voiceapps

GetJar is second only to Apple’s iTunes in the world of mobile app providers. And as of this summer, the independent online store boasts just over 1 billion app downloads for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and other smartphones.

GetJar’s web site claims the store owes success to its open market approach. That is, the company supports 2,147 different devices and has sold apps to people in 200 different countries. GetJar seems quite aware of their position, too. The company blog revealed that mobile app revenue is on track to reach $17.5 billion by 2012.

In the meantime, GetJar has been expanding its own operation to prepare for this app explosion. A series B funding round just provided GetJar with an additional $11 million from backer Accel Partners, and the company tripled its number of employees in the past year. The most straightforward sign of the store’s success? The fact that each year, GetJar has also tripled its overall number of downloads.

GetJar was originally founded as a feedback site for app developers. Six years later, the site has accomplished a review process of 70,000 apps to identify consumer patterns. The most popular mobile apps that people download from GetJar are Facebook Mobile, eBuddy Messenger, and Nimbuzz. Their Facebook app alone exceeded 50 million downloads by last spring. The Yahoo, Google and YouTube apps are also in the Top 10.

Hi, I’m Ellie Cachette and I’m the resident nerd who is obsessed with consumer media.  You’ll find me crawling between the cracks of Facebook and covering breaking news about new company marketing campaigns and the changes within corporate customer service. My passion for Consumer Media is deeply rooted both as a consumer and entrepreneur.  I see the evolution of media and vast opportunities for companies to better connect with their end users and all the new ways people will be able to live healthier and happier lives. When I’m not writing for Social Times, I also write for Allfacebook and have covered stories ranging from privacy loopholes to new customer support features on Facebook.

When not writing I can be found supporting the team at ConsumerBell, an early stage  start-up I founded earlier this year to help people resolve customer service issues and keep consumers informed with educational campaigns like Food Undressed Week.  I love seeing new consumer-minded features roll out on social media platforms– and am usually one of the first to cover it.

At Social Times I enjoy covering all that is new and upcoming for consumer media, innovations in customer interactions and features that solve everyday problems.  So far I have been based in San Francisco, CA and consulted for large corporations like Macy’s and small gaming start-ups like Peanut Labs before coming aboard.

Know about something that will be coming out revolutionizing customer service? Send it over my way!:

e (dot) Cachette @ gmail.com

If you head over to YouTube this morning you’ll notice something different—a snazzy new logo that changed every time you refresh the page.  YouTube has gotten a little arsy-fartsy with their logo today in order to remind users about their YouTube Play partnership with the Guggenheim.  But whether or not users are familiar with, or even care about YouTube Play, the fresh, new logo is a pleasant surprise, much like Google surprises users from time to time with fancy, revamped logos. This isn’t the first time in recent history that YouTube has done up their logo to promote a project on the site.  Earlier this month, YouTube staged a countdown to the Day In The Life project with their logo as well.  In the days leading up to the event on July 24, in which YouTube and Ridley Scott asked YouTubers to make a video about their day to be made into a feature documentary, the YouTube logo counted down the days.

I, for one, am going to be sad when the YouTube Play event comes to a close and the YouTube logo goes back to normal.  There’s something so exciting about coming to a website expecting the familiar, recognizable logo and getting something bright, fun and different.  Just like Google surprises us on a regular basis with themed Google Doodles, maybe YouTube will start changing things up on the reg.

What do you think about today’s YouTube Play logo?  Do you think that it’s nice when brands give their logos a temporary upgrade, or do you think logos should go unchanged?

Scout Labs is designed to help brand teams tune in to social media across the Internet. Scanning blogs, forums, Twitter, news, photos, videos, open social networks and more, Scout Labs takes all of that data, counts it, trends it, analyzes it, scores it for sentiment and extracts interesting customer quotes and emotions to present what customers love, hate, want, wish, think, and feel about a brand right now.

After the jump — what you need to know about Scout Labs.

The application in a sentence

Scout Labs a real-time social media search engine that is continuously scanning the web for the voice-of-the customer, processing the data and displaying it in a real-time dashboard.

Ways the product benefits social media campaigns

• Brand Mentions: Measure the number of mentions in key channels going back six months and compare data sets.
• Brand Quality: Sentiment analysis and natural language processors on all mention types — blogs, forums, news and Twitter.
• Visualization: Quick graphs for comparison to industry and other brands. Identify areas of success and for development.
• Collaboration: Workflow features allowing assignment of post to anyone on the team for quick action. Also, quick save of items of note.

