AOL Launches Stand-Alone Lifestream

AOL unveiled its social aggregator and publisher, Lifestream, as part of its instant messenger platform last Fall. Now they’re launching a stand-alone site at lifestream.aol.com. After it appears they’ve failed with Bebo, this social venture may have a chance of success, in the opinion of TechCrunch at least—they’re saying, “This is what Google Buzz should have been.”

Like most social aggregators, Lifestream gathers content from several social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube. Lifestream uses existing friend lists on those social networks, so users don’t have to recompile their friend lists. Users can also cancel updates from entire networks, users or users on networks (i.e. ignore your friend’s Twitter stream but keep following his Facebook). It’s also integrated with Facebook Connect, so there’s no separate login, and users can publish back to social networks from the platform.

Lifestream also has a network of its own, and plans integration with Google Buzz in the future. TechCrunch doesn’t mention whether the service automatically hides duplicate messages—for example, your friends who have their Twitter statuses automatically publish to Facebook, too.

And then there’s the mobile platform: the website is compatible with mobiles, but Lifestream also has AIR, iPhone and Android apps. The mobile apps auto-note location, and you can use them to post pictures.

TechCrunch concludes:

The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol.

In a time of more and more fragmentation, I think many people are looking for a product like this. If Lifestream is really as easy and seamless as TechCrunch says, and if it can gain acceptance, it could be the product AOL needs to turn its social fortunes around.

What do you think? Will you give it a shot?

Media Giant WPP Sees Its Digital Future

While you may be aware of WPP in general it may be worth a look to see just how big this media conglomerate is. Last week the company stated that digital will account for 2/3 of its business over the next three to four years. Considering they did about $13 billion in revenue in 2009 this is no small statement.

Those of us on the Internet marketing side of the fence tend to see this kind of announcement and scoff by saying “No kidding! You finally figured it out, huh?” which can be fun for a moment of over time starts to sound childish. The world has moved at breakneck speed to the digital side of the ledger and in the process is undoing how media has been bought and sold for the past 60 years or so. Nothing that big and entrenched changes overnight.

In the paidContent section of The Guardian is some more data to wrap your head around:

New media sales accounted for 27 percent of the advertising and marketing group’s revenues, or $3.6 billion. This is already a big step: to compare, one competitor, Havas, last month said that digital accounts for 16 percent of its revenues to account for one-fifth of its revenues by the end of 2010.

WPP appears to be pegging its own digital revenue share to stats that are coming out on how much time people are spending online. Sir Martin Sorrell pointed out that recent figures show that this too is currently hovering around the 27-28 percent mark.

Mark Read, director of strategy and CEO of WPP Digital, touted the company’s specialist digital expertise in the earnings call: “We have to have digital in all our businesses.” The company is continuing to integrate technology platforms into the business, and industry partnerships with companies like Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Facebook, MySpace (NYSE: NWS) and Omniture (NSDQ: OMTR), now owned by Adobe.

A curious omission (probably more of an oversight) is no mention of Twitter but hey they are still trying to figure out this digital thing, right? I suspect that WPP being this aggressive in their statement is sending a message to their competition that they are going to be a leader in this area. Of course, this has not come easy thus far

Digital is a blessing and a curse, says Read: “Technology is shaping our industry…however this is confusing for our clients and extremely complicated to manage.”

OK, as any good agency guy is going to do he is going to push the “confusion” to his clients. It may be more confusing to clients as to why it has taken WPP this long to figure all this out. Read set up a nice “out” as well by saying this is extremely complicated to manage. Isn’t that why you are hired as an agency for these things? Oh well, like I said earlier, this is a process.

Well, if you want to learn more keep your eyes open for WPP’s “Digital Day” on April 23 where they will share more information on their digital strategy. Sounds more a class trip so maybe they’ll supply a box lunch too!

Will YouTube See $1B Next Year? (And More Captions)

And it’s time for everyone’s favorite non-Olympic sport: YouTube Valuation Speculating! Come one, come all, this is not a spectator sport. If you’ll recall, last year we had valuations from Credit Suisse and Ramp Rate, working with a $240.7M revenue (CS foresaw a $470M operating loss; RR predicted only $174M).

Now CitiGroup has thrown a hat the ring—with much better news for YouTube. This year, they predict, YouTube will see gross revenue of $945M (net $614M), and next year they’ll bring in $1.1 billion (net $737M). Either way, that’ll be almost enough to break even with even the most pessimistic estimates of operating costs.

However, CitiGroup based their revenue estimate on MySpace’s CPM price. Does that even make sense?

