Daily Bits

Social Networks

MySpace Launches a Better Looking My Music 2.0 in Beta

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Are you still using MySpace? I’m pretty sure there are still some if not many of you who are still maintaining your MySpace account. Or perhaps you’re still active in MySpace? If you are, you’re probably waiting for MySpace to launch its new My Music portal. Well, it just did, went out live in beta.

My Music 2.0 aims to become your hub where you can build and manage social playlists from My Space’s comprehensive online music catalog. And what does the new My Music 2.0 offers? Quite plenty actually, which include a new sleeker UI and several nifty features.

Some of MySpace’s My Music 2.0 key features that you may like and actually end up using include:

  • sortable song grids with a slicker drag and drop feature
  • subtle “reveals” which display the information and features as you need them
  • in-place edits and settings
  • vertical scrolling improvements
  • playback in-page

In addition, My Music 2.0 now also lets you broadcast playlist on your MySpace profile and share it directly with your friends. There is also a new “song activities” module which displays the latest song related to your activities. This makes it easier other MySpace members to discover most recent music that their friends or other members are sharing.

You can check out MySpace My Music 2.0 from this link.

Facebook Quietly Rolls Out Post Insights for Pages

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Facebook has quietly roll out a new post analytics tool which will be most useful for Facebook Page administrators.  If you run and maintain a Facebook page, this new post insights tool will give you how many impressions each post on your page have received. In addition, it also tells you what percentage of those impressions resulted in corresponding actions – likes, comments, or even much better clicks if you’re promoting something on your Facebook page.

In short, the post insights tool is short of being your usual web analytics tools.  The post insights is currently rolling this out to few Facebook pages administrators. More administrators would have this on their respective Facebook page soon.

While this may not be useful to you if you don’t maintain a Facebook page, those who have been using Facebook for brand marketing will definitely find this tool very useful for their marketing campaigns. Somehow it beats Twitter which does not have this feature yet.

The display is impressions and percentages are pretty simple.  Here’s a screenshot given by All Facebook blog.

Facebook Lets You Communicate with Apps via Email

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Facebook has just announced a new way of letting your stay connected with your favorite Facebook apps. It’s really just a matter of applying the same email notifications that you receive whenever you are tagged on a photo or receive a message from your Facebook friends. And like other Facebook add-ons that requires access to your email account, this new Facebook feature will never receive your email address unless grant application developers the right to email you.

So, how does this new feature work? Starting probably today, you will start seeing dialog boxes on your application pages containing a question from app developers whether you want to receive notifications about their apps, coursed through your email address, of course.

And why would you want to receive email notifications from Facebook app developers? Honestly, I don’t see any good reason why. But the Facebook blog said that it will give you more detailed and interesting information from developers about your favorite Facebook applications. These information include – receipts of purchases, newsletters as well as notification of actions with their apps.

Of course, like any other email notification set-up, Facebook apps notification feature can be easily cancelled anytime. All you need to do is to hit the “unsubscribe” button located at the bottom of the email notifications that you received.

This new feature is just one of the many new features that Facebook is planning to  launch this year.

Yelp for iPhone v4.0 Adds “Check Ins” Feature

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Remember Foursquare?  Well, it seems that its “check ins” feature has become all the craze among iPhone users, that one of its rivals, Yelp for iPhone has just added the same feature to version 4.0 of its own native iPhone app. Actually Yelp for iPhone has been around longer than Foursquare but didn’t quite get the same enthusiam from iPhone users.

With the release of Yelp for iPhone v4.0, Yelp hopes prevent Foursquare’s possible break-out in the mobile location service arena.

So, what is this “Check-Ins” feature all about? It’s a way for you to broadcast that you are at a business to your friends on Yelp, Facebook or Twitter. Specifically, you can broadcast the following:

  • Your activity via your Yelp for iPhone profile page
  • Opt-in alerts including “Push” notifications
  • A Leaderboard on Yelp for iPhone
  • A Map that will also show the “Check-ins” of your friends nearby and your check-in count next to your Yelp star rating if you’ve written a review on Yelp.com
  • Where you’ve checked in on Monocle, Yelp’s AR feature launched in August
  • Active users of Yelp Check-ins can also earn “Regular” status of highly-frequented  businesses.

Aside from the “Check-Ins” feature, Yelp for iPhone v4.0 also rolled out some new features including the ability to log into your Yelp.com profile and see and interact with your Yelp profile as you would on Yelp.com.

You can now also see and invite friends from your iPhone’s address book to join you on Yelp, share your check-ins and quick tips via Facebook Connect and Twitter. You can also check out Monocle, Yelp’s augmented reality feature.

Overall, Yelp for iPhone is a pretty good iPhone app. Yelp for iPhone is a free app and you can download it from here. (iTunes Link)

Facebook Teams Up with McAFee to Offer Free Security Software

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Facebook just announced that it has signed-up a year-long deal with McAfee to offer free download of its security software. That’s putting McAfee’s software available for download to 350 million people, although not all of them might be PC users.

The deal would allow Facebook members to download and use the security software for a free six-month subscription after which those who opt to continue using it can renew the subscription at a discounted cost. Again, thanks to Facebook’s deal.

And the reason why Facebook is doing this? To help its members protect themselves against security threats that could otherwise hamper them from using their computers which might include accessing Facebook.

It’s a nobel effort from Facebook. Although we could not discount the fact that it’s also a marketing ploy for McAfee and Facebook. Either way, there’s no harm in getting the free security software even if you can use it only for six months.

And in case you’re computer is already compromised even before you got the McAfee software, Facebook will detect it once you try accessing its site. It will then ask you to go through several processes which include running the McAfee virus scan procedure. Again, another one-of-a-kind service from the world’s no.1 social networking site.

To get the free McAfee security software, simply head over to the Protect Your PC tab on the McAfee Page on Facebook.

Facebook Discourages Members from Visiting the Site Just to Reply to Comments

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If you’re the no.1 social networking site worldwide, with all the monthly numbers practically going into you, you can practically do anything without fear of losing your grip. I’m alluding to Facebook here, which just announced something that’s getting into me in a different way.

According to the Facebook Blog,  members who opted to receive email notifications whenever comments are made on the posts they created on Facebook can now reply to those comments directly from the notification email. The reply will then be automatically posted on the specific thread where the comments were made. So, this means that you can opt not to go to the Facebook site just to reply to comment.

Now, while this maybe a useful feature especially for users, I don’t really think that Facebook is encouraging site eyeballs on the Facebook site. Or perhaps this Facebook’s way of helping users who can’t access Facebook at work to at least stay active on Facebook even when they are in the office?

Anyway, the reply-to-comment feature works for email notifications regarding comments on status updates, photos, videos and wall posts. It basically allows you to stay informed about your Facebook friends’ activities even if you don’t log-in to Facebook

And in case you’re not receiving any email notifications or you have not activated this feature yet, now may be the right time to do so. Just go to your Facebook account settings and enable email notifications from the Notifications tab.