Coolest feature

Quotes: Natural language processors go through the data to find the most compelling quotes — an instant focus group identifying what people love, hate, wish, recommend, etc about any brand, keyword or string of keywords.

User profile

Scout Labs is designed for use by extended teams across an organization — marketing, product, support, PR, operations, senior execs, legal. Everyone can tune in, collaborate and jump into conversations with customers.

Pricing

Priced by number of concurrent searches. Just about every package includes unlimited data and unlimited users. There is no advertising on the site, so no outside marketing affects customer use.

Compared to competition

According to the company, “Intuitive UI, unlimited data returned to an unlimited number of users and ad hoc searches.”

With an ever-increasing number of social media marketing options, brands and agencies are searching for solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their campaigns. This series reports on significant product releases and updates to assist in selecting the most appropriate tools to meet individual objectives Recent posts covered the social media monitoring and management solutions HootSuite, Involver AMP, NetVibes.Com and Context Optional Social Marketing Suite

This week an adorable video of a baby eating a watermelon from inside the melon went viral and it inspired us to put together a list of the top 10 sweetest watermelon videos on YouTube.  August is almost here, and what’s more refreshing than a watermelon in this sweltering summer heat?  So grab a big slice and get ready to see some of the greatest YouTube watermelon videos of all time!

Baby eating Watermelon

Have you seen this yet?  This video of a baby eating a watermelon has really taken off this week with over 1 million views so far.  If there were a watermelon big enough I would love to hop inside for a nice, cool, refreshing snack.  It’s like a million degrees outside!

Watermelon Nights – The Meth Minute 39

I am a self-proclaimed stop motion animation fanatic and I love watermelon too, so its no surprise that I think this following clip is one of the best videos ever.  “Watermelon Nights are here, so sing along!”

Kitten vs. Watermelon

With more than 4.5 million views, this is the most popular watermelon clip on YouTube.  However, I’ve got a feeling that it is more popular because of the kitten than because of the watermelon.

Rotting watermelon

While I definitely wouldn’t call this video sweet or refreshing, how awesome is time lapse?  This video was shot over the span of nine days.  If you are eating watermelon right now, you may want to finish it before you watch this.

Most Watermelons Smashed with the Head

This unbelievable video features Leonardo D’Andrea from Italy breaking the world record for the most watermelons smashed with the head.  He smashes 22 watermelons with his head in one minute.  Embedding has been disabled for this video, but you can click to watch it here.  Would you smash a watermelon with your head?

High Speed Video of Watermelon Exploding

It’s always cool to watch stuff explode, and this video of a watermelon exploding doesn’t disappoint.  Embedding has also been disabled for this video, so click to watch it here.

Alligator and the Watermelon Heads

I like this video because of the alligator destroying the watermelons.  I’m not sure how I feel about what happens after that.  I’m not sure whether it makes me want to laugh or cry.  That being said, the alligator destroying the watermelons part is awesome.

High speed watermelon peeling

I didn’t know that it was even possible to peel a watermelon, let alone this fast!

Don’t touch my melon!

This little meerkat is very possessive of his watermelon.  Someone needs to teach him how to share.

Pets Love Watermelon

Meerkats aren’t the only animals that seem to really like watermelon.  Pets love watermelon too.  So our number 10 spot is dedicated to watermelon-loving pets.  Check out the three videos below, which show just how much cats, dogs and even guinea pigs love watermelon.  And while you watch that, I’m going to go buy myself a watermelon, because putting this list together has made me hungry!

Kitty with a Watermelon Addiction

Gus likes watermelon

Guinea Pigs Eating Watermelon

From the looks of YouTube, jumping out of airplanes is totally in right now.  Today’s most watched video list is spattered with skydiving videos.  It seems that a group of power YouTubers, including vloggers PrankvsPrank, DeStorm, meekakitty and TheHill88 decided to jump out of a plane together.  They did it, posted their experiences on YouTube, and are now going viral and inspiring others to jump too.  You might not jump off a bridge because everyone else was doing it, but would you jump out of a plane because you saw it on YouTube?

DeStorm

Let’s start with my favorite clip—YouTuber DeStorm skydiving while rapping.  Viewers challenged DeStorm to make a song about skydiving and rap the song while falling from the plane.  I’m totally impressed by his effort.  He actually managed to rap quite a few lyrics while falling through the air, and the song is pretty catchy as well.  Check it out below.

meekakitty

YouTuber Tessa, AKA meekakitty, uploaded a couple of clips of her jump.  She posted the full video of the jump, as well as a vlog where she talked briefly about how the jump was.  Tessa says she wasn’t at all nervous leading up to the jump, until she got to the edge of the plane.  I feel like passing out just thinking about jumping out of a plane.  How about you?

