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This Week in Lumps
#42 [11/03 - 17/03]

· Well, of all the acquisitions and buyouts I thought I might talk about this year, this one wins the award of being the most unpredicted. AOL, part of the Time Warner media empire, silenced all of the rumours about a partnership with Yahoo by announcing its plans to buy Bebo in an $850m (£417m) cash deal.

Bebo, huge in the UK and New Zealand, but pretty unknown everywhere else, is in the 85th place of the Alexa top 100 list and has approximately 80 million unique users. In regards to the more heavyweight social networks on the net, its a very small and very poor distant cousin, albeit with a dedicated fan-base. This deal shows AOL still thinks of itself a major tech company alongside Google, Microsoft and the rest, and sees Bebo as a way to resurrect its ambition to be a leading global player in the online advertising market.

Randy Falco, Chairman, CEO, and general Commander-in-Chief at AOL explains the deal:

“Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media. What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

Now, for those of you who skimmed over that, don’t worry; after the first sentence you didn’t miss much. In summary, this is AOL’s move into the international market, one to remind us all that they’re still alive and kicking (and apparently still with a bit of change in their pockets) and they want to dive head first into social networking with aplomb. In fairness, Bebo was probably the only option available, and despite being a watered down version of the heavyweights, is still popular enough to hold its head above the murky water of social networking in this country. Even the facts to prove its got a long way to go: Bebo users spent 81% less time on the site last month than they did in the same period last year, a figure AOL would have surely tried to ignore.

So why hasn’t anyone sat up and made a fuss over this? Well, over the pond, American blog Mashable sums up why no-one around Silicon Valley gives two shits:

“I say the answer is probably rooted into two factors. For one, AOL, like many other tech giants, have a hard time integrating new startups into the fold without either quashing their purpose, erasing their culture and community, or just straight up forgetting they exist.

The other factor is quite simple: most of us here in the bloggerati are English-speaking, red-blooded Americans that are more or less isolated in our Web 2.0 bubble. Bebo plays at the edges of our vision, but it isn’t Facebook, Google or MySpace, so we’re largely ignorant of what’s going on over there. Therefore, it really doesn’t matter to us.”

But here’s the thing, It’s not made any splashes over here either. With regards to Bebo I cant logically see how much will change, it’s been described as a “natural progression“, and that’s as best as it could have been put. Lest we forget what the A in AOL stands for, and, for them, this is nothing more than a very expensive marketing campaign.

Someone, please, make the next big thing in social networking, because it’s certainly not out at the moment.

~

· Back in week 19 I spoke of a new Radiohead album due, and then followed that in week 21 with a dissection of what everyone thought about it. The shiny new CD wasn’t the talking point, nor in fact was the music, it was the ‘whatever you think is best’ attitude towards the price, and once the dust was settled, it was universally accepted as a good idea. In the weeks that followed, rumours were flung about as to whom the next band would be who would take the plunge into legal downloads and name-your-price prices, including Oasis or Jamiroquai, but it seems the next major band to do so is Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails.

The new release, titled ‘Ghosts I–IV‘ is a 36-track monster, and becomes the seventh studio album by the band, and it continues the recent experimentation with digital distribution. It was officially released on March 2nd. This came after Reznor posted a mysterious news update on the bands website on February 16th, simply saying “2 weeks.” Physical versions of the album will be released via RED Distribution on April 8th, in both double CD and 4-LP formats. The release is split into 4 sets of 9 songs, the first nine being available free, whilst the entire thing is available from as low as $5, all the way up to the super smashing deluxe edition costing $300, which sold out almost instantly.

The first NiN album I brought on its release day was the much anticipated ‘With Teeth’, the 2005 effort from the band after a 6 year rest. The recording saw them return with emotional vigour; a tug of the heartstrings rather than a gunshot to the head, and like some kind of musical marmite, was either adored or abhorred depending on which fan you spoke to. It was also the sound of Trent clean and in control, leaving behind the life of excess drinking and drugging and living to tell the tale, where some other musical icons such as Layne Staley had fallen. It also was an album free from the pressure of being a ‘genre-defining classic’ that may be expected of those who had emerged in the 5 years he band were in a solemn peace.

So, when it came to Ghosts, I’ve a clean slate, almost. Of course, songs like Closer, and Hurt are favourites of mine, but I’m by no means an obsessive. Which may be why the album (and the news surrounding it) came as such a nice surprise. Sadly, I’ve only been able to listen to Ghosts I, the free download which is widely available on The Pirate Bay. I’m holding out on the rest until the CD release, which I am now eagerly anticipating.
The album, which took just 10 weeks to create, has been described as a “soundtrack for daydreams” that is “the result of working from a very visual perspective — dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture.” Okay, so Trent has gone all shoegaze and post-rock on us all, but that’s by no means an excuse to put you off. In fact, if you’re a fan of bands like Mogwai, Amina and Efterklang, you may want to get your grubby hands on this.

After pressing play, what follows is a deep and dark ride into the mind of one of the most naturally talented musicians and troubled minds of my generation. Bleak and barren may sound like harsh words to use, but it is meant in good faith; it’s an album that touches something you didn’t think NiN could do. In 2 Ghosts I, a pianissimo godsend of a track, it seems to make some of the more recent Death Cab for Cutie albums sound like Slayer, but still have that dark and scary undertone that seems to ring true of all the NiN albums. The track that follows it hits you right between the eyes, like a sudden dip in a roller-coaster. From A Whisper in the Noise-esque song into Kid-A style hypnotic, haunting tick-tock trek through Trents head – It’s different and weird, but it’s distinctly Nine Inch Nails. Brian Eno would be proud.

