• a cleaner simple look
• dozens of new themes including some by Shepard Fairey’s Studio One
• the ability to create a own custom header
• easier navigation
• profile designs carry over to on photo, video and other pages

For musicians. MySpace has increased the total number of songs that can be uploaded to 25. So far, more than 4 million users have upgraded their profiles. Lady Antebellum, Silversun Pickups, Outkast, Thirty Seconds to Mars and Colbie Caillat we’re named as examples by a MySpace spokesperson.

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Users can upgrade here.

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“This is a first in a series of changes that you’ll see designed to simplify the organization and display of content to benefit our users,” a MySpace spokeperson told Hypebot. MySpace has been struggling to retain users even as Facebook soars; and rapid innovation is their best chance to reverse thet trend.

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New features on the user home page include:

• A wider activity stream: The stream now spans the first two columns, featuring shared content and status updates from friends across their network.
• My Stuff and Recommendations: A new “My Stuff” module gives offers quick access to photos, videos and music from the homepage; and recommendations (Featured Games, People You May Know, and Recommended Events) have been combined into a single “Recommendations” module.
• New alerts system and address book importer: The new alerts system collects similar alerts and repositions them in a more visible and persistent location, enabling users to browse and interact with their alerts without ever leaving the UHP. A new version of the address book importer will help users find and connect with friends more easily.

What do you think of Myspace and the new front page?

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Dave’s Answer:

In its quest to be all things to every user, Facebook has again tweaked its interface, adding a feature that Yahoo Answers has had for eons, that Google’s experimented with variously, that’s been part of LinkedIn for a while, and that’s obviously near and dear to my heart with Ask Dave Taylor: the ability to ask your followers and fans a question.

On Facebook, it’s called “Ask Question”, ingeniously enough, and it’s actually pretty neat how they’ve integrated it into the newsfeed and interface, though I’m sure not everyone agrees. Maybe we should ask them!

More seriously, I will also say that in the week or two since the feature was released, I haven’t seen a single question show up in my news, so perhaps it’s not getting the widespread adoption that the Facebook team were hoping?

Anyway, on your main page, instead of the status box ready for input, there’s now a little strip of links along the top, one of which is “Ask Question”:

You can see here that I’ve clicked on “Ask Question” and typed in what I believe is a perfectly reasonable question (at least if you’ve seen the daft film Monty Python and the Holy Grail). To submit the question, I click on the “Ask Question” button and, since it’s the first time I’ve asked a question…

Yeah, yeah, I’m good with this. I click on “Ask Question” and it offers the ability for me to add photos, add a further description, even turn it into a poll (that’s cool!). I can also add topics, which are presumably keywords, but I’ll skip it all and just choose “Done”.

Now in my newsfeed – and presumably that of everyone I’m friends with – this shows up:

A short time later my friend Steve pops up with the correct answer:

Notice here that I can vote the answer helpful / not helpful by clicking on the buttons. Nice. In fact, I like Q&A systems that let you vote on the value of an answer, so I have to say that Facebook took its time and did a very nice job implementing the Ask Question feature. Now the real question: is anyone going to use it?

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While I don’t necessarily believe in the “value” of the page calculated by this tool per se, it is a handy way to put a number to a page based on that page’s activity—looking at both post volume and the reaction to those posts. When you analyze the data this way, only three of the largest pages stay in the top 50. (Actually, it’s 51, as I inadvertently left Starburst off the Top 50 list. They are included here.) Here’s the list.

Key findings

As you can see, the list reorders dramatically. Some key findings:

• Passion products (like Oreos, Slurpees and Converse) may be able to grow fan bases quickly, but that does not automatically translate into page value;
• The pages with the highest value posted the most. While this isn’t surprising, it shows the effort required;

• All 5 of the top 5 most valuable pages had posts on Sunday and each one has custom tabs;
• While each of the top 5 have custom tabs, only 3 of the top 5 have set a tab other than the wall as the landing tab. This surprised me a bit.

• Each of the bottom 5 posted quite infrequently, except McDonalds.

• McDonalds (in the bottom 5) had seemingly random posts, each of which links to a different burger.

Value by fan

When you sort by dollar value per fan, the top 50 turns practically upside down. Here are the top 10 by that metric, with their rank by fan count in parenthesis:

1. Xbox, $7.08 (51)
2. Dr. Pepper, $7.04 (30)
3. Monster Energy, $5.30 (43)
4. adidas Originals, $4.57 (14)
5. Walt Disney World, $4.50, (46)
6. Breast Cancer Awareness, $4.28 (48)
7. iTunes, $3.31 (10)
8. YouTube, $3.27 (4)
9. H&M, $3.27 (24)
10. Playstation, $2.98, (49)

Xbox barely made the list in terms of size, coming in at 50th 51st, but they’re motivating their base better than anyone else. Dr. Pepper shares a strange collection of very product-centric updates with their fans, but the fans love them. And adidas Originals has both a partnership with Snoop Dog on their page and exclusive product announcements—a good mix of celebrity and insider info.