PrankvsPrank

Check out YouTube’s favorite couple, PrankvsPrank, jumping out of a plane in the clip below.  According to the description on their video, The Hill88 was there as well.  However, we haven’t seen any video proof of this fact just yet.

So what do you say?  After watching these videos are you inspired to go skydiving, or will you be keeping your feet safe on the ground?

To find inspiration for Social Times ongoing Imagine series, I only ever have to ask myself “what do I want to be doing now and why aren’t I?”  If the answer involves technology, which it often does for a person like me, I find my inspiration.  This week, the answer to that question was that I wanted to be able to have “a site that automatically starts playing some of my favorite tunes based on what it’s learned about my favorite music… and also integrate what my friends like into my playlist”.  I was going to write a post imagining the service, but when I checked up on Pandora, I realized they’re already doing it!

Pandora is an incredible music service that focuses on the concept of Music DNA to predict what you like.  So if I listen and say I like “12:51” by The Strokes, it looks at the music DNA of the song to see what I like.  It will know that I like songs with higher tempos, clean guitars, raspy vocals and straight ahead percussion.  With such a powerful algorithm used across hundreds of my “likes” and “dislikes”, Pandora begins to learn my music DNA, and starts predicting songs that really do match what I like.

Pandora does a lot of things right, and reminds me of Google in a sense: as they collect heaps of data, they are making sure not to overcomplicate their simple user interface.  As a user, I just have to type in an artist or song I like and away the service goes.  Now, when I used to use it, I could make radio stations but it was unintuitive to find and add my friends, and listen to their stations.

They’ve updated the service so that it’s quite easy to ‘quick add’ friends using their email addresses now, and you get to see all kinds of information about their music tastes and their ‘music DNA’.  I’m sure at some point there will be some sort of branding of each person’s music DNA, and I look forward to that day as well, as the service would be a lot of fun if there was the ability to sift through their massive store of musical data and discuss it with friends.

Check out our look at the Pandora CTO discussing how mobile transformed their business as well.

At this year’s Social Developer Summit, I had the chance to sit down with Robert Winkler, co-founder of 5th Planet Games and creator of Dawn of the Dragons.  The team is small, and two things stand out about Dawn of the Dragons.  The first is that the game has that high production value and infinite customizability that reminds you of classic MMORPGs.  The second is that with such a small team, they’ve accumulated nearly 100,000 MAUs and are continuing to grow.  See the video after the jump to see Robert take the time to explain and demonstrate the game.

Check out the video below, and please “Like” our Facebook page if you enjoy it!

Robert Winkler of 5th Planet Games Discusses Dawn of the Dragons from Neil Vidyarthi on Vimeo.

The growth of a smaller game by a smaller team is becoming a rarer story in the booming social applications industry.  The common reasoning is that as big players like Playfish, EA, Playdom and now Disney get involved, it becomes much tougher for small games to crack the market.  However, games like Dawn of Dragons demonstrate that creating a compelling experience and focusing on storytelling will prevail.  There’s no doubt that the most intriguing part of the game to me are the elements of narrative, such as the player starting as a farmer before being forced to become a warrior to save his/her village.

In any case, check out the game here and let us know what you think!

Facebook’s grand plan for domination continues as it annexes Playdom with the aura of Facebook Credits, enticing the social gaming giant to succumb to exclusivity over a five-year contract. Playdom, whom recently got acquired for $563.2 million, joins the likes of Crowdstar, RockYou and Zynga to enter into a five-year contract (notice: a long term contract is separate from a contract about exclusivity). The choice of going exclusive is expected to benefit all the players involved but there are others, such as Vikas Gupta of Jambool, that feel differently.

There are other players who are exclusively using Facebook Credits, such as Wooga and LOLApps in addition to the aforementioned players, but the 5 year deal is only exclusive to some, as we discussed in our previous post. Using an exclusive currency, players will be able to spend across all of Playdom’s games like Social City, Sorority Life and others.

Zynga and EA/Playfish have yet to sign a deal especially because Facebook Credits ARE voluntary, not mandatory. Facebook has not yet publicly announced whether Credits will be mandatory in part because of the adverse reaction that might entail. Facebook Credits is nonetheless aiming to become ubiquitous across social games as Facebook gains strength and numbers in adopters.

As we recently covered, RockYou had agreed to a similar deal where Facebook would earn 30% on all transactions – the standard for Facebook Credits. In addition, we speculated Facebook is in turn rewarding these developers with millions of credits for their virtual economies, a move to reap the benefits in the long term. Crowdstar was the first to sign this exclusive deal, already using Facebook Credits in all of its games since December 2009. All the players seem to be thinking positively about the exclusivity.

