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Senzari, the Pandora competitor backed by $1 million in funding from 500 Startups and others, has just debuted a brand-new recommendation engine called AMP³, which steps up the competition quite a bit between it and other streaming radio providers. The new engine (which we’ll just call “AMP” for short) isn’t like the basic “artist radio” option found in Pandora, or the radio features in other streaming music apps, either. Those, at best, may just include a “more/less like this” slider option for customization purposes. Instead, with AMP, listeners can customize their music by a number of factors, including popularity, tempo, similarity, and discovery.

And, says Senzari, this is just the beginning.

“We looked at solutions for recommendation of music and found that pretty much all were similar to what has been done over the last half a decade or more in music,” says Senzari COO Demian Bellumio. “It started with Pandora with the Music Genome, and the solutions out there are just looking at the music itself…we felt that it was an opportunity to innovate in that space,” he says. Bellumio notes that several technology developments have made this type of deeper customization possible, like the advance of tools that help with the crunching of big data, for example, as well as Facebook’s Open Graph, which offers another source to analyze the meaning and the relationships between data points.

“What we decided to do is build a platform that could connect all those dots and go beyond just creating new set of experiences based on the music, but really understand  how the music qualities, plus the social layer, plus anything else that could give meaning to the music, like context, could all come together,” he says.

The initial version of the recommendation engine, nine months in development, is the first step to achieving that goal of building a truly personalized radio. Today, you can use AMP to say, for instance, that you want to hear songs like Pearl Jam’s slower music, but only less popular songs, and those you probably have not heard. Popularity and discovery are different settings, to be clear – just because music is “popular,” that doesn’t mean you’ve actually heard it. And Senzari knows what you’ve heard, to some extent, by mining your “likes” and those of your friends on Facebook. It also knows things like the age of your friends, location, what apps people use and who you chat with the most in the Senzari Facebook chat sidebar. All these signals combined help to influence its ability to know what you may or may not have yet heard.

Senzari thinks of itself as not a music company, but a technology company which is focused for now on music. But that being said, it has ideas as to how it can take on the  music radio incumbent Pandora. Its “recommendable” catalog encompass some 18-19 million songs (up from 11 million in May) and far more than Pandora’s 900,000. And it’s also targeting worldwide markets, while Pandora remains U.S.-only. Senzari is now available not only in the U.S., but also Spain, Brazil, and just recently, the U.K. It’s rolling out to Italy and parts of Latin America next, and expects to arrive on mobile by October.

In the meantime, users in supported regions can try the new AMP recommendation engine here on the web.

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing facilities around at the moment- rivalled by Pinterest and Flickr. It’s popularity has been consistent since its launch (with the retro – vintage filters, making us feel like we’re living in the 40’s) – but the numbers have recently shot up hugely making it the best time to join [...]

It looks like someone made the colossally silly decision to buy Mitt Romney Twitter followers. Earlier this month, Romney saw an implausible spike of 150,000 Twitter followers, and many of these likely fake accounts had less than 2 followers, according to some crack reporting by The Atlantic. It is unknown whether the purchase was made by someone at Camp Romney, a clueless PR flack, or a conspirator trying to make him look bad. Regardless, fibbing politicians are a serious affront to democracy, and someone owes the American people an explanation.

Up until Romney’s Twitter spike, his account had been growing at a slow-but-steady 3,500 followers a day, prompting widespread speculation of fraud after the surge occurred in a few weeks ago.

To test whether or not the media had unearthed something legitimate, or were just aching for a cheap corruption story, The Atlantic performed a simple statistical analysis on Romney’s new followers to test if they somehow differed from both Barack Obama’s followers.

Humans typically have more followers than automated accounts, since they Tweet more interesting information and they share similar interests with other netizens. More sophisticated automated accounts will boost their follower account by following one another, but they do so in a (statistically) recognizable way, and can be ferreted out by comparing the way humans cluster together. The study concluded:

“The median number of followers for Romney’s new followers was 5, whereas the median for the comparison group was 27. This represents a stark, and statistically significant difference… the p-value on this was 0.0000.”

The “p-value”, if readers recall from their college Statistics class, is how likely an event could have happened by chance. A coin flipping heads has a p-value of 0.5, for instance. A p-value of <0.0000 means that Romney is about as likely to get hit by a meteor as his is to get 150,000 followers in a few days.

Earlier in the campaign, Romney’s fellow Republican colleague, Newt Gingrich, got in hot water for buying Twitter popularity. “Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them. As you might guess, Newt is most decidedly one of the people to which these agencies cater,” a staffer admitted to Gawker.

Now, we’ve argued that social media is an over-hyped asset for political campaigns. If no one under the age of 30 had voted for Obama in 2008, he still would have won every state but two. The fact that Obama has 17 million more followers than Romney is probably inconsequential. But, truthfulness from someone who could be the most powerful man in the world is important. Zach Moffatt, Romney’s otherwise impressive digital director, has denied that the campaign is involved in inflating its Twitter account.