Real winners

The real winners on this list, then, are the pages that combine both high fan count and high value, as they are doing the best job of converting those fans into action. (Of course, we don’t have insight into the impact this is having on their business objectives, but if you can consistently motivate your fans, I have to think your opportunity to impact your business is enhanced.)

From that angle, the pages that have impressed me so far are:

• YouTube (#4 in size, #1 in value, #8 in value/fan)
• Skittles (#5 in size, #6 in value, #14 in value/fan)
• iTunes (#10 in size, #4 in value, #7 in value/fan)
• Facebook (#1 in size, #2 in value, #19 in value/fan)
• Victoria’s Secret (#9 in size, #11 in value, #18 in value/fan)

Of all of these, I’m most impressed with Skittles. YouTube, iTunes and Facebook have the advantage of a near limitless supply of content. Victoria’s Secret has, well, other advantages. But Skittles does not.

Little blobs of coated sugar, they got heckled a bit for their Skittles.com social takeover in early 2009. But it’s clear from this that they have not taken those fans for granted. They’ve found a way to keep them entertained.

Not the 50 most valuable

Keep in mind, this is a rank of the 50 largest branded Facebook pages, by value. It’s not the 50 most valuable branded Facebook pages. If it were, it would look a lot different, but it would require analyzing hundreds more pages individually.

For example, one of our clients, Windows, has 626,197 fans (as of Sunday, 7/11) and a value of $2,296,080. That would rank it 7th in value per fan ($3.67) and 28th in total value. But since it’s not big enough to be on the current Top 50 list, it’s also not on the “value” list. (But I think we’ll let them know nevertheless.)

What surprised you when you saw how the Top 50 re-ranked by value?

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Tweetshare Tweetshare as the site says is the Facebook fan page taken to the next level. Certainly it moves beyond Facebook to blogs, YouTube and so on where users can share content and receive feedback on their work by creating Twitter Pages around their content or brand. It works in a very simple way.

Tweetshare turns every comment about your content into a tagged Tweet that is shared with the Twitter community, virally promoting your content.   Tweetshare thus integrates your content directly into the Twitter stream.

ComTweets is like Linkedin in Twitter. More precisely, it is a community for businesses on Twitter where companies and organizations come together under one hood to interact and communicate amongst the coworkers. Sign in with your company email address and soon you will be connected to your co-employees. You may then share messages, comment on other’s posts, also interact with customers and use the tool for marketing your brand or products.

TheCadmus Cadmus gives relevance the prime spot in its service model. To elaborate, Cadmus is a real time service that can be used to manage the Twitter stream (also Friendfeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content since the last time you logged in to your account. It therefore removes the clutter of the old posts clogging up the streams and also draws out the trending topics that are hot amongst the people you follow keeping you updated all the time eliminating the chances of missing out any conversation.

Twaitter One of the most widely used Twitter apps for business is used by companies to promote their products and interact with their customers. With a number of features like tweet calendar, managing multiple accounts through Ping.fm integration, forming groups, multi-account management and so on, TwAitter is a potential player in the business app market. They even offer a translator to post tweets in any language of your choice.

Twitterfeed Almost all of us are well aware of this app, as TwitterFeed offers the most seamless way of automatically managing the feeds from your website posting them directly to social networks. It also keeps track of these feeds providing real time stats to analyze the performance of your Twitter marketing.

Twitterlive Twitterlive falls along the along same lines as Twitterfeed and allows users to post the feeds automatically to Twitter, track the clicks and collect real-time traffic data.

SpokenTwit Why write updates when you can speak and tweet? That’s exactly what this Twitter app allows users to do. All you need to do is register your phone number that will be used for tweeting and chirp around. The spoken tweets will display in your twitter stream.

Nsyght This app allows users to aggregate, share, and search their twittersocial graph in real time. Nsyght also supports threaded discussions, email alerts, inline video and photo display, and support for other services like Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Vimeo, Delicous, and Last.fm.

Buzzom Buzzom is a one stop solution for all your needs giving the best of features to manage your Twitter account in the most efficient way. Finding people from the gigantic list of Twitter users could have never been made so seamless. Buzzom is the only known Twitter app to offer people search based follow. Automatically grow your network by following the people that match your interests, follow back those who follow you or flush ones who don’t.

The premium version takes the Twitter experience a step ahead by allowing users to view their twitter performance through stats, scheduling tweets to stay active on Twitter even when they are not available, managing the direct messages and spam easily and posting updates to different social networks from one place. 

A very new feature of the brand management gives businesses an opportunity to launch their Twitter campaigns and monitor their performance amongst their target audience.

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Why should the music industry care? Just as Apples iTunes App Store opened up new avenues to  deliver and monetize music, the Chrome Web Store will offers a new opportunity to reach a much larger set of potential customers – anyone with a computer or web enabled device.

For example, an artist or label could sell a web app with music plus bonus content. Another could sell access to a complete audio and video catalog or a regularly updated stream of content.  The possibilities are endless. Google has just provided a music bigger sandbox to experiment in and a much clearer path to monetization.