Pretty graphic of the comparisons:

In other news, YouTube is expanding its accessibility. Back in November, Google announced that some select universities and other partners would be receiving automatic closed captioning on their videos. Now YouTube is spreading the love—all videos where the audio is clear and in English will soon have captions.

YouTube recognized their captioning isn’t perfect: “[Google software engineer Ken] Harrenstein took time to point out that the captioning isn’t perfect, showing how the words ‘SIM card’ got transcribed to ’salmon.’” Users will still need to check the captions on their video for accuracy. (But hey, I’ve seen worse in TV closed captions, so perhaps the Deaf are used to it.) And at least some Deaf students are enthusiastic about the offering as-is:

(…So the biggest benefit is that they’ll be able to understand music videos better? That’s the best example YouTube could show them?)

What do you think? Will captioning help boost YouTube’s popularity? Is MySpace’s CPM a good measure to estimate YouTube’s revenue?

Google’s Real Time Search Now Shows Facebook Pages Status

While everyone is concerned about just how Google will eventually take over the world and implant chips in everyone so they can search for your real time position at any time in real time for real information (do you get the sarcasm here?) there is one area where Google is not going to do as well as the competition (read: bing). That is real time search results for Facebook.

Google has announced that Facebook Pages status updates have started to be included in real time search results. This is added to their addition of Twitter and MySpace info to search results as well. Where Google is not going to be effective, though, is Facebook and Venture Beat’s Digital Beat tells us why

The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. Microsoft has the ability to index public status updates, while Google’s access is limited to updates from Pages, which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content.

While this may be seen as a disadvantage by some, I don’t necessarily see it that way. I go to a search engine to get information about different subjects of interest, products, business data and general entertainment. Honestly, I don’t want to see personal Facebook updates in any search engine. It’s just creepy. I think that updates from Facebook Pages, however, can be of help and it doesn’t have any creepiness factor to it. It’s marketing information for the most part so that can only get as weird as everyday marketing can get. No harm there.

Now, I know that this is just my opinion so it would be good to hear from others. Considering all the flak that Facebook has received about privacy should personal updates be included in search results for bing since many are likely still clueless about just how much of their information is public? Do you want to see that information?

Holy 1999: MySpace in Google Search (Oh, with Real Time)

Buzzy buzz buzz. Google would really like to keep us from thinking about PAY NO ATTENTION Buzz TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, and old pal MySpace is here to help: the real time search deal the two discussed in December is now live. Oh boy, oh boy, real time updates from that cutting edge social MySpace right in Google!

Hm? What’s that? Is 2010 and Google’s had real-time results from social networks including Twitter and Facebook for months?

Oh. Much less cool .

Yep, as they said a while ago, Google’s using MySpace’s real time API to import real time updates (they do that on MySpace?) into selected SERPs. I’d go out looking for these results in the wild, but somehow I think they’re pretty hard to find. Even when I look for updates on news and current events in Google, I seldom see the real time results (or maybe I just don’t scroll down). Luckily, MySpace provides a few examples for me:

I love the Olympics. Every (other) year, I think, “Meh, I don’t really care about the Olympics,” and then I get sucked in and watch them obsessively. (“Go, go, person I’ve never heard of, representing a country I don’t care about, in a sport I’ve never seen before! Win!”) And I’m super glad that I can see what MySpacers think about the events. (Not. Did you read those comments?)

Um, anyway, I like that MySpace’s integration with Google is so flawless that the best way to get their real-time results is to actually include “MySpace” in the query. I suppose that’ll keep extraneous social results from showing up in my SERPs, though, so I’m happy .

On the other hand, it is convenient if you want to know what people are saying about a topic on MySpace. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d want to, but . . . you know, it could happen.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to oh-so-pertinent results from MySpace coming to a SERP near you?

Facebook Corners 44% of Social Sharing

TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld talked to sharing-widget producer Gigya recently to find out what site people tended to share content on the most. Gigya’s widget power social sharing from sites such as ABC.com, Reuters and Answers.com (and 5000 more). When people shared content, where did they tend to post it? Facebook was the #1 choice for 44% of content sharing.

(Sub-lesson of this article: lying with statistics. Can you guess what share the other three got from the chart?)

Gigya also looked at sign-in data for these sites—for example, whether users signed in via Gmail/Google, Yahoo or Facebook Connect to interact with or share content. For some types of sites, they were nearly equal—but not others. News sites saw 31% Facebook sign ins, 30% Google/Gmail sign ins and 25% Yahoo sign ins (Twitter saw 11% and AOL 3%). But for entertainment sites, Facebook was the far more popular choice at 52%, with Google (17%), Yahoo (12%) and Twitter (11%) trailing far behind. (MySpace, 7%, and AOL, 1%, fared even worse.)

