Making Sense of a Manic Monday

Whenever Facebook unveils a new feature, you can be sure everyone will take notice.

If Google launches a new service, it's going to dominate headlines.

When Apple announces any updates, a frenzy hits the news and blogosphere.

But what about when all three online giants make announcements on the same day? Besides being inundated with updates in my RSS feed, I was left struggling to decide which one to cover in today's post.

So instead of prioritizing, I'll give a brief rundown of what all three companies announced on Monday.

Thinking outside of the (in)box.

Facebook unveiled a revamped version of their messaging system. While rumors flew that this was designed to compete with Gmail, Facebook claims this new messaging system is not an email killer.

The new messaging focuses on being a social inbox with seamless messaging and a conversation history. Users will also receive an @facebook.com address based on their username. Other features include off-site emailing, compatibility with other systems, and integration with SMS and mobile Web apps, all of which will take place on this new message platform.

Turning up the location-based heat.

Google is once again venturing further into the location-based arena with Monday's release of Hotpot, a Yelp-style recommendation engine. Hotpot takes all of their existing Google Places features like reviews and ratings with a friendlier user interface. Hotpot allows users to link and recommend services directly from their account, as opposed to aggregating the data from outside services like Yelp or Gowalla.

Beatles and iTunes come together.

After years of going back and forth, the families of the Beatles have finally agreed to sell the back catalog of songs to iTunes. Rumors had been swirling that the Beatles would finally be landing on the music service, and those rumors were proven true with Apple's announcement Monday. And if you go to iTunes, you'll notice that Beatlemania has taken over iTunes both musically and visually.

So as you can see, it was a very busy day for anyone covering the latest tech and social media news. Hopefully, this gives sheds some light on a very busy Monday.

YouTube Adding Links

YouTube is adding another source of revenue to its site: links to iTunes and Amazon. Recently, YouTube added banner ads to popular videos as a way to monetize the site. This form of advertisement should be much less intrusive than a banner ad. It will also make more sense.

Take a look at the top videos of all time. What do you notice? An overwhelming amount of them are music videos. Adding a link in the video to purchase the song will help drive sales. The Pandora Application has this feature built-in to it, which has cause me to spend at least $50 on various songs.

iTunes Music Store To Shut Down

No, not really. I don't think anyone believes this one, but Apple is threatening to close the iTunes music store if music royalty rates increase. Tomorrow, the Copyright Royalty Board will be voting on a substantial increase in the royalty rate paid to record labels. Apple already pays $0.70 per song to the labels and since record labels don't want to cover the costs, an increase would most likely force them to raise the consumer's price, making the current $0.99 model an unprofitable one.

In a related story, Warner Music's CEO said that Guitar Hero and Rock Band should pay more money to labels to use their songs in the games. Activision's CEO quickly responded that it should be the other way around. Due to the immense popularity of the video games, labels are receiving free promotion, a new avenue to market the music, and as a result have seen huge jumps in album sales of their back catalog (many albums have jumped 200%, 300%, and even 1000% in sales after being featured in the games).

What I see in these two situations is the record labels scrambling around and loosing sight of the bigger picture. Instead of panicking about how to make money and trying to squeeze cash out of everyone, the labels need to understand that they have to start looking at their business model differently. How about instead of labels trying to get more money for their songs in Rock Band, they set up a system that would allow gamers to click on a song they are playing, enter a music store, download an album to their XBox, search similar artists, and alert their friends list what music they bought. Maybe gamers could be alerted when the artist they are rocking out to is coming to their town in concert? I came up with these ideas in 30 seconds, and I would really hope there are more creative minds than mine out there at the labels. The new world of marketing is all about social media and tapping into its potential. The point is this: Labels will die if they don't start innovating new ways to stay alive.

Bloggers Rage On the App Store

Since the opening of the App Store on July 11th, developers have had a long-standing feud with the App Store. The ambiguous terms of what is accepted into the App Store has many developers frustrated and annoyed with Apple.

This became a resurfacing issue today with Apples decision to reject a Podcaster App. The reason behind the rejection: "Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes." This isn't sitting too well with the developer and fellow developers.

Since the debut of the App Store, I have been hoping for a Podcaster App to come along and now I know why I haven't seen one. Apple needs to clearly define the terms for what is accepted and what isn't. Why did the "I am Rich" application make it, but useful ones like the Podcaster get rejected? You're better than that, Apple.

Power of music publicity

If you have checked out the top ten songs on iTunes recently, you will notice "Paper Planes" by MIA in the #2 position. Didn't her cd Kala come out a year ago?

Thanks to heavy plays during the trailer of Pineapple Express, the song and album have resurfaced again. Although, I saw an advanced screening of Pineapple Express last week and Paper Planes was nowhere to be found in the movie. Interesting. It also helps that the song is probably the catchiest pop song of 2007.

This reminds me of several artists who have been given a boost thanks to commercials. If your song is in an Apple commercial you are pretty much guaranteed a spotlight. Yael Naim and The Ting Tings are probably the most recent artists launched by Apple (Coldplay doesn't count since they are already huge).