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You see, every 30 seconds, a child in Africa dies from malaria and every 10 seconds, another case is diagnosed. That might not mean a lot to you…I’m sure where you are right now is probably the furthest away from Malaria and Africa. But even where you are, right now, you’re in a place to actually save a life…literally.

Please join the efforts to #endmalaria. All it takes is a $10 donation. Please click here to donate now.  Or, text the word “NETS” to 864233, and a $10 donation will be charged directly to your cell phone bill.

100% of the proceeds will be given to UNICEF, used to buy treated mosquito nets, the lowest cost and most effective way to prevent malaria.

Once you’ve donated, please help spread the word using the #endmalaria banner.

To kick start the effort, I reached out to good friend and one of my favorite artists, Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid). He designed an original piece (above) in the hopes of spreading awareness and support using art as a social object.

World Malaria Day

Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of the world’s malaria control activities, with over 90% of malaria deaths occurring on the continent. Over 190 million long-lasting insecticidal mosquito nets have been delivered since 2007, covering nearly 400 million people or over 50% of the endemic population, compared to less than 10% in 2005.

On the anniversary of World Malaria Day, we are setting a goal to close the gap of bed nets needed to eradicate malaria. In order to reach this goal, we need $10, which buys a treated net to protect children while they sleep.

The World Bank announced this week that it has joined the fight against malaria. To do so, it will donate a whopping $200 million to buy 25 million nets. That massive gesture takes us half way to our goal.

Social Media Envoy

The job is far from done, more work is needed…

Last year, you might remember the famed race to 1 million followers on Twitter between Ashton Kutcher and CNN. While the number of followers was the focal point, the true agenda was to raise awareness for Malaria as well as sending bed nets to Africa.

This year, in conjunction with Ashton’s company Katalyst, United Nations Secretary- General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, Ray Chambers, announced a special Social Media Envoy group to continue the work. The Social Media Envoy group is chartered with inspiring social media audiences throughout the year in support of malaria control to achieve the Secretary-General’s goal of providing all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010.

The 2010 Social Media Envoys include:

Queen Rania of Jordan

Derrick Ashong, Musician, Social Activist & Oprah Radio host

Veronica Belmont, Host of “Tekzilla” and “Qore” and Internet Personality

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey

Sarah Brown, of the United Kingdom

Jason Calacanis, Founder and CEO of Mahalo.com

Pete Cashmore, Founder and CEO of “Mashable—the Social Media Guide”

Anderson Cooper, CNN Anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360”

Dennis Crowley, Co-Founder of Foursquare

Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs and Partner at Activate

Jack Dorsey, Creator, Co-Founder and Chairman of Twitter, CEO of Square

Justine Ezarik “iJustine” Internet Personality

Mahei Foliaki, “@Iconic88” Internet Personality and Co-Founder of “The Internet Chef”

Steve Frayne, “Dynamo Magician”

Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft

The Gates Foundation

Jack Gray, CNN Producer/Writer for “Anderson Cooper 360”

MC Hammer, Entertainer and Founder of Dancejam.com

Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Kim Kardashian

Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder of Alltop.com

Larry King, CNN Host of “Larry King Live”

Shira Lazar, Internet Personality

Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic

Amy Martin, Founder of Digital Royalty

Stefanie Michaels, “Adventure Girl”, Internet and Travel Personality

Alyssa Milano, Actress

Dave Morin, Former Facebook executive- responsible for Facebook Connect and Platform

Jason Mraz, Singer-Songwriter and Social Activist

Drew Olanoff, Social Activist

Shaquille O’Neal, NBA Professional Athlete

Jason Pollock, Film Director and Social Activist

General Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, former Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff

Jeff Pulver, Founder of 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) and Co-Founder of VoIP (Vonage)

Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg

Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital

Ryan Seacrest, Founder, Ryan Seacrest Productions

Brian Solis, Tech Entrepreneur, Author

Jordin Sparks, Singer, Ambassador: “I’m M.A.D. Are you?” Campaign

Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter

Catherine Valdes, “Catrific” Internet Personality

Khayyam Wakil, Venture Catalyst & Internet Personality

Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco

Pete Wentz, Musician

Jon Wheatley, Co-Founder of DailyBooth.com

Lotay Yang, Founder and President of Black Card Circle

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing, Facebook

Twitter has also joined the effort. Each time you Tweet about malaria and include the #endmalaria hashtag, your tweet will carry a special mosquito icon to increase visibility.

For more information on the Office of the Special Envoy, visit malariaenvoy.com

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When asked why they have no Internet connection at home, “don’t need/not interested” represented 16.7% of those surveyed, “too expensive”  was the answer for 38.9%. And when dial-up net users were asked why they don’t upgrade to broadband,  “not interested “shrank to 7.3% and “too expensive” jumped to 41.3%.

Answers for the music industry:

One solution is certainly to support The Obama administration’s efforts to spread affordable broadband access to poorer and rural areas. But another interim strategy could be to not abandon the physical format so quickly and – just as the experts preach in the digital realm – make the product available wherever the consumer spends their time.

If Wal-Mart want to shrink thier music section, would Dollar General make space for a brave rack jobber? Or what about music pop-up stores across from arena size concerts or at the county fair?

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