Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Wild West’

LadyGaga as a Service: Bringing Apple and Google to Commerce 2.0

Lady Gaga, along with her record company, is evolving the album in the form of software as a service. Considering the content of her hit new video, Telephone, it is fitting that she would use software to tackle the hard problem of getting paid by amazing fans.

On her path to global dominance, the site, LadyGaga.com has innovated the next generation of brand management for artists. To do this, she creates a join between Google’s YouTube, Apple’s iTunes, Twitter, and Facebook. Way beyond having a an Twitter account, LadyGaga is hosting an interface party, and you’re invited. She’s a performer who is inventing ways to create the value of using multiple platforms to juice the network effects.

Sponsor

Commerce 2.0

Like it a lot? Take a souvenir home from the party for the low introductory price of $1.99 in your iTunes.

Today, we noticed another cultural icon, VC Fred Wilson posted this question on his blog as to what will emerge as Commerce 2.0.

“So the question is who will the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter of commerce be? Maybe they exist today and will emerge as large scale web services soon. Or maybe they are still ideas in the minds of entrepreneurs and will be hatched in the coming years.

It’s an area I am excited about and will be on the lookout for. Clearly I’m not the only one.”

This is where we think LadyGaga.com’s promotion for Telephone stands out as an example of the new world economy. This world is connected by the best ad engines of Google. And it is directly connected to Apple’s amazing commerce engine. Apple, in the context of digital goods is showing how extremely well it is positioned to be the industry payment engine.

Embedding YouTube: Get it Now, Anywhere

We witnessed YouTube transition from the Wild West to a control point for record labels. Now, a lot of the newest official artist videos flow straight to Vevo, the branded label friendly site that runs ads and controls the experience of the brand.

YouTube is taking advantage of its place as a channeling service for video. In this case, the top, most requested inventory pays for the rest of the service. The higher the demand, the more attention it gets.

LadyGaga.com, like many sites, uses embeddable YouTube. In addition to pointing to commerce services like iTunes, the video embeds curated links into other properties at Vevo. This provides the site custom promotion experience while leveraging the YouTube and Vevo distribution channel.

iTunes is prominently offered for both buying the video (which is also free on the same page) and also the album. So, there is a bet here that people want to own it, or place value in their iTunes library to offer this connected service.

This brings the user to a one-moment to buy scenario. Shown here, there is the familiar transition to iTunes from the LadyGaga site.

And, the authorization to ‘Buy Now’.

In default mode, iTunes is set to require a validation step (a second click) to buy the media. The user can can be set easily to bypass this step and enable the user one-click to buy from the web in the future.

This feature is available to any Apple affiliate, but we find it particularly effective coming from the artist embedded with the video and other endorsements.

Tweeting, End to End, Facebook, FTW

We noticed that with a simple interaction, we can logon to Facebook and Twitter from LadyGaga.com and drop a status post, or “tweet” into Facebook or Twitter. Incredibly, inside iTunes, both services are available as well. The real story is that social networks, and commerce networks work together, end-to-end, and, for-the-win.

In a twist of fate, in this version of digital music future the record labels win big. They do it by being close to both eyeballs (Google) and library (Apple), and bringing out the thing they know, the pop.

LadyGaga is on a roll

With the help of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Apple she will connect to more platforms than ever before, with fewer clicks and passwords.

We wonder how this evolve further into other platforms. Will LadyGaga’s services continue to find new ways to leverage real-time services? We’re starting to envision personal mobile and location aware fan applications.

Will the forces of cloud computing and commerce force Apple and Google be best-friends-forever in music?

And, will we ever build a phone that doesn’t disrupt us while on the dance floor?

And, for god’s sake, damn, Beyonce’ has her back.

Discuss

Read the whole story…

Developer quacks about ‘minimal user functionality,’ but it’s not a new rule

Filed under: Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Since the early days of the App Store, it’s been a virtual Wild West out there — people can release apps that do whatever they can imagine, from a virtual cowbell to a mirror, silly as the functionality may be. Still, there has always been a (very low) hurdle for the least an app can do; once again, Apple has rejected an app for the reason of “minimal user functionality.” To be clear, despite what you may be reading elsewhere, this is not a new rule, but one developer thought that his rejection under a long-standing reviewer’s option was a reason to raise a little heck.

The creator of the just-rejected app (which, for the record, shows a picture of a duck and makes the iPhone quack like a duck) emailed TechCrunch looking for a little justice, and all he got from them was sarcasm. We don’t have anything he’ll want to hear, either: with hundreds of thousands of applications in the store, Apple is entitled to use its veto power on the non-functional apps. And so far, that’s a good thing for consumers like us.

Deleting apps for sexual content is one thing, but deleting apps for lacking all redeeming value is another. Of course, the standards are just as sticky (what if someone really does need a quacking sound?), but at least someone at Apple does have a standard somewhere in terms of making an app serve a purpose. I don’t mind the sex apps (and I think an Explicit category is the right way to go), but I would appreciate Apple stepping up the line on quality, especially now that the store is full of great apps already.

TUAWDeveloper quacks about ‘minimal user functionality,’ but it’s not a new rule originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

AT&T Reportedly Blocks 4Chan. This Is Going To Get Ugly.

As if AT&T wasn’t already bad enough. In an act that is sure to spark internet rebellions everywhere, AT&T has apparently declared war on the extremely popular imageboard 4chan.org, blocking some of the site’s most popular message boards, including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/. m00t, who started 4chan and continues to run the site, has posted a note to the 4chan status blog indicating that AT&T is in fact filtering/blocking the site for many of its customers (we’re still trying to confirm from AT&T’s side).

Reports of the blocking began to surface on reddit this afternoon, and a number of blogs are beginning to pick up on the story, though it doesn’t seem like any have managed to get a comment from AT&T (we’ve reached out to the company and will update once we hear back).

4chan has been called many things, most of which aren’t particularly flattering. Some parts of the site are entirely unmoderated, leading to a wild-west, highly NSFW environment where irreverance, mischief, and lewdness thrive (I like to think of it as the Mos Eisley of the web). But that doesn’t mean the site isn’t extremely influential on web culture. Many of its exploits are famous, including taking over the Time 100 list, and it’s also where some of the Internet’s most famous memes got their start, including the Rick Roll and LOLcats. It’s also known as the main hub for Anonymous, a group that has held a very public campaign against Scientology.

In other words, AT&T has just opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms it could have possibly found. Blocking any site is an extreme breach of user trust, but the decision to block 4chan in particular just seems stupid. Expect the web equivalent of rioting if this doesn’t change soon.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Read the whole story…