It’s been a rollercoaster of a week with buy-outs, sell-outs and re-vamps all over the place. Here's Yomego's take on all the news you need from this week, and everything you're going to need for next week - featuring the potential UK launch of Turntable.fm, the BBC's project Barcelona and the biggest changes to Google's search results yet.
This week our Brand Barometer piece focuses on Lynx, a brand which brought 'chaos' to the streets as it launched its first female product. Find out how it scores over on Marketing Magazine.
(Image from here)
A hit in the making?
Remember Turntable FM, the music service that lets your hipster friends host music streaming chat rooms featuring their fave playlists? It’s been US-only forever due to licensing restrictions, but at SXSW, founders Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein announced having successfully secured deals with all four of the major labels, making the UK service good to go. We’re big fans of Spotify’s comprehensive streaming service and Last FM’s intelligent music discovery system. If Turntable FM can combine the best elements of both, its product might just be worth the wait.
Contibuted by music guru Annie @anniefiddle
Contibuted by music guru Annie @anniefiddle
Goodnight Gowalla
Three years since its launch at SXSW festival, location based check-in service Gowalla officially closed its doors. Despite many attempts to refocus to compete with major rival Foursquare, the service failed to gain the global market share achieved by its main competitor. Speculation about the service closing began Facebook acquired the company three months ago, so the news is sadly no huge surprise. However, with the new injection of talent into Facebook, we can expect them to steam ahead in developing their location services. We'll be watching Foursquare closely.
Contributed by insight executive John-Paul @johnpaulfox
Contributed by insight executive John-Paul @johnpaulfox
Searching for an answer
If there's one constant online, is that Google is always changing. This week, the company announced what is possibly their biggest overhaul of the service yet. Taking a (massive) leaf out of Wolfram Alphas book, Google has started to implement ‘computational’ and semantic results. What this means, in essence, is that where there is a definitively 'correct' answer, Google will provide it, rather than offering a group of web pages that may or may not be correct.
So searching for a country will likely now list all of the countries’ vital stats at the top of the results page, rather than the Wikipedia entry, say. Not only does this save time, it also keeps customers inside Google, rather than sending them elsewhere. Changes to Google’s core search algorithms are always controversial and this could really set the cat among the pigeons.
Contributed by account manager Sam @cooltweetbro
So searching for a country will likely now list all of the countries’ vital stats at the top of the results page, rather than the Wikipedia entry, say. Not only does this save time, it also keeps customers inside Google, rather than sending them elsewhere. Changes to Google’s core search algorithms are always controversial and this could really set the cat among the pigeons.
Contributed by account manager Sam @cooltweetbro
Buy Buy Posterous
Earlier this week Twitter acquired micro-blogging platform Posterous for an undisclosed sum. Both companies have said Posterous spaces will continue to run without disruption for the time being. While most people are assuming that the purchase is a simple acquisition for talent (see Gowalla above), Yomego hopes that Twitter has something more creatively interesting in mind for the platform - see MD Steve's thoughts on the matter on eConsultancy here.
Contributed by insight executive John-Paul @johnpaulfox
Contributed by insight executive John-Paul @johnpaulfox
And finally...
Project Barcelona
Word has emerged from the BBC that the corporation is planning to make large chunks of content – including archive material – available to download for a small fee. The project, codenamed ‘Barcelona’ is described as a sort of cross between iPlayer and iTunes.
It’s an obviously intelligent move for the BBC, and we would imagine it makes use of Auntie’s already extensive online archive service, BBC Redux, used and loved by BBC staff.
Redux contains pretty much all the BBC's digital footage – anything that’s been recently broadcast or digitised from the archives.
Some people have complained about the costs in the Barcelona model; suggesting that anything online has already been paid for by the licence fee. But as long as it’s well-priced, Yomego expects it to meet little resistance. Most people know that while programme making costs are covered by the BBC, it’s hard to argue that the cost of digitising classic Dr Who episodes from the 1970s could have ever been forseen in the licence fee. It’s also one way to tackle the problem of BBC fans who watch content solely online with no licence fee paid – something applicable to a rising number of younger viewers.
Making content available to the public on a wider and permanent basis should also do wonders for content sharing, creation, mash ups etc. Nice one, BBC.
Contributed by PR and marketing manager Claire @claire_foss
It’s an obviously intelligent move for the BBC, and we would imagine it makes use of Auntie’s already extensive online archive service, BBC Redux, used and loved by BBC staff.
Redux contains pretty much all the BBC's digital footage – anything that’s been recently broadcast or digitised from the archives.
Some people have complained about the costs in the Barcelona model; suggesting that anything online has already been paid for by the licence fee. But as long as it’s well-priced, Yomego expects it to meet little resistance. Most people know that while programme making costs are covered by the BBC, it’s hard to argue that the cost of digitising classic Dr Who episodes from the 1970s could have ever been forseen in the licence fee. It’s also one way to tackle the problem of BBC fans who watch content solely online with no licence fee paid – something applicable to a rising number of younger viewers.
Making content available to the public on a wider and permanent basis should also do wonders for content sharing, creation, mash ups etc. Nice one, BBC.
Contributed by PR and marketing manager Claire @claire_foss
This week our Brand Barometer piece focuses on Lynx, a brand which brought 'chaos' to the streets as it launched its first female product. Find out how it scores over on Marketing Magazine.
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