Infused Palermo is a way for brands to provide fully functioning stores — with inventory browsing, shopping cart and checkout capabilities — directly onto their Facebook fan pages. It also allows brands to offer affiliates fully functioning stores, rather than just display ads, to break through physiological click-off barriers.

After the jump — what you need to know about Infused Palermo.

The application in a sentence

Infused Palermo is a social commerce platform that allows merchants to sell products directly on Facebook and across the internet.

Ways the product benefits social media campaigns

• Increased sales: Infused Palermo Facebook stores experience higher conversion rates because fans stay on Facebook through the entire social commerce loop — from browsing, to checkout and purchase, through recommendation and feedback.
• Leverage social capital: Fans become a more powerful force in brands’ marketing efforts. Those participating in a completed social loop get the satisfaction of knowing that they have made good recommendations and aided informed purchasing for friends. They are motivated to continually engage in the social loop by recommending and discussing good products and experiences.
• Measurable return on investment: Infused Palermo’s analytics model allows brands to track sales on their Facebook fan pages, giving quantitative data on how their fan pages are performing.

Coolest feature

On site checkout: Shoppers complete their purchases from within Facebook, without being redirected or prompted to grant permissions to either Facebook or other third party applications.

Feature rundown

• Secure Checkout: Infused Palermo uses VeriSign SSL for secure transactions, employing up to 256 bit encryption. Stores operate and communicate within their own container, so they remain secure regardless of Facebook’s security. In addition, each store includes the VeriSign lock, accompanied by the Infused Palermo name to help shoppers feel safe that their sensitive data is being well protected.
• Systems Integration: Infused Palermo is designed to be a social commerce extension of a merchant’s existing e-commerce infrastructure. It takes advantage of many common practices in e-commerce, making integration with payment processing systems, product sourcing systems and fulfillment systems reasonable and quick. In most cases, orders from Infused Palermo stores are integrated to be processed just like orders from a merchant’s main site.
• Distributed Commerce: Merchants can used Infused Palermo as a distributed commerce solution by providing affiliates with Infused Palermo stores as a replacement for standard banner ads. A merchant’s Infused Palermo store can be embedded into any fan page and across the internet.

User profile

Anyone who is selling online and wants to leverage their social networks to start bringing products to the consumer, rather than making consumers come to them.

Pricing

Customers pay a monthly fee plus a metered commission on transactions processed through the store. Customization fees may also be applied to meet unique customer requirements.

With an ever-increasing number of social media marketing options, brands and agencies are searching for solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their campaigns. This series reports on significant product releases and updates to assist in selecting the most appropriate tools to meet individual objectives. We recently presented LoyaltyMatch OnDemand Social Loyalty.

Israel-based startup Wibiya has made waves with their social web toolbar, experiencing tremendous growth since their June 2009 launch and positioning themselves as the most popular web toolbar on the Internet.  The Wibiya toolbar allows site owners to instantly integrate their entire web presence, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other outside functionality, into their website.  A little over a year after the company’s launch, Wibiya is now being used on over 70,000 active websites and boasts 150 million unique monthly users—that’s almost as many as Twitter! Today I had the opportunity to sit down with Wibiya’s CEO and co-founder, Dror Ceder, who demoed the toolbar for me and introduced me to its capabilities.  By installing Wibiya on your website, you can bring all of your online activity to your site, where visitors can view it without leaving your homepage.  Wibiya can bring Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Buzz, and more directly to your site and your visitors can chat, share and engage with their social networks while checking out your content.  Check out the screenshot below to see how users can engage with Facebook, directly from the Wibiya website using the company’s toolbar.  Users can connect to “like” and share content, comment and even update their Facebook statuses, directly from the Wibiya toolbar.

Wibiya is a great way for publishers to add functionality and content to their websites without having to revamp or reprogram their entire website.  Dror Ceder explains how it works:

“Our Company’s mission is to help Websites of all types easily integrate applications and features into their websites without writing any code.  Websites can easily add features based on their benefits, from increasing page views and viewing analytics to integrating social networks.  This allows each website to concentrate on their core business and use Wibiya for everything else.”

What makes the toolbar great is that it allows website visitors to engage with outside sources and social networks, without ever leaving the site, greatly decreasing the bounce rate for sites that have opted in to the service.  Wibiya’s 150 million monthly users are engaged across the 70,000 plus websites that have the toolbar installed.  They are using the toolbar to share content, chat with other website videos, watch YouTube clips, read Twitter content, and more.

