The “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” on Youtube, is the viral video of the moment (if you want to see it, scroll down to the end of the post). At the moment of the writing of this post, it has 1,613,403 views. When I first saw it, like an hour a ago, it had 1.4 million plus views. Means that the current rate is 200,000 views per hour, which will be interesting to check if it double by the end of the weekend.

Is crazy if you see the graph [on the image bellow], how the video exponentially went up in views in the last day or so. If you see in the graph around the 23rd of July the video started to get traction and then suddenly it when up. My first question is what happened, what was the catalyst?

[source youtube.com]

The answer to the question is the demographics that go interested on the video, which is shown in the image bellow: Females from 35 to 54 years old. Women around that age already have been married (or divorced), have kids and generally have great social network of other moms.

[source youtube.com]

Women at this age share a lot and support each other, so it is natural that if they love this video, they will share it. I guess, to them this is a act [by a couple] that really wanted to make it a special day. In other words it was romantic gesture, that wasn’t disrespectful and had a catchy song (adding the modern twist). This way finding it appealing and sticky, therefore trigger them to share it with their other women friends.

Without further ado the famous JK Wedding Entrance Dance video, big kudos to the couple:

Although most are trying to figure out what exactly the Web  3.0 will be, I like to take a moment and show you what the business model of Web 2.0 was and what is happing today with web a.k.a Web 2.5.

The best way to explain what was the predominant business plan of the Web 2.0 companies, let take a look at this clip from the South Park episode called Gnomes (or “Underpants Gnomes”):

Finished? Cool stuff how the Gnomes business model and Web 2.0  look alike. Here is the comparison:

The success of Google gave “permission” to a bunch of VCs and companies to launch a “cool” or “innovative” way of using the web, getting a bunch of registered users and then (if no big company wants to buy them) try to figure out how to make money i.e facebook and youtube. Being  twitter and friendfeed  the last famous companies of the batch to use Gnomes business model.

With the economic recession [in other words realizing that we can't just waste money on promises and bet on money we don't have], it’s harder for web companies to get funding, if they don’t have clear revenue model (other than advertisement). So, today in the Web 2.5, companies like Vimeo, Animoto, Userfly and Mailchimpp, offer a trial or basic version of the service for free. If you want or need more advance features you can pay a subscription fee or paying as you go. Generally the “pay as you go” is for occasional users. What is interesting is that this is not a new business model, its basically the same used by companies behind  famous “shareware” software. But because the trend is to provide “software as a service” hosted on the “cloud” then, they took the principal of the shareware model and applied it to services. It will not be called the “shareware” model because its not software that you download and installed ( you just log and run it in your browser). The contemporary name is “freemium“.

Finally what is Web 2.5, well here is my kind of chaotic definition:

• Use freemium (or any variation) as their business model
• “the design style is really a re-emergence of the pre-web standards era of the late nineties”
• refocus on mashups and APIs
• target is less mainstream (as a result of a focus on making money)
• better user experience
• transition phase, were the lessons learn from web 2.0, are applied.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world”, Mahatma Gandhi.

If you visit Mininova site, you will see some ads to the right, but other than that have a nice clean layout. The site has a Web 2.0 air, with soft colors that come easy to the eye. It will not get the same good PR as other Web 2.0 sites, because is a BitTorrent index site and the protocol is seen as bad and only useful for piracy. However BitTorrent is more than that, is a way of distribution large files without incurring in high bandwidth costs, since we download from other peers that have the file, not a server, this way distributing the load among the peers. Everybody knows that BitTorrent can be use for distributing “legal stuff”, still nobody has done anything about it, until Mininova.

Enter Mininova in 2007, with there new distribution service. The service offers, to the owner ( or the your company) of the copyrights of quality content, a tool to distribute the content for free, if it promises tol not upload DRM protected content or spam and not charge for content. And this is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation because:

• the owner of the content can distribute their content at no cost (unlike other forms of hard media or self hosting)
• the fans get quality content at high speeds without paying extra money (other than their internet connection)
• Mininova (and BitTorrent community) because shows that the protocol is good for legal distribution

At first glance, it might not be seen as a big deal since there are similar services like Jamendo, where artists can distribute their content under Creative Commons. Also, in recent news the Norwegian State TV launched a tracker to distribute their TV shows,  BBC also is experimenting with torrents, by providing downloads under creative commons of their TV shows, starting with R&DTV. All is great stuff and I wish more media companies join the BitTorrent bandwagon, still Mininova is offering a platform and now includes a way to monetization. Yes, now artists can distribute their content digitally and offer their fans the option to buy the album (see image) or donate to the artist using paypal (kind of pay what you want scheme).  They also offer fans a 20% discount if they seed the albums.