But, someone is buying followers. It’d be a win for the Romney campaign and for the integrity of the office of the President if they were honest about who is responsible.

It’s of note to mention that BlogFrog has developed a platform that would not be possible without women bloggers.

The newly available platform has a network of 100,000 “social influencers.” Women represent 95% of that community. These are women who write about parenting, food, health, fashion and home and garden.

It’s with this network of women bloggers that BlogFrog has built what it calls an end-to-end influencer marketing platform that brands use to develop social marketing campaigns that connect blogs, brand sites and their properties on social networks.

On BlogFrog, bloggers are tracked and measured according to their social media influence. BlogFrog’s technology platform tracks the posts that bloggers craft.

Comments are managed through a BlogFrog widget that allows moderation and distribution of reader comments. Blog posts and reader comments can  then be distributed to the customer’s own web page which is usually a branded asset of some kind that is marketing consumer products.

Customers of BlogFrog’s software as a service (SaaS) get reporting on the campaigns through a realtime dashboard that tracks impressions, unique visitors, reach, links, social actions (votes and likes), replies, clicks, and shares.

Shifts in society have forced marketers to interact differently than they did in an age when there was no online medium for women to express themselves.  As noted in a recent BlogHer study, women bloggers say writing a blog gives them a fuller sense of self. That’s true of many bloggers I know.  If you believe what you write then it is only natural for it to have an impact on the way you view yourself. What these women bloggers write is not lost on people who read these blogs.  They relate to the way bloggers express themselves. According to BlogHer, 98% of women surveyed said they trust the information that they get from blogs.

• A shift from advertising to social marketing: Advertising dollars are shifting to campaigns that leverage blogs and social media networks such as Facebook and Pinterest.  This means more money for people who write blogs on topics of importance to brands.
• Content marketing: Content that is developed by people with sway - influencers as they are often called.
• More sophisticated social marketing tools that are being used by public relations companies and marketers. How much bloggers get paid is determined by the return on investment they provide.

Influencer marketing is a hot trend. Services like Klout, Traacker and SocMetrics are examples of companies that have emerged in the space.

I am a bit skeptical of influencer marketing.  It is a form of pay-to-play, which has been on the rise. It leads to questions about the  independence of the blogger. Are they writing for their community or the brand?

Bloggers can get paid very well. BlogFrog says it has paid out about $500,000 to bloggers this year. That’s a lot of money. And the purse will only increase over time as advertising budgets go increasingly to social campaigns.

BlogFrog will be extending its reach into other markets such as tech and gaming. It just formed a major partnership with Meredith Publishing which selected BlogFrog as its influencer marketing platform of choice.

The stakes are only going to get higher. But we need to be careful not to lose sight of why bloggers have become so important. It’s their independence that matters. If we forget that, bloggers will be viewed nothing more than shills for big corporations.

With Facebook’s first quarterly earnings report looming this Thursday, there are so many questions being thrown around that it can make one’s head spin.

Will they be profitable? Are they committed to advertisers or users first? Will Mark Zuckerberg do anything at all?

Well, ahead of the big event we find an infographic from the folks at SodaHead, which looks at just how popular, or even unpopular, Facebook is these days. They even threw in a little opinion about Apple products as well. Take a look and weigh in on how you see this.

Are you one to say that Facebook’s position is precarious for the long run or is there no way that the Facebook juggernaut gets stopped?

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Uh Oh, Facebook Is Losing Its Popularity – Technology – Rebecca Greenfield via The Atlantic Wire:

This is inevitable, because Facebook is the new AOL:

Rebecca Greenfield via The Atlantic Wire

Over the last month, Facebook has not only seen a 1.1 percent drop in U.S. users, but a decline in 14 of the 23 countries where it has 50 percent penetration, found an analyst using tracking software. Beyond numbers though, another metric, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, found over the last year the users that have stayed are less satisfied. Facebook scored a 61, which not only represents over a 7 percent decrease from one year ago, but puts it well below Google+.

The end will be sooner that most imagine: in three years, Facebook will be a has been.

Announced at I/O last month, Google’s Google+ iPad app has just gone live in the Apple App Store.

Keep in mind that the iOS version is out before the Android version and with it comes a dynamic stream of Google+ content based on popularity. So, if your friend’s recent video is more popular than a picture of your dog, the video will trump the size of your photo. Sharing and commenting is a pinch with simple finger gestures to pinch and expand posts in your stream.

You can even Hangout with up to nine friends and even stream the conversation over AirPlay to your Apple TV.

Also in tow comes Events on Google+ for iPhone, which can be created and edited right from your phone.

