or webmaster is looking for further information.
Sending Your Press Release
When you are ready to send your press release, there are a few details that can make or break your presentation. The first is your recipient list. When you send an email to one person, it is received with one address in the “To” field. If you put your entire media list in the “To” field, the recipient will receive an email that includes a full page of the email addresses of everyone else you are sending it to.
To avoid this, you can use several features of your email program. Your program probably has something called a ‘group’ or a ‘distribution list’ which allows you to put all the email addresses you’re using under one heading. This way, only the name of the group is in the “To” field. An alternative is to send the press release with yourself in the “To” field, and everyone else in the “BCC” (Blind Carbon Copy) field.
If you have sent out an email consisting of two pages of email addresses in the “To” field before your message, don’t fret too much (the first time, anyway).
Everyone does it once. I opened an email recently from a major airline with about 200 email addresses visible. Funny, I never did read the email buried three or four screens in.
Never, never attach your press release as a document of any kind. This is one of the fastest ways to get your email deleted straight from the inbox. Attachments take more time to open and are notorious carriers of computer viruses. Cut and paste. Don’t attach.
Test. Never skip the test. Write the press release, paste it into your e-mail, then send it to yourself. Only yourself. When you open it in your own email program you may be surprised at what you missed – maybe you wrote a signature and embedded your signature as well, maybe you forgot the signature all together, or you forgot to take out the line breaks and the email looks all jagged and is hard to read. It’s a very simple, very brief safety precaution, and it’s saved me a few times from making embarrassing errors.
Now you’re ready to hit that SEND button and start measuring the success of your campaign, but that a completely different story.
This is a guest post by Sergio da Silva, a professional SEO in London.
Social Networking Lured in by New Movie
Sep 6th
There’s been much (and much and much) ado about upcoming Facebook movie The Social Network, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, but relatively little buzz has descended upon another social media movie soon to debut: Catfish.
Catfish is a documentary tale about a photographer, Nev Schulman, who is contacted by an eight year old girl, asking permission to paint one of his photographs. Her ensuing painting draws Nev into a Facebook relationship with her and her family – and, ultimately, a romance with the girl’s older sister. According to the synopsis by Universal Pictures, unsettling information about Nev’s love interest prompts him, his brother Ariel, and Henry Joost – the latter two both filmmakers – to take a road trip to uncover the truth.
So while filmed in documentary format, at its heart Catfish is a mystery deeply rooted in social media, that asks us questions about the fronts and, sometimes facades, we put up when social networking. How far-reaching are the ramifications when we disclose, or fail to disclose, details about ourselves and our lives? And, as Nev Schulman ponders during an interview with CNET, “Can you call your friend and go have dinner and talk about stuff without having to put it out in front of millions of people?”
Catfish received a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Critics have praised it for its unnerving roller-coaster ride of a conclusion and warned audiences the final forty minutes of the film will haunt them. It’s slated for release on September 17th in select cities, but bravely, its cross-country full release will come on the same day as The Social Network, October 1st. [via InventorSpot]
The full Catfish HD trailer can be found on YouTube.
Related on BlogHerald: Mark Zuckerberg Opens Up About IPO, Social Network Movie And Lawsuits [Interview]
Stalk Facebook Friends With A New Beta “Subscribe To” Feature
Sep 6th
My biggest problem with Facebook is the fact that I have to read through a whole lot of “Like” links, stupid updates that tell me nothing and other information from my friends feeds, just to pay closer attention to those friends I actually want to be following.
Sure I could delete friends I don’t talk to on a regular basis or just hide certain friends messages from appearing on my feed, but then I might miss something important down the road. Thankfully, Facebook is now looking to make it easier to stalk…ummm, I mean follow certain friends.
The new feature, called “Subscribe to (person)” creates a separate feed for each subscribed user, that information is then sent to a separate notification screen so you know when the messages you actually want to receive have arrived.
TYPES OF INFORMATION YOU MIGHT LEARN ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS
Want to know if a friend used Facebook Places to check-in somewhere? Want to find out what your BFF said today? It’s no problem with Facebook’s new option. Basically you know EVERYTHING your friends do on the social networking website, aside from sending private messages and you know that information without having to search out their profile all the time to check up on their activities.