The Dutch record label Beep! Beep! is one of the firsts of first to partner with Mininova, uploading all their discography. Given that Mininova resides in the Netherlands, is natural business move for a small local record label to use the service. Permits them to deal face to face and smooth out any rough edges. When you click on the buy now button, it will take you to a shopify page where you can do finalize the transaction. The service, can also provide new fans of the band, with concert tickets and merchandise of the band. You can see all the Beep! Beep! releases here.

Beep! Beep! and other record labels can differentiate from the big labels using Mininova as a Partner. They get some free PR and can be subject of viral marketing, which is welcome when you don’t have the big resources of the “big 4″.

Contrast of Styles

Although in mainstream media The Pirate Bay (TPB) is the best known BitTorrent entity, with their trail and raids, Mininova is the king of BitTorrents. Mininova is on the top 100 most visited sites in the world, it was recently reported that it had its 8 billion download and is constantly changing and adding new features. In other words, Mininova has become the place to look for media (as Google is for information).

The Pirate Bay shakes the world aggressively, they are the biggest BitTorrent tracker, don’t care about copyright material on their site, and where the protagonists of a spectrail (which will soon dominate the news again). They don’t care how they do it, they want to change the world with a bang (and apparently they are successful). On the other hand Mininova has a more passive approach try to be under the radar. They even have a friendly copyright policy, here is a fragment of the copyright policy page:

Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website. The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way. However, we offer a service to remove torrents from our website if the copyright holder of the content requests so.

In contrast TPB publishes the emails asking them to remove torrents, in a section they call “legal threats“. Also they promise no torrent files will be taken out, never ever.We need both them, kind of a God Cop, Bad Cop scene, so the media industry understands that they have to give in.

Change is already here and there is no way to go back to the old practices of tell us what to consume, nop now is our turn. If you had to give this two entities a character although not accurate, you can see The Pirate Bay as Richard Stallman (idealist, crazy, funny and loud) and Mininova as Linus Torvalds (quiet, is about business, has a plan and takes a step at a time).

Step at a Time

Mininova are playing it smart, trying and experimenting. Slowly but surely getting more people involved and cleaning up the act of BitTorrent. They want to change the world a torrent at a time, gently rocking the music industry (as well as movie and TV). They don’t just want to be a trend setter and then fade out into the horizon, while others take all the glory. Time will tell us what will be of Mininova and TPB, still today they are forces of change.

Userfly is a service that permits site owners, record the sessions of their visitors. All you need to put a script in your website and viola.  Its a pretty cool and useful tool, because you see how your visitors “behave” in the website, as well what works and what doesn’t.

When you sign up they give you 10 session recordings for free and if you want more you pay for them, at a price of 0.05 USD. Bellow is an image showing the “Buy Now” button, above it is a message that states: “Buy as many user session captures as you need for only $0.05 per capture. Captures are sold 100 at a time”.

Uh?? I can buy as many I need, but the only way to buy new captures is 100 at a time, it doesn’t make sense.

The first sentence states that I can buy as many captures I want. Sure, I need 30 more sessions that is 1.50 USD. However captures are sold 100 at a time, then what about the other 70 sessions captures I don’t need? I can use them latter, sell them to a friend, etc,  that is not the point. The point is that the company looks bad, cheap and unsecure of their product. If the product is good, why not use something that is clearer and direct:

100 captures for 5.00 USD. Captures are sold 100 at a time.

or

Minimum is 100 captures, at 0.05 USD each.

Is like buying fruit or vegetable at a market: 20 tomatoes for 5 USD, 3 mangos for 7 USD, etc.

I’m not questioning the 100 limit, they have their reasons. I guess many customers will end up using the 100 captures, because of the number of visitors a site might have. Also, they are targeting owners of business website, not the “Videos of Cat Blog” or “My Life As a Teen” blog using WordPress or Blogger.

[Yeah its might sound as a big deal, but is insulting to trying NOT to scare customers using the “5 cent” strategy. Actually, I tried to find a an email where to suggest them to change that pricing statement, couldn’t find any, so I decided to blog about it.]

The CEO of a company should be aware of what is going on the website, how the pricing is presented to the customer, not an intern. Pricing of products and services needs to be done carefully and after a lot of analysis. The wrong price may scare possible customers, or the company may miss out on revenue that will make the company profitable.