Wibiya’s toolbar is already being used by a number of big brands and websites online, including TheOnion.com, Playboy.com, JellyBelly.com, Philly.com and more.  The toolbar is allowing these brands to add functionality to their sites and give their visitors more opportunity to engage and share content.  As word spreads about Wibiya, which is being marketed through word of mouth alone, it is likely to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Have you interacted with Wibiya on any websites that you visit regularly?  What do you think about the added functionality that this type of service offers?

Zynga and Softbank have been secretly meeting in an effort to figure out how to tackle the Japenese market with high-quality, mass-appeal games. In June, news broke out that Zynga had ‘raised’ $150 million from Softbank Capital but we had no way of knowing how true that was. Zynga’s expansion into the Asian market, accelerated by acquisition of Chinese game developer XPD Media, is now solidified as the $150 million is confirmed. Zynga and Softbank will work in a joint venture to develop and distribute games across Japan.

Millions of users will have the ability to playing these games ‘anytime and anywhere’, according to the release. Softbank will bring to the table its competencies in cutting edge mobile and web technology that should give Zynga the wide global audience reach it needs to maintain its unquestionable lead. Zynga has now raised to date $366 million and expanded in countries like India to broaden its social gaming presence. We also found out that Google might have secretly invested $200 million in Zynga as part of its effort to develop a gaming service, but that has yet to be confirmed.

“Zynga is a leader in social games and I am delighted to partner with them to introduce their social games to Japan,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of Softbank.  “We share the same vision as Zynga in social games and look forward to working together to create a social game powerhouse.”

Softbank has been quite active in social gaming, having made investments in companies like Oak Pacific Interactive (China’s largest SNS operator), Ustream.tv, Alibaba and others, to extend its arm in the e-commerce, social networking and online games industry. The tech giant also recently invested $10 million in RockYou as part of its joint venture with the social gaming giant called RockYou Asia that plans to gain market share in the Japanese, Korean and Chinese markets.

“We’re excited to partner with Softbank to bring Zynga’s social games to Japan and gain insights from the Japanese market,” said Mark Pincus, CEO and Founder of Zynga. “As one of the most innovative technology companies in the world, Softbank is bringing the mobile internet to consumers making the social web more accessible to people everywhere.”

Zynga and Softbank have been secretly meeting in an effort to figure out how to tackle the Japenese market with high-quality, mass-appeal games. In June, news broke out that Zynga had ‘raised’ $150 million from Softbank Capital but we had no way of knowing how true that was. Zynga’s expansion into the Asian market, accelerated by acquisition of Chinese game developer XPD Media, is now solidified as the $150 million is confirmed. Zynga and Softbank will work in a joint venture to develop and distribute games across Japan.

Millions of users will have the ability to playing these games ‘anytime and anywhere’, according to the release. Softbank will bring to the table its competencies in cutting edge mobile and web technology that should give Zynga the wide global audience reach it needs to maintain its unquestionable lead. Zynga has now raised to date $366 million and expanded in countries like India to broaden its social gaming presence. We also found out that Google might have secretly invested $200 million in Zynga as part of its effort to develop a gaming service, but that has yet to be confirmed.

“Zynga is a leader in social games and I am delighted to partner with them to introduce their social games to Japan,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of Softbank.  “We share the same vision as Zynga in social games and look forward to working together to create a social game powerhouse.”

Softbank has been quite active in social gaming, having made investments in companies like Oak Pacific Interactive (China’s largest SNS operator), Ustream.tv, Alibaba and others, to extend its arm in the e-commerce, social networking and online games industry. The tech giant also recently invested $10 million in RockYou as part of its joint venture with the social gaming giant called RockYou Asia that plans to gain market share in the Japanese, Korean and Chinese markets.

“We’re excited to partner with Softbank to bring Zynga’s social games to Japan and gain insights from the Japanese market,” said Mark Pincus, CEO and Founder of Zynga. “As one of the most innovative technology companies in the world, Softbank is bringing the mobile internet to consumers making the social web more accessible to people everywhere.”

