SEO Werkt!

Among the more than 200 new features that Apple plans to incorporate into next month’s release of iOS 6 will be an update to the software’s alarm clock application that will have you stumbling out of bed in the morning to your favorite tune.

Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ has become one of the most-covered and parodied songs on YouTube, and over the weekend the Belgian-born Australian musician, Wouter “Wally” De Backer, uploaded an epic mashup of the fan-made homages to the song.
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So the London 2012 Olympic Games have come to an end.

A spectacular closing ceremony last night – with music, song, dance, awe-inspiring stadium lighting and fireworks that made up the greatest show on earth – brought the past two weeks of competition to an emotional climax.

The sight of the Olympic spirit rising as a phoenix from the dying flame is an excellent metaphor to apply to the 2012 Olympics legacy in the coming weeks and months, not only in terms of the big picture politicians and others are painting about investing in school sports throughout the UK (“empowering a new generation”) and helping British businesses “reap the rewards”,  but also for Team GB and the launch platform their success has built in these games.

All the doubt, worry and criticisms before London 2012 about our ability to host these games quietly vanished within days of the start, replaced instead with powerful and growing feelings and displays of national pride as we witnessed thousands of athletes from around the world doing amazing things in open competition, right here in our capital city and other places of competition around the UK.

Indeed, worldwide worry disappeared.

And we were suddenly proud to be British, uplifted especially by the achievements of our Team GB, collectively and individually – and that includes the 70,000 volunteers – with their selfless hard work, team spirit and determination to succeed, maybe even win a medal or two.

If government can enable the framework – that’s their prime job – then Team GB can be an influential player to kick-start the legacy.

As they say so compellingly, don’t stop me now.

Piracy has been a persistent problem for content owners over the years, but Singapore-based Tell My Friends thinks it may have come up with a novel solution. Where UK-based We7 sought to tackle the problem by offering consumers free songs tagged with 10-second advertisements, Tell My Friends gives users a way to share music, ebooks, videos and apps legally while getting paid for their efforts.

Now in beta, Tell My Friends aims to celebrate music’s inherent “paying it forward” nature, in the site’s own words. Rather than sharing an illegally downloaded copy of a song or other content, however, the company encourages users to share a link to licensed music instead; not only that, but it pays users each time someone else buys from the link they share. How it works? Users begin by signing up for a free Tell My Friends account. Then, each time they make a new music purchase, they can choose to share it on their social networks. When they do, a unique identifier code links their original share to people who subsequently buy the track. Thereafter, anytime anyone clicks on the shared link they get an order page along with a sample and information about the song. Those who directly click and buy from the original link earn the original user a set amount per purchase for up to 10 purchasers; those who buy from links shared by others earn the originator a slightly smaller commission per purchase. The video below explains the premise in more detail:

Tell My Friends works closely with societies like Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS), Music Publishers Singapore (MPS), labels, publishers and independent artists to negotiate and determine royalty rates in advance. It also helps promote local musicians by organizing events such as concerts and performances. Typically, at least 50 percent of the revenue from the sale of each product goes back to the people who created it; about 30 percent goes back to Tell My Friends users in the form of commissions, the company says, while the remainder goes toward administration. Music-minded entrepreneurs around the globe: one to emulate for the audiophiles and artists in your neck of the woods?

Website: www.tell-my-friends.com
Contact: www.tell-my-friends.com/contactus

Spotted by: Katharina Kieck

This guest post is by Lianne Froggatt of Yes Gifts, UK.

Managing an unsuccessful social media profile is a time-consuming task that requires your undivided attention and dedication. Encouraging so much animosity around your profiles takes time, patience and, most of all, an incessant desire to anger every person who ever had the misfortune to hit that Follow button.

So, do you want to make your customers and friends hate your every status update? Look no further!

