Last.fm and free meals

To my surprise yesterday when I turned on my last.fm to listen to some music I received a message saying in polite terms that the service was not free anymore. “trial period has expired” – funny, I didn’t even notice it had started! When I subscribed Last.Fm was a free service.
My first reaction was a slight disappointment: “Why should I pay for something that had been free until yesterday!”. Soon after I realized how important for me the last.fm radio service was; I listen to it almost everyday. Economists say that in free markets there is no such a thing as a free meal, and I agree with that. Quality comes at a price, and I was willing to pay – I took my credit card and spent 9$ for three months of service. As soon as the music feed came back I felt “good” for helping a successfull web company to expand his business and build a sustainable business model. 

My point here is very simple. Technology doesn’t come for free, and great services such as Last.Fm don’t come for free either. The social web is a great revolution and like most industrial revolutions it also need a social revolution, in terms of sensibility to certain matters and a cultural shift in the way we consume information and services. If we love a service we should be ready to pay for it, at least 3$ a month.

Today Last.Fm annouced that, after the negative feedback they received, the service will remain free.

Wisdom of the crowd wins again – or does it?
Isn’t peraphs this crowd failing to understand that even in the information age, information has a value, and the currency we use to buy this value is still money?

UGC: User Generated Costs

According to a report from Credit Suisse, YouTube might lose approximately $470 million in 2009, mainly because of bandwith costs from all the user generated content.
The main problem with YouTube is that monetization of content remains a big challenge, with infrastructural costs growing, and advertisting revenues not catching up.

An interesting post from The Slate shows that YouTube’s problems are very similar to those faced by newspaper, where printing and distribution costs sometimes are not balanced with advertising.

YouTube and Newspapers are not alone in this game; Facebook is facing the same growth in storage and bandwith due to UGC from the now 200 million user base. Techcrunch reported that facebook is spending almost $1 million a month just for electricity.

The Silicon Alley on his post “Is YouTube dommed” states:

Credit Suisse estimates YouTube will manage to rake in about $240 million in ad revenue in 2009, against operating costs of roughly $711 million, leading to a shortfall of just over $470 million. This half-billion dollar loss comes after more than a year of feverish experimentation in various forms of advertising, cross-product embedding, licensing and partnership deals.

Coca-Cola launches “office of Digital and Social Media”

PRWeeks reports that Coca-Cola has created a new office of Digital and Social Media media within its public affairs and communications department.
Clyde Tuggle, SVP of corporate affairs and productivity at Coke, noted

“Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our Company all around the world, one person at a time,” Tuggle wrote. “Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

Coca-Cola, together with others Fortune 500 firms, is realizing the importance of Social Media and the need of specific skills and experience to join the conversation with the customers.

Dell, for example, has more than 40 full-time employees charged solely with social media marketing on behalf of the brand. Companies such as Pepsi, Ford, and Toyota are on the same track.

One more proof that Social Media is becoming a priority in every marketing department.
With facebook reaching 200 million users and twitter growing exponentially, it’s something that clearly cannot be ignored.

Advertiser – Consumer relationship

A short and funny video on how advertisers are failing to understand today’s customers needs.

Best Buy and web2.0 tools

An interesting video on how Best Buy is using social technologies to communicate and collaborate with employees. I loved the prediction market tool  “TagTrade” above all.

What is twitter?

A cool parody video on twitter.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/03/20/video-into-the-twittersphere/

Let’s make work social again

An inspiring and visionary video on Social Software in the enterprise..

Social Media bigger than Email

A recent Nielsen Online (“Global Faces and Networked Places”) shows that in 2008 66.8 percent of internet users across the globe accessed “member communities” last year, compared to 65.1 percent for email.
Another interesting trend is the growth of facebook users in the age range 35-49, showing that social networks are not only for teenagers and digital natives anymore.

 

More info from Nielsen

I 25 Social Network più utilizzati

Compete.com ha aggiornato la propria lista di Social Network più visitati al mondo.

Oltre all’ormai assodato sorpasso di Facebook su mySpace per utenti unici al mese, risalta anche Twitter, che ha scalato la classifica dal 22esimo al terzo posto in un anno.

Interessante anche la classifica per minuti passati sul sito, che vede sempre FB in testa.

Maggiori informazioni da compete.com

Facebook e Privacy: Retromarcia

Facebook, dopo le critiche sollevate dalle nuovi Termini di Servizio che diminuivano la tutela della privacy dei propri iscritti, fa retromarcia e torna ai TOS precedenti.

Maggiori info da PCWorld