Check out some video from his presentation below:

This Week In Social: Facebook dominates the headlines, launching their own app center, file-sharing for groups and a new feature that lets users pay to promote their status update

Google+ Launches ‘Hangouts on Air,’ Lets You Broadcast Live to Everyone

Tumblr Introduces “Storyboard,” A Hub To Feature Creative Users

Facebook Is Your New I.D For Social Good

Gmail Adds Full Suite Of Google+ Features, Including Commenting & +1s

Facebook Lauches “App Center”, Paid Apps

Bing Deepens Facebook Integration, Connecting Searchers With Friends

Couponing with foursquare

Facebook Rolls Out File-Sharing for All Groups

With IPO Just Days Away, Facebook Faces FTC Probe

Facebook Testing ‘Highlight’ Feature, Lets Users Pay $2 To Promote Their Status Updates

“The company, which lets users alert their friends to their location by “checking in” via smartphone from coffee shops, bars and other locations, revealed for the first time that it plans to let merchants buy special placement for promotions of personalized local offers in July in a redesigned version of its app. All users will be able to see the specials, but must check into the venue to redeem them.”

Couponing within foursquare’s app is an evolution of foursquare’s partnership with American Express to deliver discounts and check-in specials to cardholders. While the program has been a success so far, it has been limited to a few partners. The new couponing system will be automated by vendors who, in turn, will pay for the visibility within foursquare’s walls. As Crowley noted, foursquare may be achieving its goal of “connecting people with places and places with people.”

A great deal of the move’s success hinges on foursquare’s recent addition to its app, the ‘Explore’ tab. The Explore Tab, unlike other recommendation and review portals (Google Places, Yelp), utilizes an algorithm based on total popularity, friends’ check-ins and personal check-in history to deliver personalized recommendations. foursquare’s move from a check-in app with badges to a legitimate discovery powerhouse ultimately made this move possible. The move also signals the continued evolution of mobile as a source of revenue. The stats speak for themself:

• Nearly half of all online consumers in the US will redeem digital coupons online or in a store (eMarketer)

• $2.37 billion of mobile coupon transactions will take place in North America in 2013, up from $5 million in 2010 (Yankee Group)

• One in Ten Mobile Users Redeem Coupons (eMarketer)

Apps like Path, Instagram, and foursquare have been ultra successful without a desktop presence. Yesterday Google quietly integrated Google Offers across its  ‘Maps’ for Android product. Mobile gaming, shopping, and consumption are all on the rise with no sign of decline in sight.

–

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iTunes turned 9 years old last week and they still haven’t figured out #social. Apple: How is that possible?

— Richard Ting (@flytip) May 7, 2012

Interesting thought, right? iTunes and the iPod/iPhone revolutionized the music industry by legitimizing the selling of digital files and creating an amazing mobile device to play those files.

But for all of its ingenuity, iTunes and Apple have failed to fold the major trend of the day into what is arguably its flagship service.

iTunes has no social DNA.

The iPod/iTunes introduction definitely preceded the social revolution inspired by Facebook, but it seems odd that Apple has completely failed to successfully embed some sort of social thinking into subsequent versions of iTunes.

It’s odd, right? The biggest tech company in the world failing to add social components into its flagship product, especially when there has been so much buzz in recent years about the socialization of digital music – see everything written about turntable.fm and the streaming music set (Spotify, Rdio, etc.) as well as buzz for SoundCloud, etc. A friend pointed out, and I think it’s very true, that iTunes in some ways feels like AOL Instant Messenger when placed in the context of the whole digital music spectrum – first to the game, definitely revolutionary, but then surpassed by others that built on its potential.

Apple did try to create a social network around iTunes by introducing Ping. It didn’t go as well as planned. Look, I’m not going to sit back and second guess how Ping was put together, especially with the benefit of hindsight, but there were major problems with it.

It failed because it was dense and difficult to use. It failed because it never felt like social was the primary function of the network. It failed because it didn’t allow you to do things that you could do on social networks (status updates, view others activity streams, real time updates). It failed because it lived in a bubble and refused to build on the social networks that already exist and are booming. The failure is well documented.

I do think that the main stumbling block with Ping is that it was envisioned as a closed network and it simply did not have the momentum to maintain those feedback loops. Social is about creating pathways for people to share and discover information. Ping was introduced as if Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist. Take a look at every nascent startup right now – they have social mechanisms that make sharing easy. Ping didn’t do that. And without those pathways and without the content to maintain a self-contained network, there was no way for Ping to maintain users.

But let’s focus less on why social hasn’t been integrated into the iTunes experience and more on how it could be:^[1]

Enable easy social sharing on mobile devices and iTunes. Spotify does this well. If you’re playing a song on Spotify via the desktop app or the mobile app, there’s a button that allows you to broadcast that information to your friends. It’s a simple way to increase engagement with your product.

good lord this is nice #NowPlaying Otis Redding – Let Me Come On Home on #Spotifyopen.spotify.com/track/3QOSKKTi…

— Varun Shetty (@VarunSShetty) May 4, 2012

Apple could do something similar in two ways. First, it could include some of these social sharing buttons in the iTunes interface to allow you to Tweet or Facebook your friends and let them know that you bought the new Black Keys album on iTunes. Second, and WAY better, they could add social sharing to the Music app on the iPhone. Listening to the Beastie Boys? Just click the Share via Twitter button to let everyone know (they already have made a deal with Twitter to integrate the app into iOS and the integration is seamless, so why not take full advantage of it?). That way you can say: “I’m listening to Holocene by Bon Iver on my iPhone 4S – buy it here on iTunes [link].” Social sharing buttons aren’t groundbreaking – why not use them?