Lose followers and alienate people on Twitter

• Tweet in batches of six or seven when 140 characters just isn’t enough.
• Tweet quotes from philosophers—you can rebrand yourself as a genius! Sophie’s World will do if you don’t know of any actual philosophers.
• Tell people about your miserable breakup. It shows the world you have a heart.
• Retweet profound quotes from celebrities. This will make you seem both cool and smart—a double-win.
• Make sure to reply to anyone who tweets about you or your work with a friendly “Thanks for sharing!”
• Tweet in different languages. This will show how linguistically diverse you are.
• Retweet ten things in a row. It will show your followers you really care about what they have to say.
• Make offensive jokes. You want to appear edgy—this will give you an extra dimension.
• Use an animated avatar. This totally makes you stand out from the crowd. So 2012!
• Follow people with “#teamfollowback” in their bio. Another valuable follower guaranteed!
• Say goodnight to your followers. And good morning. And Happy Tuesday.
• Name and shame people that unfollow you. Your other followers won’t dare to cross you.
• Reply to tweets by major celebs. Onlookers will think you are actually friends with them! Sneaky.
• Tweet your favourite song lyrics. You may attract other fans!

Lose followers and alienate people on Facebook

• Hook up your Twitter feed to your Facebook account, and every time you tweet, this will be posted as a Facebook status update. This ensures everyone, everywhere constantly know what’s going on in your life.
• Like every status you post. People will be more inclined to pay attention to your witty nature.
• Encourage as many likes as possible without considering their relevance to anyone; it’s quantity not quality that matters!
• Post ambiguous status updates. This will make you seem aloof and intriguing—after all, who can refrain from commenting on a sad face? Attention guaranteed!
• Never keep your statuses brief and to the point. If people don’t know the whole story how can you possible achieve those all-important likes? (Unless you are posting an elusive ambiguous status—in that case, short is fine.)
• Post all the time! Remember, if it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t happen, so everything from you breakfast to your bowel movements must be documented … and quickly.
• POST IN CAPITAL LETTERS. THIS IS EYE-CATCHING AND IN NO WAY LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING.
• Tag every horrendous photo you find. Whether this be your friends, or your clients at conferences, everyone loves to have their comedy “ugly” shots broadcast to the world.
• Show that you care. If a friend changes their relationship status to single, post reassuring comments like, “It’s okay babe, he wasn’t good enough for you anyway.”
• Don’t use your real name—this way, only people who are in the know can find you on Facebook. To be totally hip and groovy, use a comedic pseudonym.
• Use plenty of apps that post updates direct to your timeline. They will allow you to show off your achievements to the world in all their glory: how far you ran, how much weight you lost, how many Number 1 singles from the 80s you can name, how many cows you own on FarmVille…
• Sign up for automated sharing on music websites like Spotify: this way, every song you ever listen to will be shared with the world. Uber-cool.

Lose followers and alienate people on Pinterest

• Only post pictures of your own products. These are your boards, they should all be about you.
• Make sure your followers’ boards are filled with your pins by having a half an hour pinning blitz. Every day.
• Don’t participate in the Pinterest community. People will surely find you due to your fabulous pinning abilities.
• Only ever repin images from others’ boards. You will be seen as engaged and interesting and it alleviates the bother of having to find unique content yourself. Phew.
• If you do pin your own content, just get stuff from Google images. It’s easy to find and it doesn’t matter where it came from.
• Target all your pins at men. It’s a male-dominated platform, right?
• Pin lots of infographics. Most “normal” people haven’t heard of them yet, so you will definitely be considered cutting-edge by pinning every infographic you have ever seen.
• Make sure the infographics you pin are very long, enabling you to take up at least half of your followers’ pages as they scroll down in an attempt to get past it. Ultimate exposure!
• Your Pinterest boards must look full at all times, and that’s about the quantity of images you have up there. Don’t get overly concerned with quality.
• Never credit anyone for anything that you pin. That’s definitely not an issue on Pinterest.
• Get involved with every argument you see on pins. This is the time to let your opinion shine, and even if you are the 100th commenter, you can be sure that people are desperate to hear your insightful opinion.

So there you have it, the ultimate way to make your social media marketing a horrifying failure.

I am always looking for new ways to lose friends and/or followers, so if you have any other suggestions, please post them in the comments below.

N.B. Just to reiterate, in no way do I actually advocate this advice. In fact stop. Reverse it. There you go!

