93octane’s posterous

Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service.

Apple’s recent acquisition of digital music startup Lala rekindled speculation of an iTunes subscription service...but after talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans...Lala will play a critical role in Apple’s music future, but not for the reasons cited above.

What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business...The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.

Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices. (full article...)

TechCrunch | Apple’s Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical (by Michael Robertson, Guest Author)

Tumblr and Posterous are the two most prominent “tumblogging” sites, i.e. sites that make blogging more straightforward by making it easier to post media. Both were launched within six months. (Actually, Posterous was started later than Tumblr.)

But now Tumblr has been an Alexa Top 100 site for a while and is still growing strong. Meanwhile Posterous has about 4 times less uniques. Yet Posterous has everything to win: it’s a Y Combinator company with top-tier investors like Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor. Its founders are experienced software engineers with computer science degrees from Stanford. How come it’s eating dust from a small startup started by a high school dropout?

The answer is as easy as it is counter-intuitive: Tumblr is a New York company and Posterous is a Silicon Valley company (full article...).

I asked Posterous co-founder Sachin Agarwal how Posterous will actually make money. His answer was simple. Charge for business and commercial use of Posterous...One of Posterous’ first “clients” is Coca-Cola, which is definitely a good first start. Coca-Cola is using Posterous for its NCAA “Dept of Fannovation” where people can come up with ideas to improve the experience of being a fan, and a chance to win $10,000. (full article...)

The LTC's Capital Access Special Interest Group presents:

 

"Angel Investing - What it is and how to get it"

 

Choose Taurman and Clayton White, Directors of the South Coast Angel Fund, will review the basics of angel investing and discuss how entrepreneurs and investors looking for capital should approach angel investment groups. 

 

Who should attend - potential angels looking to find out more about angel investing, and entrepreneurs considering a search for funding.

Date:  Wednesday, January 20^th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm

Location:  Louisiana Technology Park, 7117 Florida Blvd., Baton Rouge LA

Cost:  $5 for LTC Members and $20 for Non-Members*

 

*Join the LTC at any event and receive 10% off the membership dues plus attend for the member price

Register today at:  http://www.ltc-la.org/en/cev/433

When you think of social media roles, chances are you think of a community manager or the oh-so-generic “social media manager”, which is usually some function of the marketing department managing strictly social media programs. But there are loads of other potential roles that can integrate or represent social media alongside other business areas. Considering these is one of the primary ways to really integrate and entrench social media and its implications throughout the business, not just isolated in the communications department. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

1. Social Phone Operator
   ...folks that help us man the front lines of what we call our Listening Grid. They’re responsible for manning the dashboard, picking up the alerts, and routing posts that require engagement or attention to the right people.
2. Lead Generation
   By listening carefully to the discussions around your brand, competition, or specific market or industry, you can spot when people are seeking out the kind of products or services you provide. We call this Listening at the Point Of Need.
3. Social Business Development
   Hush with you that social media can’t be good for B2B (I’ve been doing social media in B2B for two years and it’s working just fine, thank you).
4. (full article...)

Altitude Branding | 7 Social Media Roles You Haven’t Considered (by Amber Naslund)

With the new funding, Get Satisfaction has raised $4.8 million in all. It now has more than 25,000 company pages, and apparently, chief executive Wendy Lea was just invited to the White House meeting of business leaders. Competitors include RightNow, Lithium, and Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud. (full article...)

VentureBeat | (by Anthony Ha)

[ I need your help! If you landed here by following a link, would you please take a short moment to leave a comment about whether or not you find my posting format (abstract w/link to full article) of value to you, and what, if anything, you would change about this technique? Any other comments are always welcome. I appreciate your feedback, thanks! -@93octane ]

Does that mean Twitter's follower counts are lying? No. Instead, Twitter accounts that have over half a million followers listed actually represent (at most) a few hundred thousand people who've chosen to become organic followers of someone, along with millions who are passively along for the ride. Some of them are inactive users, some are spammers, some just ignore the noise of the accounts that don't interest them, like spam in an email inbox. But they can't count as "followers" in any meaningful sense. A few people have asked what my goal is in writing about the experience of being on the [Twitter's suggested user] list...Well, perhaps the best way to articulate it is that I think the list is being used as a useful fiction for distorting the value and promise of this new medium. (full article...)

Dashes.com | Nobody Has A Million Twitter Followers (by Anil Dash)

[ I need your help! If you landed here by following a link, would you please take a short moment to leave a comment about whether or not you find my posting format (abstract w/link to full article) of value to you, and what, if anything, you would change about this technique? Any other comments are always welcome. I appreciate your feedback, thanks! -@93octane ]

CarMax is looking to boost sales prospects in 140-character, tweet-size chunks by launching a new promotion using the social networking Web site Twitter. Company officials are planning to give one consumer $25,000 toward the purchase of a used vehicle from their nationwide inventory. "Giving away a late-model, fully reconditioned CarMax vehicle is an excellent way to draw attention to both our great cars and our efforts on Twitter," explained Joe Kunkel, senior vice president of marketing and strategy. (full article...)

AutoRemarketing | CarMax Promotion Taps into Market of Twitter Users

Starting today at the new Twitter offices in San Francisco are no less than 10 new staff members in a variety of roles. The biggest fish Twitter caught is likely Bakari Brock, a former attorney at Kilpatrick Stockton who has served as Corporate Counsel for YouTube and Google since September 2007.

It’s not only Google losing key staff to Twitter, though. [Louis] Gray also tracked these people, who are likely starting at Twitter today:

- Paul Soals (ex-IT Support Engineer at Bebo and previously with Apple)
- Nancy Broden (ex-Director of User Experience at Qik)
- Florian Leibert (ex-Platform Engineer Data Services at Ning)
- (full article...)

TechCrunch | Twitter Kicks Off 2010 Hiring People Away From Google, Bebo, Ning And More (by Robin Wauters

Seesmic applications on Blackberry, Android, Web, Windows and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration very shortly and therefore will instantly support 50 social networks. Seesmic users will also be able to update not only with the apps they are used to, but also with Ping.fm's email, sms and chat gateways. (full article...)

Seesmic.com | We've acquired Ping.fm. Get ready to update 50 social networks from Seesmic