While the enterprise market remains a predominantly Windows-based environment, Macs are creeping into the workplace as the popularity of tablets driven by Apple’s iPad slowly erodes the walls of Microsoft’s once-impenetrable fortress.

I think a lot of us struggle with what to write about and WHO we are writing for.  I’m also glad that Gini touched on a similar topic today because it reminded me to write about it here.  Here’s what Gini said:

“When this blog gained a little bit of popularity, we began to have internal conversations about the type of content we should be writing. You see, what I consider the “smart” posts are never the ones that get shared a lot. Sure, people read them, but not as many comment nor share on their social networks.

The ones that do get a lot of comments and shares? The top 10 this or the such and such is dead.

It kind of makes me nuts. I won’t pretend it doesn’t.”

I am in the same boat.  A few years ago on The Viral Garden, I began to notice something.  Every post I wrote would get 5-15 comments like clockwork, UNLESS I wrote about music marketing, those posts always got 1-2 comments at best.  Most of them got none.  This drove me insane, because I really thought there was so much that marketers could learn from how music artists connect with their fans, but my readers never wanted to talk about that, it seemed.

So the next time I wrote about music marketing, I ended the post by pointing out how passionate I am about this topic, but that I noted that the readers never responded to it. I asked if this was really a topic they cared nothing about?  Several readers commented that they loved my music marketing posts, but had no idea what to add.  Some felt the topic was ‘over their heads’, which is why there really wasn’t much discussion happening around the posts.

And back to Gini’s comment, those Top 10 Reasons Why….posts ALWAYS get shared and linked.  I had a guy tell me once that writing list posts was ‘beneath’ me, and that he would never do it.  Well, if your readers want that content, and you are writing for your readers, then what choice do you have?  Sure, you can play the role of blogging hipster and look down your nose at list posts, but if your readers get value from that type of posts, why not write them?

But that also doesn’t mean that you should ONLY write for your readers, you as a blogger still have to have a passion for your blog, else you’ll lose interest.  Personally, I think there needs to be a balance when you are writing your blog.  If you decide that you are just writing for yourself, to hell with your readers, then you’d better have a voice that other people LOVE and seek out.  Few bloggers are this popular with their readers, IMO.  On the other side, if you only write for your readers, I think you’ll eventually lose interest because you won’t be addressing all of the core issues that are important to you.

I think there needs to be a balance, and like it or not, there probably needs to be room for an occasional ‘Top 5 Ways To’ post.  What do you think?

Today, Facebook app discovery too heavily favors the loudest apps with the most users, so Facebook today announces it will soon launch the App Center, a single, personalized hub for discovering the highest quality Facebook-integrated games and utilities from across the web and mobile. And for the first time, Facebook is beta testing the option for developers to sell pre-paid web and HTML5 apps. You’ll be able to access App Center via the web or mobile, and you can send apps you discover on a the web to your littler devices.

App Center could be a huge boon to app growth on Facebook, especially for those that are beloved but not inherently viral.   With any luck, App Center will usher in an age where your news feed is filled with apps you actually want use, not just the spammiest ones or those with the biggest marketing budgets.

Unlike the unpersonalized app directory Facebook shut down a year ago, App Center won’t list every available app, just the ones with the highest customer ratings, engagement, session length, and voluntary sharing. App Center dynamically shows you different apps depending on your habits. If you play games, that’s what you’ll see. If you think those are a waste of time and only use utility apps like BranchOut or Open Graph apps like Foodspotting, those will be what appear.

Here’s a few more details on the App Center:

• Facebook is finalizing the App Center’s design. However, it looks like the homepage will show apps recommended based on those you already uses; apps frequently used by friends; lists of top, trending, and highest grossing apps, big “app of the week” style features, and the ability to browse by app category.
• Unlike the Apple App Store and other marketplaces, Facebook’s App Center won’t have objective rankings. Instead, each user will see a different set of apps, so it won’t have the same “king-maker” potential. This should lead developers to focus on general quality rather than install count or other specific metrics.
• The signals the cause certain apps to appear more or less frequently in App Center to any particular user include a customer ratings, session length, return visits, frequency of user shares from the app, similarity to apps you already use, usage by friends, and spam reports as well as overall user counts.
• App Center listings will replace the auto-generate App Pages that litter Facebook now. Developers will need to submit assets to populate their listing, which is what users will land on when they find an app through search or the App Center. Apps that following the listing guidelines and that are submitted before May 18th will receive priority for appearance when the App Center eventually launches.

• Developers will gain a new category of Insights metrics measuring the quality of their apps. They can monitor these to see how changes they make impact the enjoyment and engagement of their users.

• Facebook is not trying to compete with iOS and Android, but rather helps Facebook-connected apps on those platforms grow. Native mobile app listings in App Center will lead to the Apple App Store and Google Play marketplaces.