Lianne Froggatt is Digital Communications Manager at Yes Gifts, UK promotional products specialist. She would love any feedback, advice or comments, you might have so find her on Twitter @LianneCai, hopefully not following her own advice!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Lose Followers and Alienate People

Realtime launched in the US today and announced a $100 million investment to help the world transition from static to live web.

Realtime is Brazilian company that has developed technology that enables the internet to update instantaneously and continuously, eliminating the need to refresh. The connection happens in real time and is bidirectional. The connection is permanent and can quickly send information whenever, whenever (like the Shakira song).

By building and distributing this infrastructure, Realtime stands to usher in the next era of the internet, creating a web that is completely fluid and dynamic.

“Our vision of the new web and the modern internet is that it will be built on top of real time messaging,” said CEO Andre Parreira. “We could be the real time web standard, and there is unlimited scaleability. There is a worldwide opportunity to create this product and this industry”

Realtime is built on top of the server and can be easily integrated into applications of all sizes. It accommodates a wide range of web and mobile languages, and can be implemented simply by adding a small amount of code to a web page.

The company also provides unique tool sets so each sector can leverage the technology to best serve its goals. For example, e-commerce can benefit from real time technology in different ways than advertisers.

“There will be a huge push for our technology because businesses will want to know where the eyeballs of the users are on the website,” Parreira said. “Clicks are not enough. Real time messaging will create platforms to help companies round the world deliver their products to the customers and get more value.”

Since its beta release, Realtime has reached 120 million users worldwide, which translates into delivering 750,000 messages per second. With this investment, Realtime intends to create a need on the market for the product. While the technology is powerful, it is not yet the norm, and thus marketing and scaling will be key for sustainable growth.

Within Brazil as emerging and booming technology scene, Parreira said there was great excitement and pride about investing in a Brazilian company. BRZTech Holding, a São Paulo-based technology investment led the investment.

Realtime started in Portugal in 1997 under the name Internet Business Technologies. It has offices in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, London, Madrid, Lisbon, and most recently, offices in Santa Monica and New York.

Filed under: cloud, deals, VentureBeat

Executives at Smule, the startup that turns mobile devices into musical instruments with apps like Ocarina and Magic Piano, say the company’s apps are about to get social in a big way.

Sharing has always been a key part of Smule’s products, but Prerna Gupta (who joined the company through the acquisition of another music app-maker called Khush, where she was CEO) says Smule hasn’t gone far enough — the cool musical stuff gets built first, then the social layer is “tacked on at the end.” That’s going to change with the company’s new products, she says, starting with Sing, an iPhone app that’s launching today. (Android and iPad versions are coming later.)

The Smule team demonstrated the Sing app for me earlier this week. At a basic level, it’s a karaoke app. Users can choose from a selection of songs, sing into their iPhone mic with the help of some on-screen guidance, then they get scored on their performance. That part is nicely designed and looks fun, but as promised, things get more interesting and innovative is on the social side. Sing users can invite other users to participate, or they can search for songs to join. Once you decided to join, you sing your own version of the song (you can hear everyone else’s performance as you sing, so if you’re particularly ambitious you can tailor your performance to complement theirs), then it’s combined into the existing vocals to create a single group track.

Smule co-founder and CTO Ge Wang says the collaborative features should help with Smule’s broader goal of making music performance more fun and accessible. When someone opens a Smule app, he says they shouldn’t ask themselves, “Am I a musician?” because the answer is usually no. Instead, the goal is to draw people in, then by the time they realize they’re making music, “it’s too late — they’re already having fun.” With Sing, it’s it should be less intimidating to join in an already-created song than it would be to start singing on your own.

I did wonder about what happens if someone joins a song and, either intentionally or unintentionally, ruins it. Wang says the current version of the app doesn’t allow users to remove specific vocal tracks from their songs, but that could be added in the future. He also says that if you’re particularly concerned about protecting your song, you could use “duet” mode, where you’re only inviting one other person to join you.

You can also discover other performances by exploring a globe showing recently uploaded tracks (in fact, the globe is the first thing you see when you open the app), and by following other users, whose updates appear in your newsfeed.