Facebook chat is also popular—more than half (56%) of all live chat events Gigya monitors were hosted on Facebook. Twitter was second with 28%, and Yahoo (9%) and MySpace (7%) eked in there.

So what were the overall share numbers for Facebook’s competitors in overall sharing? Twitter had 29%, Yahoo 18% and MySpace 9%. If you really study the tilted 3D graph, you can approximate it pretty well—but it looks a little more proportional even at a glance in the 2D graph, doesn’t it?

Upon seeing the data from Gigya, another sharing widget company volunteered its data. AddThis, used in 600,000 (smaller than Gigya’s, for the most part, since AddThis’s clients include Blogger users), shared the top ten services their users choose to share with. While Facebook was still tops, their lead wasn’t quite as decisive as in Gigya’s data.

Facebook: 33%
Email: 13%
Print:9%
Twitter: 9%
Favorites: 8%
Google: 6%
MySpace: 6%
Digg: 3%
Live: 3%
Delicious: 3%

What do you think? Is Facebook the way you prefer to share things online?

Ad Spend on Social Networks Gains a Whopping Half Point in Share

Apparently, ads on social networks aren’t working out too well.

While this is not anything we didn’t already know, it must be disheartening for Facebook, MySpace et al, to learn that pinning their revenue growth on display ads may be a tough row to hoe.

It’s not a completely ugly picture, according to eMarketer, ads on social media networks will gain a 5.5% share of all online ad spending, but…

That’s up from 5 percent in 2008, the stats released Thursday say. The good news is that, unlike some other sectors of the ad world, it’s not shrinking–but it’s also not growing exponentially by any means. After plunging from a 61 percent rate of growth in 2008 to 12 percent in 2009, the rate of growth is projected to crawl back up to 14 percent this year and stay about the same at 13 percent next year.

MySpace is to blame for most of the stagnation–its own ad revenues have fallen–and it doesn’t help that Facebook is cutting back on its ad serving as well.

Of course, the news isn’t quite so depressing for social networking advertisers. Social networks still make up around 22% of all online display impressions, it’s just that they are dirt cheap–hence not being a bigger slice of the ad spend pie.

MySpace Adds Facebook Connect—the Beginning of the End?

Rumors of MySpace integrating Facebook Connect have circulated since October. And now it looks like they’re coming true: MySpace’s Fan Video site allows users to login with either MySpace or Facebook accounts.

The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features sharing capabilities to post the videos to MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Additionally, you can create videos for your friends using their profile pictures, and you can choose these friends from your MySpace or Facebook friend lists (depending on which account you used to sign in).

Not a super-useful application (more fun than sheep throwing, I guess), but is this a harbinger of things to come for MySpace? Are they ready to concede the social networking arena to Facebook?

Side note here: although Facebook has eclipsed MySpace in terms of traffic, MySpace still edges out Facebook in ad revenue. So the race isn’t already lost. May be close, though.

via

Collecta Launches Dedicated Real-Time MySpace Search

Collecta has announced a real-time search tool that taps into content posted on MySpace. The dedicated MySpace search includes the public comments, blog posts, videos, photos, and links that are posted by MySpace users. It can be accessed at myspace.collecta.com for now, and Collecta says the MySpace content will eventually be incorporated into its primary [...]

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Facebook Set to Pass MySpace Revenue Ahead of Schedule

Facebook has drubbed MySpace on almost all fronts—in the media, with users, in growth, in traffic—except ad revenue. But expect that to change next year, according to eMarketer: “It will surpass its former rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010, when marketers worldwide will spend $605 million on Facebook versus $385 million on MySpace.”

The projections for next year show MySpace on a downward trend, falling from $490M worldwide this year to $385M next year. Facebook on the other hand is still climbing: from from $435M this year to over $600M next year.

Meanwhile, overall social network ad spending is going up. eMarketer predicts 7.1% growth for total ad spend next year, bringing the total to almost $1.3B. Although they initially expected 2009 to see a downturn in revenue, now the stats show 3.9% growth over last year.

Back in September, we saw that 20% of all online advertising was on social networks, with MySpace slightly leading Facebook (9.2% to 8.2%). I suppose we can expect the social share of online advertising to continue to grow—but not MySpace’s.

The biggest factor contributing to Facebook’s revenue growth this year, according to ClickZ, is its growth. They reached 200M users in April—and just five months later, they’d added another 100M users. Now at 350M active users, Facebook has doubled in size since February of this year.

Yeah, I’d say that would drive some revenue growth.

What do you think? Will Facebook really pass MySpace? How has MySpace been able to retain its revenue lead for so long?

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