Web Cupcake Icons
The Regali Kitchen has released a great free rance of web cupcake icons. You might also notice that Myspace is missing!
Archive for: myspace
Where Would We Be Without Facebook?
Facebook has unquestionably become a part of life for the majority of internet savvy people around the globe. Whether you’re a high school student using it to gossip with your friends, in your 30′s looking for old classmates, or an entrepreneur or bussiness owner publicizing your company, Facebook seems to have something for everyone.
I have always been savvy with technology and computers – I started working with my first computer at the young age of 8 and when I was 10, I taught myself how to program in BASIC literally overnight. For some reason, though, I didn’t immediately jump on the Facebook bandwagon the moment it became mainstream. It seemed silly, frivilous and simply trendy. I had been using MySpace and enjoyed the ability to control the look and feel of my page. I managed to find a few old friends on it, but most of them never posted anything. Mostly I just used my page as a personal blog to track my mundane life.
Then one day, I finally took the leap. I joined Facebook.
At first the pages looked dull and boring. A stark contrast to MySpace’s colorful pages, flashing blinkies and auto-loading music and videos. But what I quickly realized is that everyone I had on MySpace was also on Facebook and… guess what… they were actually posting! Next I realized that not only were my old friends there, but so were dozens more. To date I have connected with nearly my entire High School class, a childhood best friend I thought I would never find, old teachers, college friends, remote family and even old boyfriends (most of whom I was already still on speaking terms with). While these may not be people I feel the need to converse with on a regular basis, I feel priviliged that I can know what great (or terrible) things are happening in their lives, offer congratulations or condolenses, provide advice, wish happy birthday’s or just simply “Like” their status because… well… I liked it!
Today, like many people, I am hooked on Facebook. I have not only used it to connect with friends, but I have also used it to promote businesses I have been a part of and to follow other businesses I have interest in. And let’s not forget the oh-so-addicting games. So what if Facebook never existed? Where would be then?
Perhaps MySpace would have remained more popular. Or perhaps social networking as we know it today wouldn’t exist – at least not at the level it is now. Businesses would still rely solely on expensive advertising, email marketing and banner ads. While these methods are still used, Facebook’s advertising has been, in my experience, invaluable.
Some say people would call, write or speak in person more. But let’s be honest here, when was the last time you called someone just to update them on your life or find out about theirs? In High School? 15 years ago or so? People tend to stay in their own circles – in their comfort zone. Facebook allows us to open up and reach outside of our circle. It extends our comfort zone.
One thing is for certain, the world would be a less “friend”lier place. I never would have found my childhood friend or connected with classmates who had been outside my circle in High School. This also means I never would have intended to attend a reunion, which I now look forward to. Facebook has given me the ability to reach outside my daily circle and laugh, cry and vent with old and new friends alike. It has rekindled friendships and connected me with people I thought I would never get to talk to again.
So despite the addicting games and countless hours easily wasted away with Facebook, I am thankful it was created. I am thankful I took the leap. I am thankful for finding friends.
Case in point: Life just wouldn’t be the same without Facebook.
Myspace Music Testing out Social Network Aggregation Tool
It seems as though Myspace is trying to get their music product back on track and at the center of this is a new product called Wildfire. Myspace are testing their new Wildfire product, which aims to help bands control all of their social networks.
MySpace Music vice president of Product Roberto Fisher, who shared preliminary details at a meeting held Saturday by the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) in Los Angeles. ”Are you aware of the people that are most valuable to you in social media marketing, to help amplify what you do?” Fisher posed. ”Wildfire is designed to help you understand the tree of engagement that happens in the time that someone does something. So, we can pinpoint in any tree of distribution the people that gave you the most reach when they heard something and re-amplified it.”
So, it’s “where in the trees you should invest,” instead of burning the whole tree with a blowtorch, according to Fisher, which sounds like a refreshingly targeted idea. But this involves a lot of close observation, on a massive scale. Accordingly, MySpace is essentially ‘wiring every single action’ that happens in the social networking sphere as it relates to artists, and then assigning scores to the most valuable ‘branches of the tree.’ ”You can score it all,” Fisher described. ”I can tell you if user A is more valuable than user B. And when you did X, these are the things that caused Y to happen.”
History of Social Media
Social media is now an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. Skloog has put together an amazing infographic which outlines the history of social media.
Click on the image to get the full view.
Virus Infecting Mac and Linux
Koobface Trojan is back, and now it comes with a few surprises for some friends: Infecting Mac OS X and Linux OS. Intego, the Mac Security Blog, informed that this virus is spreading through social networks and does affect Mac computers as well as Linux.
Koobface appears in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and now they will not infect only Windows computers. One of the common messages we should receive indicating the presence of Koobface: “Is this you in this video?” once we click on the link it will try to run an applet from Java which will install a malware in the OS.