According to the All Facebook blog:
“This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).”
CONTROL FOR SUBSCRIBED PERSON?
I only have two questions about the button, first, will users be notified when someone subscribes to their life and can you deny someone the right to subscribe? Not that I have a problem with friends watching everything I do, but for co-workers, business acquaintances and other people I barely talk to, I’d like to know if they are trying to more easily watching my every move and block them in some cases from doing so.
The “Subscribe to” feature is currently being beta testing on select Facebook profiles, just visit and friends page and if you see the link under your friends main profile picture you have the option to give the new feature a test drive.
Let us know what you think about the “Subscribe to” feature once you’ve had the chance to try it out.
Netflix Pulls the Plug on Social Network
Sep 6th
It’s been long time coming, since Netflix hammered the first nail in the coffin of the social networking features of their site this past spring. But Friday the end became reality as the doors closed definitively on Netflix community features.
The move comes just days after Apple launched its new product-based social networking service Ping in iTunes. Now Netflix admits the community aspects of their site were hardly used and their engineering resources would be better spent devoted to developing aspects of the site that are highly popular – such as video streaming. Whether Netflix’s poor experience blending products, services, and social interaction will bode unwell for Ping remains to be seen.
Netflix’s community features allowed users to recommend films and TV shows to one another, follow their friends’ activities and reviews, and even view each other’s rental and streaming queues. The latter was an unpopular feature for many who didn’t want their more questionable tastes to be exposed to other users. (Ping also offers this feature; the ability to display your purchases and favorites to others is optional.)
Steve Swasey, vice president of corporate communications for Netflix, explained to Investor’s Business Daily simply that social networking on Netflix “was a feature that never really took off”.
There does appear to be backlash within the Netflix user base. Interestingly, the error message one receives when attempting to access community features explains that most community features have been disabled. (Access to and editing your own profile and reviews remain.) Could be it they will reinstate the features that users complain about losing the most?
Apple Pings Your Music Tastes
Sep 4th
Apple’s new Ping network has debuted with the most recent release of iTunes.
Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.
Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world.
The Facebook and Twitter of Music
ReadWriteWeb explains that Ping operates similarly to Facebook in that it allows users to rate and comment on music (a la Facebook’s “like” feature), and also contains features familiar to Twitter users, such as following other users and music artists to track their activities.
Steve Jobs recently admitted the inspiration behind Ping, stating the social service is “Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes. But it’s not Facebook, it’s not Twitter. It’s a social network all about music”.
The entire purpose of Ping is not entirely clear. Whether it’s a ploy to drive people to purchase more music from iTunes – as they see the music discussed by the people they’re following, or recommended by Ping itself – or a genuine attempt at bringing people together will be carefully watched over time.
A Work in Progress
Ping’s hardly perfected, and one of the biggest flaws mentioned in numerous reviews is the lack of the “genius” mode of music recommendations. Ping will instead recommend music that is most popular on the site – so if you’re a fan of indie music, be prepared to be recommended Lady Gaga and other wildly popular artists, simply because they’re buzzing on Ping and iTunes.
Users might also find it difficult to locate their friends as there appears to be a delay between when someone signs up for Ping and when he/she appears in the Ping search results. Users can invite their friends to Ping, but this is a fairly clunky way of making connections.
The Fate of MySpace Music?
Does Ping spell the end of MySpace Music? MySpace users tend to flock to artist pages to get the latest news and listen to music posted on their profiles. When they want to purchase new music, they’re linked to iTunes. With Ping, this is all possible from within the iTunes Ping interface, eliminating the need for third party involvement for iTunes purchases. (Alternatively, MySpace still offers the ability to buy via Amazon MP3.) What this means for one of MySpace’s most popular features, and arguably a major reason anyone remains at what has long been considered a withering social network, we can only speculate.
Is Convenience or Contrivance King?
The convenience of accessing a social network from within a piece of software people commonly use is apparent. The contrivance of a social network based largely around selling music may turn more cynical users off the service altogether. Ping is still a work in progress, and its overall success very much remains to be seen.
