Music dashboard coming to Facebook?
Facebook may soon launch its own music dashboard as it prepares to conquer another media sector.
The social media powerhouse has been talking with music-streaming services such as the European Spotify, GigaOm’s Om Malik writes. It’s unclear which other online music services Facebook is interested in.
The music dashboard will be accessible from a tab called Music found at the left part of your profile, Malik says. “This tab will show up if a user has listened to music with one of Facebook’s partner music services.”
A playback/pause button will be displayed where users find the Chat service now. “Mouse over it and you can see what is playing on whatever service you might be logged into using Facebook Connect,” Malik writes. “It also allows you to play or pause a track once you discover it on Facebook. It is also linked to the play buttons in the news feed.”
Other features Malik predicts the dashboard will include: notifications to let you know what your friends are listening to; an area to hear songs your friends recommend; top songs and albums from your friends; and a page listing all the tracks you’ve listened to and the number of times you’ve listened to each song.
Facebook is expected to announce its music dashboard in August, during its f8 developers conference.
Chris Crum of WebProNews says this music project is in light with how people interact on Facebook. “Musicians are already hosting special events (like paid concert streams) on Facebook. Facebook is where people are talking about music and ‘liking’ all of their favorite artists to keep up to date.”
To read Jonathan Franzen article on New Yorker Facebook Page, you need to “Like” it
You’ve heard of paywalls but what about “like walls”? New Yorker magazine is mimicking the music industry by locking a new article on their Facebook Page and interested readers can only access the full article by clicking the “Like” button on the publication’s Facebook Page.
If you don’t “like” it, you can only read the intro to Jonathan Franzen‘s lengthy article about visiting Alejandro Selkirk, the island where the book Robinson Crusoe was said to have been based. Once you “like” it, the entire article becomes available immediately.
So far, more than 203,000 people have “liked” the Page. Earlier today, the count was closer to 200,000.
The New Yorker is experimenting with an idea often seen in the music industry. Last month, Jennifer Lopez asked Facebook fans to “like” a song if they wanted to download the track on iTunes. Also, Lil Wayne unlocked a track off a new album once fans “liked” his Facebook Page.
Study: Retweets happen most often at 4 p.m., weekend mornings
If you want your tweets to get noticed, update your Twitter feed at 4 p.m. and on weekends, a new study revealed. Dan Zarrella, a social media researcher, unveiled his findings in a report he calls The Science of Timing (above). In his three-year study, he found retweet activity to be highest at 4 p.m., although anytime between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. will generate more retweets than during other time periods.
Weekend mornings are also prime times to tweet, because “users have more time and attention to devote to content on the weekend, even if the content isn’t fresh, and fewer distractions compete for attention,” Nieman Labs quotes Zarrella saying.
The researcher created a simple online tool called TweetWhen to display the most popular days and times for a feed’s most retweets per tweet. (We tested the tool – @futureofmedia gets the most retweets on Tuesdays at 5 p.m.).
Zarrella also advises retweeting the same tweet more than once, mentioning how your followers won’t likely see the same tweet twice, especially if they follow hundreds or thousands of feeds.
He touched on how to best implement Facebook in your social media strategy. His study found engagement with Facebook links during the weekday is quite minimal, likely due to many workplaces blocking Facebook during the week. Weekends are ideal time to post content on Facebook, since people often check their accounts on Saturdays and Sundays. Nieman Labs adds, “Postings on Facebook also tend to ‘stick around’ longer, re-emerging when people post a comment or like.”
How often should you tweet? It depends on your intention and your outlet. Zarrella says accounts that push out two or more links an hour show a “dramatically lower clickthrough rate than those who share no more than one.”
What other news sites can learn from MotherJones.com’s record-breaking traffic spike
If only Steve Katz had some magic elixir to offer other news outlets looking to boost their online traffic…well, he’d share it with this reporter. But the publisher of Mother Jones, a non-profit news outlet based in San Francisco, can’t pinpoint exactly why February 2011 traffic to MotherJones.com surged 420 percent from February 2010′s number.
“Our reporters kicked out stories people were interested in,” he says in an phone interview. “They hit the zeitgeist when it was hot.”
In February, the site raked in 3 million unique visitors. Pageviews increased by 275 percent – to more than 6.6 million - compared to a year ago. Mother Jones had never seen this kind of traffic before.
“But the real challenge is to keep the traffic up past February,” he says, “and we have our fingers crossed.” The company publishes a monthly magazine and also provides daily content on its website.
So what did Mother Jones do right? Known for their sharp political reporting, they expanded their Washington coverage and also covered the Wisconsin protests, with the latter articles attracting significant attention.
The news outlet also credits its “explainer” articles that offer comprehensive info on current affairs, such as the Libya uprising and the Wisconsin issue. They act almost as topics pages. Nieman Labs sees value in this content: “…it’s news material catered to readers’ immediate need for context and understanding when it comes to complex, and time-sensitive, situations. The pages’ currency, in other words, is currency itself.”