As for Windows, Koobface will run a local web server and an IRC Server, acting as a Botnet and as a DNS changer; and of course will try to reproduce to other computers.
Intego assures that the Intego VirusBarrier X6 and X5 detect and eradicate this malware, but we must avoid running any unknown Java applet in our computer, and if so, we should detect an installation is running and quickly cancel it.
Social Media Demographics
Flowtown have put together another great infographic which shows the basic demographic backgrounds of each social media site. All sites are broken down by gender, income, education and age.
Download Music from MySpace with Grab That File!
“Grab That File!” is an online service available that lets you download music directly from MySpace completely free. This free version provides us with the possibility to download up to 7 songs per day, with the possibility for a Premium upgrade.
As you probably know, MySpace is the favorite site for many bands to start distributing new songs but of course the only way to listen it is using the website with an Internet connection. Grab That File! gives us the possibility for a direct download of the MP3 file.
The use of it is pretty simple: Login using your Facebook account; enter the MySpace URL with that contains the music; and download the file you want.
Of course, there’s a big disclaimer saying that you should only download music that does not infringe any copyright laws.
MySpace Breathes New Life into imeem Playlists
…to what end?
I think that’s the real question. For those of you that have followed the MySpace Acquisition of imeem and the eventual realization that users could not access their playlists, Crenk is wonders if people still care. There was no doubt that users of the imeem music service were dedicated to the platform and infuriated at how MySpace handled the acquisition.
With no warning at all the entire platform was shut down leaving developers and users in the dark. A lot of users left for other music sites, sites that appeared to be more stable. Now acquisitions can happen at any time, but two things were for sure. First users wanted to know where their music was and were unhappy with the response by MySpace, and secondly that many users detested the MySpace music platform and did not want to be affiliated with it.
Still, it’s nice to see that MySpace as still followed through with its promise of bringing back the playlists and there will be no doubt that users will migrate and begin to engage one another again, just on a different platform. Now it’s only fair to note that MySpace was not officially responsible for the imeem platform going down. Users were unawares that money had run out and services were on their way to being shut down with or without MySpace’s involvement.
For full reports and a step by step process to access your music accounts, take a look at the article from TechCrunch.
MySpace Assures imeem Users, Playlists Are Safe
In what was practically the unplug heard around the world, imeem users were rudely awakened when upon loading their favorite playlists, they
imeem playlists moving to MySpace Music
were nowhere to be found. MySpace’s acquisition is not responsible for imeem going away, as the suffering company would have surely gone the way of the dinosaur on its own, but rather, shutting off the API killed a lot of apps, desktop and mobile alike. The impact was felt the world over as no word was even given, no warning, not even an explanation was made at the time of this event.
Recently MySpace has done right with the imeem community by assuring them that their playlists are fine, and are simply being ported over to MySpace music playlists. While I’m not entirely sure of MySpace’s music porting capabilities, I’d have to assume this is not an overnight process. Nevertheless, MySpace’s imeem acknowledgement provides some comfort to avid imeem users, but little those that have already migrated to other platforms. The service’s dedicated fans were the most spurned by this transition in ownership, and perhaps MySpace’s assurance comes too little too late.
In the announcement MySpace encourages users to use the existing music service provided by said company while the transition is taking place. It states it has the largest licensed digital catalog of music, hoping to lighten the blow even more, but for some of us, MySpace is not a site we thought of when we thought of music. Will the acquisition of imeem, will this change? Should be interesting to see the response once the imeem playlists have been brought over.
iLike – Soical Networking for Music Fans
We all like music. Rock, rap, R&B, metal, rave, trance. What ever your taste sometimes talking about music with other fans is really cool. Discussing favourite songs, artists, concerts or the industry news is what music fans do. iLike is a platform that allows you to do just that.
It’s is about to be purchased by the floundering MySpace – perhaps in some desperation to heal their wounds. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick run down on what iLike has to offer.
Firstly, it combines all of the great music facilities into one profile from across loads of different social networks such as Bebo, Hi5 and FaceBook. So instead of flying around all the different social networking sites to discuss music you can simply go to iLike.
They’re also in tune with the music scene with tons of news and song updates. iLike will also detect what city you’re in and inform you of upcoming concerts and festivals in your area.
And, as expected you can get songs their (well, iTunes). On the homepage there are free Mp3 songs from lesser-known artists that you can download for free. They also have popular songs that you can buy.
iLike also has different arrangements with many different singers and bands. For example, at the time of writing this article they were promoting Creed’s upcoming tour. The smaller things include loads of applications for download and cool pictures and videos for your enjoyment.
A great service for the chatty music fan.