Create activity streams. This takes the previous suggestion a step further. Allow folks to create a running history of what they’re listening to that they can share with friends (Last.fm already does this). Allow them to tag locations where they heard songs. Integrate with OpenGraph to get this information in front of as many eyeballs as possible.^[2]

Make iTunes a home for artists. MySpace is staying alive right now because it found a niche as the go-to site for bands to connect with their fans. It’s still an arena where Facebook has yet to make major inroads. Often times, we’re trying to figure out how to integrate e-commerce into existing sites. With iTunes, we have a different problem – how do we build a community around a shopping experience. Bringing the artists’ into the fold could make a huge difference. The current Lady Gaga Ping page contains her name, number of Ping followers, similar artists, and her Twitter stream. Give me one reason why I would EVER visit that page.

What about allowing artists to have a home on iTunes? Copy MySpace. Allow streaming songs there (obviously, major legal and licensing hurdles to overcome); allow multimedia content; give artists the option to build their presence out via iTunes. If they can do that, the fans will come. And then the artists have a direct portal to e-commerce (although that portal will be available under the terms that Apple sets).

Social recommendations. Half the fun of listening to music is sharing it with other people. The other half is looking down on people who don’t know anything about the bands you’re listening to. There’s a certain amount of collaboration/one-upsmandship that makes turntable.fm so much fun. Is there a way that can be baked into iTunes? Leaderboards or discounts for users that are able to recommend music for others – where that recommendation results in a purchase? I personally like this idea because, although I was very excited for the Genius function (you choose a song, Apple creates a playlist from it), I felt that it never lived up to what it could be. Plus, people are better than robots (for most things).

Discovery through social data. Take a look at what Next Big Sound is doing – aggregating social data about acts to allow people to draw insights and make decisions about them. With the proper segmentation this could be a fantastic way to find out about new music. Billboard even uses Next Big Sound to come up with a “social” chart. An iTunes integration would be great – allowing people to find popular music as it’s gaining momentum.

******

Apple’s work has been revolutionary in so many ways, but it would be nice to see them push iTunes even further.

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Despite the fact that we were in a relatively empty bar that we all frequented, or that everyone in the crowd was a few years past 21, I was still pretty surprised when the waiter gave the okay. Over a pitcher of beer, my coworkers and I wondered if this was a first – was a Facebook profile really just accepted as proof of ID?

Fast-forward to last week, and it seems that Facebook is even more useful as a particular form of identification, thanks to the recent inclusion of the “organ donor” option under the health and wellness section of milestones.

In an interview with Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, “Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories. We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation, and that they want to participate in this with their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.”

For a website that started out as a resource for college coeds wondering if that cutie from Psych 101 was single, and is now a primary source of communication for people across the world, the much publicized “organ donor” option marks a distinct and calculated choice for Facebook to move beyond the realm of simply “social media” and into the world of social good. Expanding upon Facebook’s “Causes” initiative, an application that enables users to organize into communities that support specific issues, campaigns, and non-profits, the organ donor Timeline option not only signifies support of a cause, but also spreads awareness on a personal level as a part of the platform’s profile structure.

Facebook users can share their stories about when, where, or why they decided to become an organ donor. If they are not already registered with their state or national registry and want to be, there is a link to the official donor registry next to the option to add “organ donor” to Timeline. Utilizing Facebook’s inherent nature as a platform to spread awareness and create conversations offers infinite potential for prompting discussion – or at least, consideration – among friends across the globe.

Now both my license and profile say I’m over 21 and an organ donor. I wonder if this is “proof” of a new era in the history of how we use Facebook?

–

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Click here to view the embedded video.

This Week In Social Media: Instagram passes 50M users, LinkedIn acquires SlideShare and Facebook introduces an organ donor initiative

Infographic: Interest In Pinterest 

Pepsi, Twitter Partnership To Yield Live Streaming Music Concerts

Facebook Is Urging Members to Add Organ Donor Status

42% of US Adults See Twitter Messages Daily

Twitter Improves Discover Tab To Surface More Interesting Content

Facebook Tests Another Social Sharing Icon

Instagram Has Surpassed 50 Million Users

LinkedIn Acquires Professional Content Sharing Platform SlideShare For $119M 

Facebook’s “Offers” News Feed Coupons Launch In Self-Serve Beta For Local U.S. Businesses

]]> http://www.attentionusa.com/2012/05/this-wek-in-social-media/feed/ 0 http://www.attentionusa.com/2012/04/infographic-interest-in-pinterest/ http://www.attentionusa.com/2012/04/infographic-interest-in-pinterest/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:15:11 +0000 Chris Lubin http://www.attentionusa.com/?p=4788 Read More >]]> Pinterest has been the most buzzed about social networking site for months now. It even achieved the distinction of being the fast growing site ever. This terrific infogrpahic from Tamba, shows just how much the site has grown and evolved in a little over a year.

This Week In Social: Google+ launches its own ‘Share’ button, Klout gets into the mobile space with its first iOS app and Facebook is now over 900 million users

YouTube Launches AdWords For Video

Facebook Updates S-1: Revenue Up 45% Over Last Year, Now At 901 Million Users

Here’s How Much Money Facebook Makes Off of You

Facebook to Change Fan Pages Again

OWS Protestor Doesn’t Own His Tweets, Judge Rules

Google+ Launches Share Button

Klout Takes Social Influence Mobile With New iOS App

A Guide To CISPA, The Most Recent Recent Cyber-Security Bill

StumbleUpon Reaches 25M Registered Users, Plans For Global Expansion And API

Twitter Updates iPhone and Android Apps: Improves Discover Tab, Search & Push Notifications