Tumblr Perfects Reblogging
Sep 4th
Despite popularizing the art of reblogging (or at least convincing WordPress, Typepad and LiveJournal of its worth), crediting the original author has (more or less) been an ugly affair on Tumblr.
Instead of ignoring the problem (something a few other platforms do) Tumblr has decided to skip the “requotes” and credit the original author instead.
Starting today, reblogging will no longer insert attribution into the content/caption of the post except to quote content added by the parent post.
This means we’re no longer cluttering up post content with reblog attribution. But where did it go? The Dashboard already attributes reblogs’ parent blogs, and now it automatically attributes the source blog clearly and consistently[.] (Tumblr Staff Blog)
Another benefit of Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging is that sites outside of Tumblr (or at least those credited within a post) receive proper attribution and attention minus the reblog distractions.
Tumblr’s approach is similar in many ways to Twitter’s native retweet, who made a similar move in November of 2009.
Unlike the twitterverse however, Tumblr’s new approach is receiving praise from the community (minus a few disgruntaled souls of course), and it will be interesting to see if other platforms copy Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging in the not so distant future.
(Image Credit: Tumblr Staff)
Time Warner Cable’s unique ESPN Web deal
Sep 4th
Many media business journalists let out a collective sigh of relief at the news that Time Warner Cable had finally inked its deal 
with Walt Disney to keep carrying its programming, including ABC, Disney channels and various ESPN networks. The programming fee negotiations had gone late into the night past their Wednesday midnight deadline and hacks, who had seen this movie before, were just starting to tire of waiting for another midnight watch.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the deal is that Time Warner Cable’s ESPN customers will now have access to ESPN3.com, a website ESPN uses to show more than 3,500 live events, including matches from the World Cup this summer.
This is unlike other ESPN3 deals which have typically been tied to the cable operator’s Internet service provider. In those cases, ESPN3 would only be accessible to ISP customers of the cable operator.
Time Warner Cable’s deal comes under the auspices of TV Everywhere, the project that Time Warner Inc and Comcast Corp have been trying to convince the cable industry to support.
ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU will also be available online to authenticated Time Warner Cable customers as part of this deal.
“We wanted to make sure this was a product available to our video customers who get ESPN, and that they wouldn’t have to pay extra for it,” said Time Warner Cable spokesman Justin Venech.
(Photo: Reuters)
Six Apart Kills Off Vox (Plus: Rumors Of A Merger?)
Sep 3rd
Today is a sad day for Vox fans. After having launched the social networking blog platform in 2006, it looks as if the Six Apart execs are shutting down Vox at the end of the month.
Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010.
This doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you’ve shared on Vox, and continue to have a home for your blog. To help you make the transition off of Vox, we’ve added new export features that make it easy to move your blog to a free TypePad account, and your photos & videos to Flickr. (Official Vox Blog)
The few passionate users of the service are not thrilled with the news (as one can tell by the comment section) and many are already reporting errors when it comes to migrating to Typepad and Flickr.
Users of Vox probably need a premium service of Typepad or Flickr in order to transport all of their media content or consider migrating to free platforms like WordPress or Posterous (which Six Apart to their credit also mentions).
While news of the site’s shut down comes as no surprise (as not many people were apparently on Vox), Michael Arrington is reporting of rumors about a merger between Six Apart and VideoEgg.
Rumors of a Six Apart acquisition began swirling yesterday. Our sources suggest that Six Apart and VideoEgg will merge and that Six Apart will come away with 25% of the new company. [...]
Says a source, “Six Apart is hosed, so they are screwing [VideoEgg] by making them buy Six Apart – and [thereby] diluting [VideoEgg] shareholders.” (Business Insider)
If true, this would be bad news for Six Apart’s investors, especially since the company recently purchased NaturalPath Media in June.
While Six Apart has yet to show any signs of joining Vox on the endangered species list (as the company “looks” profitable), hopefully the team can put some new life into both Typepad and Movabletype (the latter which could potentially challenge WordPress).