Katz says February’s traffic spike should also be credited to their embrace of social media. One of the first alt-news companies to go online in the late 1990s, Mother Jones now asks all its writers to use Twitter and Facebook to engage with their readers. The strategy seemed to have culminated with glowing stats last month: membership to its Twitter feed increased by 28 percent and Facebook “fans” increased by 20 percent. The overall result? Around 29 percent of MotherJones.com’s traffic came from social media sites, nearly three times the amount attracted in the same period in 2010.
“Twitter and Facebook communities turned out to be interested communities in their own right,” Katz notes.
Social media integration is all well and good, but if they don’t point to compelling articles, what’s the point? Luckily for Mother Jones, readers were driven to stories they cared about, as evidenced by the 630 comments in Kevin Drum’s article on “What Wisconsin is Really About.”
You might recall Mother Jones won the “Colbert bump” due to their income inequity charts being featured on the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report; but that occurred on Mar. 1, after the February traffic numbers were collected.
Katz says February wasn’t the only highlight of the traffic success story. In fact, 2010 was a record year for Mother Jones: monthly page views and unique visitors to MotherJones.com in 2010 increased by more than 50 percent over the previous year, a press release states.
“We still have so much to learn,” Katz says, before offering some advice to news sites in a similar position. “It’s smart to invest in digital early, and to really invest in social media to see where it’ll take you.” Katz also commended their decision to give full-time reporting decisions to writers providing content instantly for the website and later for the print publication.
“Our staff are comfortable working in a digital environment,” he adds.
The spike in February 2011 traffic for MotherJones.com
Katz doesn’t see a big traffic drop coming soon; in fact, he envisions steady growth, thanks to early GOP meetings to determine the front-runner in the 2012 primaries.
The area Mother Jones is most cautiously circling is mobile, Katz reveals. They optimized their website for smartphones but they have yet to launch a dedicated iPhone or iPad app. “We’re not sure if there will be financial gain for us [to invest in mobile] so there has to be another reason for us to move in that direction.”
For an overview of Mother Jones’ February traffic figures, go to this press release.
Digital Journal launches updated Comments plugin using Facebook(R) Platform
Social networking giant Facebook has announced its next big move: An updated commenting system is now available to third-parties. Digital Journal is happy to announce it is one of only two Canadian media sites to have the new Comments live and in use.
Digital Journal today revealed a new social commenting section using Facebook Platform to let readers engage with articles, blogs and images across Digital Journal’s entire news network using their Facebook account.
Digital Journal’s integration of the updated Facebook Comments plugin comes on the heels of Facebook’s announcement today that it has launched an update to its Comments plugin that makes it easier for readers to comment on publisher websites with their real identity, and share articles with friends. Digital Journal is one of two Canadian news outlets to work with Facebook on the plugin ahead of the launch.
“As a digital media network with contributors in 200 countries around the world, DigitalJournal.com offers a very unique social news experience for readers,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal, Inc. “We’re pushing the envelope and aiming to define what social news experiences should be all about. Facebook’s new comments plugin offers readers a new and very powerful way to engage and communicate with one another.”
Digital Journal readers will now see a Facebook Comments Box on the bottom of articles, blogs and images, allowing them to comment on articles using their Facebook account. The entire commenting system is powered by Facebook Platform and offers readers richer features to interact with their friends.
“The social layer is one of the deepest and most important parts of a modern media business,” said Hogg, “The Facebook comments plugin is just one more way we’re working to give readers the cutting-edge tools they need to engage with content in new ways.”
Digital Journal today introduces the latest version of the Facebook comments plugin that will further customize the media experience at DigitalJournal.com. These features include:
Comment syndication:
Readers can comment on DigitalJournal.com and share the comment to their Facebook profile. When a friend responds within Facebook, that comment can also appear on DigitalJournal.com. Vice versa, when someone replies to a comment made on Digital Journal, a reader will also see it in their Facebook feed. This two-way integration allows comments and discussion to take place both within Facebook and on Digital Journal — the conversation will be syndicated to wherever readers are.
Sorting comments by relevance:
Comments are ranked based on a reader’s social graph, meaning comments made by friends appear before strangers’ discussions. This feature is designed to help readers find conversations more likely to interest them, with people they know. Facebook Comments also show readers other relevant comments, including comments from friends of friends, comments that have received a large number of replies, or comments that have the most Likes.
Comment as a brand or company:
Readers who also manage a Facebook Page on behalf of a company can also comment as that Page. This enables people to comment as themselves or make a statement on behalf of a business, celebrity, government official and more. Comments made on behalf of a Page will also be shared back to the Page’s Wall. This feature opens up great new potential for dialogue between brands and individuals.
Digital Journal is a Toronto-based global digital media news network operated by Digital Journal, Inc. a leader and pioneer in social news delivery with millions of readers.
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