Tomorrow, Second Life creator Philip Rosedale will give Linden Lab’s corporate strategy presentation to the company’s customers, at the most perilous time in the virtual world’s history. A darling of the Internet industry only three scant years ago, Linden’s profitability has been eroded by company efforts to turn SL into a real world business platform and improve the complicated user interface — both of which yielded negligible results, and worse, a massive layoff of Linden staff (including the top executive and CEO who led that drive.) Newly returned to Linden Lab as “interim CEO”, Rosedale says he’s pushing a “back to basics” crusade that will fix the nagging technical problems that beset Second Life. Which is a good start. But as someone who’s been writing about Second Life for seven years (first as a Linden contractor, and then as an author and blogger), saving Second Life in today’s Internet will require quickly growing its userbase. Here’s how: With about a million unique users who log in every month, Second Life is hardly dead; what’s more, several hundred thousand new accounts are still reportedly created monthly. The problem is few stay, and those who do rarely spend much money on Linden Dollars (the world’s virtual currency) or buy SL land (the company’s main revenue source.) Fortunately, there’s a number of fixes with a reliable track record that could improve this, and which the company could implement relatively easily and cheaply:

Add an Achievements/Leveling System to Second Life Overwhelmingly, most new Second Life users quit because they generally have no purpose or motivation to explore the world, find the incredible amount of user-generated content in it, or interact with the existing userbase. An achievement/leveling system matched to L$ rewards and pinned to exploration and interaction would immediately increase user retention, while encouraging noobies into the far richer experience of Second Life that lies beyond the initial learning curve.

Partner with a Prepaid Card Service While Second Life has some of the highest ARPU rates of any freemium virtual world, it needs many more customers to keep the internal economy of user-generated content thriving. Already popular with the largest virtual worlds and social games, a prepaid retail card for Linden Dollars would quickly create those.

Add an “In-World Now” Display Linden Lab has been fighting a losing battle to create a viable search engine to expose all the great user-made locations in Second Life. One short term solution is easier, and probably more effective — a list of locations which contain other users currently online. Most people don’t care to find pretty locations that are empty; far better to show them all the places that are full of people. That’s how Habbo does it, and Habbo’s fricking huge.

Greatly Improve Text Chat In a study by two University of Michigan academics, chat was found to be the primary predictive factor for keeping new Second Life users engaged. Not making money, or exploring the world, but simple text chat with fellow SL users. The problem is that Second Life chat, especially within groups, is dodgy and unreliable. If there’s one feature that needs the most attention, therefore, it’s this one.

Point-and-Click Movement Incredibly, moving in Second Life still resembles a first-person shooter, hardly the most user-friendly UI metaphor for casual social gamers. To capture the mass audience who’ve embraced the most successful full 3D PC games, like The Sims 3 and World of Warcraft, Second Life needs a navigation option like theirs: Point-and-click.

Heavily Promote User-Made Machinima Linden Lab has unsuccessfully tried to promote Second Life as a place to hold business meetings, while largely ignoring the most powerful real world application of SL: Machinima, which has already been used in several Hollywood movies. That’s SL’s real world killer app, and should be promoted to film schools, indie filmmakers, and others interested in a cheap and powerful platform for 3D animation. (And all that machinima only serves as a great visual promotion for Second Life itself!)

Hire a Game Industry VP With Design Background Here’s another surprise: Linden Lab has never had an executive with a background in the game industry that’s heavy on design. (Programming and marketing, yes; not the same thing) But it’s game designers who’ve already learned how to solve a lot of the problems Second Life faces. Above all, hiring a game designer means Linden Lab will have made the most important realization about its own product: Niche real world applications aside, Second Life is still essentially a game, and needs to be fun before it is anything else. But doing that will require getting out of what I call the Dwight Scrhute Echo Chamber.

Of course, there are many more features that need fixing and adding, but I believe these are the easiest to implement that’ll gain the best immediate results. Failing that, I fear the most interesting and inspiring user-generated community I’ve ever written about will flounder into irrelevance, instead of becoming what it could and should be: a central hub of the social Internet.

A survey of over 1000 US Internet users reveals that the majority of those surveyed favor free content accompanied by relevant targeted ads. The research, conducted by PreferenceCentral, also shows that attitudes and preferences shift significantly when consumers are provided with education about behavioral targeting or when they are offered the ability to control targeted ad exposure.

According to the study, certain factors play a role in consumers’ comfort level with online advertising. When educated about behavioral targeting, 29% of respondents became less comfortable with the tradeoff of free content for targeted ads. However, when subsequently informed that behavioral targeting data is anonymous, non-personally identifiable, 35% of these Internet users became more comfortable, indicating a need for consumer education on this topic.

PreferenceCentral offers a solution that allows advertisers and their partners to provide consumers with a way to control their own online advertising experience. The company was encouraged by the finding that, when presented with the option of using its product as a means to exercise more control over their exposure to targeted ads and transparency into the data used by advertisers, 70% of Internet users expressed interest in using such a tool, with 33% stating they are very to extremely interested. Additionally, 41% of consumers became more comfortable and were 27% more willing to receive targeted, relevant ads in exchange for free content if they were given a control solution.