Gupta says we can expect to see a similar emphasis on social in Smule’s future products, which will include both new apps and updates to existing ones, though the exact form the social interaction takes will be “a little different for each thing.”

Wang also looks at social as a way to connect the user experience across all of Smule’s apps. In the future, for example, the company could create a single user profile showing all of your performances in any Smule product. Or users might be able to collaborate across apps, with one person supplying the piano part via Magic Piano while someone else provides the vocals via Sing.

Smule says its apps have now been installed 61 million times, and that they have 15 million monthly active users.

You can download the Sing app here.

Helping people everywhere answer the nagging question, “What’s that song?,” Shazam today celebrates its 5 billionth tag, meaning that the company’s audio fingerprinting technology has been used more than 5 billion times to help mobile users identify songs and television content.

“It took Shazam 10 years to see its first billion tags, then 10 months to achieve the second billion. And in just a year, we have gone from two billion tags to five billion,” Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher said in a statement.

Pink’s song “Blow Me One Last Kiss” marked the 5 billionth tag, the company said.

Shazam started as a small-time text message service for song identification in the U.K. in 2002. It has since become the definitive music-tagging application, with 225 million mobile users who use the app 10 million times per day. The company’s rise to recognizability — Shazam is often used as a verb — can be attributed, in part, to releasing early on mobile with an application for iPhone in July 2008.

More recently, the London-based company has migrated to bigger screens, enabling its technology to recognize television content and advertisements to provide viewers with enhanced second screen experiences.

The first Shazam-enabled TV commercial aired during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, and since then the company has worked with brands and media companies, including American Idol and the London Olympics, to make television content taggable.

Photo credit: caribb/Flickr

Filed under: media

At the dawn of the third millennium, there aroseth a new generation of consumers, called Millennials, and the great and mighty brands looked upon this generation and did lust after their spending power greatly. But the ways of the Millennials were strange to the brands, who despaired of winning their favor. Then there aroseth in the land many false prophets, who said unto the brands, “Giveth unto us a large retainer, plus travel expenses, that we may deliver these Millennials unto you, for their strange ways are known only to us.” In this way many were deceived, and despair filled the land, except among those whose retainers purchased ski vacations in Banff.

As a Gen-Xer, I’m a little jealous that marketing gurus never burned so many mental calories trying to figure me out. But the ones who did invariably pointed out that Gen-Xers had grown up in a media-saturated culture, had become immune to the siren song of traditional advertising, and demanded that brands treat them with authenticity. Does that sound like some other generation you know? Ironically, we’ve made the Millennials seem so distinctive because digital media has enlarged our echo chamber, so we can devote a lot more space to analyzing a generation of consumers whose chief characteristic is, well, their immersion in digital media.

But Millennials’ status as “digital natives” — a generation that never knew the dark and disconnected pre-internet era — does give them a legitimate whiff of the exotic. They process information differently, socialize differently, and they alone will be able to play movies in their minds with the next retooling of Netflix. Also, the fact that they have grown up largely unexposed to commercial jingles frees up large portions of their brains for higher-order reasoning, like figuring out where to purchase the most sustainably made hemp messenger bag. I, on the other hand, dither my way through middle age being able to recite, in order, the ingredients of a Big Mac while never again being able to eat one, lest my arteries stop sending blood to my brain.

So how do we separate fact from hype when marketing to Millennials? As a digital marketer whose company, People to People Ambassador Programs, markets to and creates educational travel experiences for the younger end of the Millennial spectrum, this question is of surpassing interest to me. So I thought I’d undertake yet another of my “de-hypification” rituals and pass on what I’ve learned about the many pervasive myths surrounding these digital wunderkind.

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I have a feeling I’m gonna lose a lot of friends with this post.

While trying to enjoy some Boy Meets World this morning, a jingle (pre-coffee, granted) hit my ears that rattled me to the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul.

It’s the first commercial jingle featured on this list, and simply put, it annoys the bajeezus out of me. But it’s certainly not the only one. And I know it’s not just me that can’t get these frustratingly catchy songs out of my head, because when I asked around the office for the commercial jingles that drive people nuts, the tunes rattled off their tongues like lightning.

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