Today with Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and similar services, you upload your photos and then anybody of your “friends” can see them. They comment, tag and share with other friends, I can see the excitement on your face. Some people like it, is part of their lives now to do so, however there is no “feeling” on those pictures. There is no way for you to tell people in a “entertaining way” how was that moment. In movies, soundtracks are an integral part on emoting feeling from the viewers. Why don’t we enhance the experience of those “friends”, didn’t live that moment with you?

Enter Animoto

Animoto is a services that permits you to create remixed slideshows of your pictures with music. The effects are cool, funky and entertaining, as well as “dance” with the tempo of the soundtrack you select . The site does all the effects and they claim that there is no equal remix, using an AI engine. (Regarding the last feature of going with the tempo of your track, it didn’t quite work that way as you can notice below.)

The free version gives your the ability to do 30 seconds shorts. You can’t download the clip but you can share with a bunch of social media platforms i.e. Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Blogger, WordPress. The service permits you to upload the soundtracks and pictures from your PC and import images from your Flickr, Picasa and Facebook account. Need more freedom and power:  like download, convert to High Def, create full length videos control pacing and do other stuff, will need to pay.

It doesn’t take much time, 12 images is the sweet spot on creating a nice video that will tell the story of a party or weekend. You can upload the images to your favorite social media site and then create the short. Those that want a quick glimpse can do it through the video and those that want to check how they look and relieve the moment through comments, can look at the album. If you ask me is pretty sweet.

[clearspring_widget title="Bay Islands Mix" wid="46928cc51133af17" pid="4987056da9a4dc88" width="432" height="260" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]

[clearspring_widget title="Animoto.com" wid="46928cc51133af17" pid="4987086c27385157" width="432" height="260" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]

As you can see, the tempo of the images and the music don’t match.

Earlier I posted about the reports of the phishing attacks against Twitter. Apparently high profile accounts i.e Obama, Britney where hacked. The good side is that the Hackers have a sense of humor, the bad thing is that they have been fixed. 

It looks like the vector of attack here some tools that where used by support, to help users change their email. I guess that the hacker was able to change the email of the accounts, change the password and login. Makes me wonder if somebody in the support team had something to do with this?

I guess they should go back and but a BETA tag like most Web2.0 sites, at least that is a good excuse (Gmail is still BETA).

Image source ReadWriteWeb

According to the Twitter blog, phishing scams targeted at Twitter users, have appeared. If you wonder what scammers are trying to achieve with it? Well think about it, there is a lot of value in Twitter account. Maybe not on the average Joe Twitter user, however there are a lot of high profile Twitter users, which account info may be of value. Just by having the president of the USA there, is worth trying the scam. Imagine if they could get the account of any high profile user  or with thousands of followers ? Some interesting social engineering could be done against the followers of the accounts hijacked.

At the end of the day, scammers may be betting on users using the same password on all their sites. Actually it makes sense, think about it, it takes some effort to come up with a new password that you can remember. And since people might think, that their Twitter account is not worth the effort of a new password, then why not use the “standard Web 2.0” password. Just shows how valuable are login information to popular Web 2.0 sites, even if the sites itself is not making money, doesn’t mean scammers can make money out of them.

I log into Facebook and I see the following:

it reads:

Unfortunately, your email notification settings have been lost. You can reset them on the Notifications page. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Before going into the boring stuff, did you notice how many spam notifications you could get?

Memo to Facebook: your notifications settings are unnecessary.

If they are subject to some trouble or blunders by developers, why have them? They should make a poll (that will be a differenciator to other Web 2.0 sites: ask your customers what they want) asking how many people actually use the notifications. They don’t even need to have a pool to find out how many times a week a person logs in. You already get your notifications at the bottom right corner, why have the emails. Aren’t emails a thing of the 90′s and chat a thing of the 00′s? Maybe somebody realized that they are useless and removed, thinking that they will be missed, however somebody at Microsoft complain about it.

So, people are at Facebook lost my notification settings? I wonder what else they have lost? Can all the messages in the wall, photos, list of friends, etc. can also be lost. Imagine receiving an email telling you that your photos has been lost, that will be a good one.

The fact is that you don’t pay for this service, therefore you may think “a that is the problem with this free stuff”. However there is “no such thing as a free lunch” and you are not paying for the service, but other people are: the advertisers. They are paying for your attention, so if Facebook devalues it’s service by making such mistakes it will have to answer to the users and the advertisers: double trouble.

By the way Facebook, where is the press release with an apology?