One may surmise that the findings can be extended to other means of becoming informed about and controlling targeted ad exposure — in other words, the increased willingness to accept targeted advertising would increase similarly if the Internet users were presented with options similar to PreferenceCentral.

The study also found that, across all tradeoff exercises, only about 10% of consumers expressed a preference for paying for content with no advertising.

PreferenceCentral states that they sought to build upon past research with its consumer survey, which asked consumers to state their preferences for tailored online advertising in the context of real-world trade-off scenarios. It is the company’s perspective that contrary to prior research, the survey results reveal Internet users are more likely to prefer targeted online ads when they are asked to make real-world, value-for-value trade-offs, such as free access to Internet content.

The survey, according to the company, went a step beyond past research by reiterating the exact questions from recent studies, including the Annenberg-Berkley survey “Americans Reject Tailored Advertising” and similar research on the topic. When asked simple, single-option questions, PreferenceCentral generated similar results as those reported in the Annenberg-Berkley study; only a minority of respondents indicated that they wanted to receive tailored online ads. However, while past researchers concluded that the reason behind consumers’ negative response was privacy concerns, the PreferenceCentral study probed further and found that their primary reason was a dislike for annoying online ads, not privacy concerns.

“The core takeaways for the advertising industry are that it’s not enough to just educate consumers on targeted advertising; we must also provide meaningful choice and control over their online ad experience,” said Dr. Karl Lendenmann, vice president of marketing and analytics for PreferenceCentral parent company Datran Media. “For online publishers, these results mean that they should be offering multiple content-access models to optimize appeal and monetization.”

Recently, the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) released their own research that shows behaviorally targeted ads are more than twice as valuable in terms of prices advertisers pay and more than twice as effective in converting consumers who click on ads into buyers than normal run-of-network ads. With such strong value tied to behavioral targeting, PreferenceCentral states it is crucial to obtain and understand a more complete view of consumers’ perspectives on online advertising.

Automobile makers are finding it increasingly fruitful to make announcements using Facebook. Through Facebook, companies have segmented their audience by car, and one well known company, Ford, announced the launch of the new Ford Explorer through their Facebook Fanpage and received a great response. Another car maker attempting this is Mazda, with the announcement of Mazda2 for North America utilizing a branded social game on Facebook called DriverVille. Read more after the jump.

Capturing the attention of digital natives is a creative task for many and Mazda North American Operations, in conjunction with a creative agency called Doner are looking to position Mazda2 as a stylish and substantial vehicle with eco-friendly components. Also known as Zoom-Zoom Concentrated, this particular feel focuses on compactness and efficiency which is captured with the virtual world that simultaneously educated and entertains users.

“The MAZDA2 is Zoom-Zoom in its most concentrated form. And DriverVille is where Your Inner Driver can learn about the MAZDA2 and connect with other inner drivers in the social space,” stated Don Romano, president of Mazda Canada and chief marketing officer of MNAO.

The game fully incorporates social features as it allows players to customize an ‘inner driver avatar’ in accordance to the player’s personality. This avatar is the front runner for gameplay that encourages users to play and win Driver Bucks virtual currency that can be used for virtual goods purchasing and entering sweepstakes as well. DriverVille also includes mini-games and quests like the Mazda Raceway Race and Snow Tires Quest where users can go snowboarding after acquiring the essential items.

“At the heart of this campaign is a big idea: to follow ‘Your Inner Driver’ to the all-new MAZDA2. The Inner Driver is part of everyone that loves to drive, and Your Inner Driver wants a car with unique styling and the driving dynamics that only a MAZDA2 can deliver in this segment. The launch of this car is all about creating high-engagement content that allows our target to take ownership of their Inner Driver thru the MAZDA2 and then share those deep experiences with their social networks and their world at-large,” said Rob Strasberg, co-CEO and chief creative officer of Doner.

One word of caution to Mazda and Doner would the use of the word ‘ville’ as part of their game’s title. Although not a threat, this social gaming move could be a potential candidate for Zynga’s legal avalanche that’s looking to protect its brand from name copyers. Regardless, DriverVille’s intentions of letting users experience the Mazda2 with expressive features and competition might turn out to be an inspirational tactic for brands to engage consumers. The content from the game will also be linked to other social networks, live events, music, cinema and other online properties that interest the savvy digital consumer. Check out the game here: http://facebook.com/mazdacanada and click on the DriverVille tab.  (note: the focus is for Canadians).

Have you ever wished that you could express yourself more thoroughly on your social network profiles and go beyond the conventional profile images and text?  Vanityvid, a new Israel-based startup, is taking the profile pic to the next level by giving users the opportunity to turn their Facebook and Twitter profile pictures into videos.  I had the opportunity to ask Vanityvid’s CTO and Co-Founder, Oren Solomianik, a few questions about the service, it’s inspiration and how Vanityvid is doing so far.  See what he had to say after the jump. Before we get into my interview with Oren, let’s take a look at how Vanityvid works.  Vanityvid brings profile pictures to life.  On the company’s website they explain that, “Wherever your profile pic shows (social networks, online communities, blog comments, etc.), people will also be able to see you move and hear you talking, and get a better feeling of who you are and what you’re like.”

Users can record or upload their Vanityvid profile videos directly from the Vanityvid website.  In order to see the Vanityvids of other users, a Vanityvid browser add-on must be installed.  The add-on is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome.  Oren explains how the site works in the video below.

I was curious to find out about what inspired Oren and the other co-founders of Vanityvid to start the company, as well as their vision for how the service would be used.  Oren has this to say:

“We are also the founders of Triond, so we sat one day going over pics of our users and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to really see and hear these wonderful people?’…When you look at a pic, you can’t answer several basic questions—How does this person view himself?  How does he communicate verbally?  What is his body language and what is his general vibe?  A video answers those questions and much more.”

Vanityvid gives users the opportunity to share a lot more of their personality with their friends and followers.  They can tell people about themselves, who they are, what they do, what they enjoy and more, and give viewers a much better idea of their personality than they can with the traditional picture and text profile.

Oren told me that they are receiving a lot of great responses from their users, who see Vanityvid “as a tool for a better social experience and for personal branding.”  He told me that more than 1,000 people have recorded Vanityvids and more and more people are making their profile pics into videos with Vanityvid on a daily basis.

I asked how the company is promoting themselves.  Oren said, “We’re currently promoting it through people using the service.  They are encouraged to share it with their friends on Facebook and Twitter.  Also, each time we get a new partner on board we immediately have the potential to be used by all of their users.”  Triond is Vanityvid’s first partner and, as such, users do not have to have the toolbar installed in order to see users’ video profiles on the Triond site.

I think that the idea of allowing users to upload videos in place of profile pictures on networks like Facebook and Twitter is a great one.  It really does allow friends and followers to get a better sense of who you are as a person, which is especially great for bloggers and professionals.  It will be interesting to see how Vanityvid takes off and whether the service will lead to a future in which video is the new profile pic.  What do you think of the idea?  What would you share with the world through a video profile picture?

Aurora Feint’s Gold partnership is a select program that invites the cream of the crop applications with exceptional utilization of OpenFeint’s social features and are in turn rewarded for their characteristics. The latest game to be selected is Depict 1.6 by Makeshift games, a universal app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Depict 1.6 is a great example of a social mobile application and is perfect for OpenFeint. Read more after the jump.

Makeshift games is comprised of various industry professionals who collaborate to create games for both fun and profit. They’ve been developing games since 2005 and their latest title is a work of art, filled with addictive gameplay, achievements and innovative social features.

“We know that players love Depict and wanted to make sure our players were properly equipped to spread the joy,” said James Jacoby, manager of Makeshift Games. “We’ve worked with Aurora Feint to greatly expand our OpenFeint integration to make the social features of the game even more accessible,” said James Jacoby, manager of Makeshift Games.

Depict, a Pictionary-like drawing game, first launched in December of 2009. Players compete with friends and others worldwide in a drawing and guessing game where they have multiple choice answers for fast and simple play. There are many modes of gameplay including classic, lightning round and solo play, the last 2 being guessing only. The game can be played over the web and taps into OpenFeint’s ability to invite others and host private matches.

There are also numerous social features. Players can change their avatars to say wink at an opponent. As we know, most casual and social games motivate users with leaderboards – something Depict 1.6 does well especially with over 30 achievements to unlock.

“Depict is a ridiculously fun game that really captures the attention of our players,” said Eros Resmini, VP of Marketing and Developer Relations at Aurora Feint, Inc. “With it’s innovative OpenFeint integration and addictive game play, Depict is the perfect OpenFeint Gold game and a title that we think our 30 million players are going to embrace.”

Past Gold games titles include Fieldrunners, Jet Car Stunts and Bird Strike. As a Gold game, Depict will be featured in special promotions, including a dedicated landing page at OpenFeint with a banner, and featured in contests by Aurora Feint. The universal app is currently available in App Store for $0.99. Learn more about it here: www.openfeint.com/games/gold.