The good news is, according to Trent “more volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.” I hope they only improve over time. As two reviews put it:

“It won’t be burning up the radio charts, but it shouldn’t have to. This is not an album for pop purposes. This is a piece of art.”

“Right now is an excellent time to be a Nine Inch Nails fan. Right now Trent Reznor is at his creative peak. Let’s hope he can sustain it for many years to come.”

Hear hear.

~

· The second series of Gavin and Stacey kicked off this week, and I’m loving it more after each episode. The romantic comedy may sound sketchy on paper, but on screen it’s one of the best shows on now, and it’s bound to fill you with all the hopes of dreams on love, romance and passion, and all that bollocks. So, if you haven’t got love, romance and passion in your life right now, where can you find it? In the pub? At work? Or maybe on the net? I thought I’d help you out with that last one.

“Online romances used to conjure up the image of sad types huddled over their keyboards creating buff alter egos with which to woo a potential mate. Now, in this age of social networking, online dating has lost some of its stigma, leading more than 22 million people to visit dating websites in 2007, according to the Internet monitoring firm comScore.”

Now, this won’t be a topic for everyone, so bare with me if you’re quite happy with your partner / sex buddy / gimp, but for all you lazy sods out there, in between downloading torrents and poking on Facebook, you may decide you want to delve into the warm waters of Online Dating sites. Then again, you may hate the idea, thinking it’s sleazy and pointless. Well, if anythings going to put you off of sites such as plentyoffish.com, it certainly isn’t just that. A while back, I thought I’d try out one of the main forerunners in this genre, Match.com, and see if it was worth all the attention. Sadly, I was signing up to a site with so much going for it, but with no real oomph in what it promises. So here are 5 ways I’d like to see it improved:

Steal and Improve
To get up there with the top list of social networking sites (and lets not kid ourselves here, you can call it a ‘dating’ site all you like, it’s no different to window shopping, and has many similarities to social networking, and in order for it to succeed nowadays, its going to have to start behaving like one) you’re going to have to start mimicking them an awful lot more. Digg is an example on how to change to suit the times; once just a social news site, it is now sold as a social news and networking, allowing users to add friends, and send shouts, so why can’t a site like Match do the same? Okay, so adding a basic IM function and creating a list of favourites isn’t going to win over the thousands, but with a bit of thought, a pinch of creativity, and a healthy dollop of theft from someone who does it well, you too could have a site that gets people to visit, and keeps them there.

F.O.C
If you want to compete with the likes of Facebook et al for a unique audience, and for a growth in the amount of time they spend on the site, you’re going to have to make everything completely free of charge. Why would any average Joe spend £65 for 6 months of “guaranteed love” searching, when he can trawl through old flames from years past on sites like Bebo? Friends-reunited have had this trouble too, and have announced they too aim to move to a free service, as money can be made up in advertising and sponsorships, but you’ll be losing a lot of audience who are put off by a hefty price tag for something they can get free elsewhere. However, if you simply must charge users for something, then consider these two points:

Give That Little Extra
Competing with established social networking sites may not be in your plans, but competing with others in your field certainly is, and while some offer a free service, you can just get that little further ahead by giving a little bit extra, albeit for a small cost. A good example of this is last.FM, who stand out in what they provide, and their users are not ashamed to dig deep for membership knowing they get special privileges, and benefits from doing so. Nothing, at this moment is enticing me to sign up to the membership of match.com, because they only thing they offer is:

“If you don’t find someone special during your 6-month subscription, we will give you an additional 6 months free to continue your search.”

So great, you can have 6 miserable months of hopeful searching and going nowhere you can have another 6 months on top of that! Excuse me while I hang myself from the ceiling fan. Oh, and whilst on the subject of ‘if you must charge’, then please…

Ban the Continuous Service Rates
Nothing else to say here, apart from this little exert I found:

“On March, 1, 2008, I checked my bank account, and it was over drown by $29.99. My bank inform me that it was from Match.com. I was very surprised because I only used this site one time about two years ago. The bank informed me that Match.com has been taking $29.99 out of my bank account since Dec. 2005. I have a lot of bills coming out of my account every pay and did not find out about this until I was in overdraft in my bank account. I had no idea that they where still taking money out after the trial time.”

Yes, that’s right. Even though you may hate the service, find someone offline you want to live with, or decide you were happier single and without the Internet, you best remember to completely delete all traces of your account with regards to their site, as they will keep charging you every month without asking your permission, or whether you’re using the service or not. Unsurprisingly, the website cleverly words this as ‘renewing your membership’, without mentioning that it’s going to cost you whether you’re happy or not. Yet another reason why it’s putting so many people off.
And finally, away from the financial side of things, Match.com have to consider….

Better Marketing
In fairness, it’s been doing it’s best to get it’s name in all the right places, fancy quirky adverts on TV, getting applications on Facebook, in that department it’s doing no wrong, but what’s really annoyed me recently with regards to match.com is their online advertising.

For one, it appears on sites they should be classing as competitors, and two it’s very tacky and annoying. I’m not talking about the semi-decent ‘Cupid and Fate’ adverts that appear on the tele every now and again, but the adverts appearing on Myspace, which involve a one minute loop of a hot girl playing with her hair on a webcam (see the screenshot to the right), with a search box underneath, implying that if you were to sign up with them (which you have to do in order to search) then girls like this are queuing up for you on demand, ready to play with your hair. In reality, this is far from the case, and Match.com shouldn’t use this bizarre and awful form of false advertising to this affect. What about the female users? What about the gay men? In fact, why not play on the fact that 75% of the users signing up are either shy and awkward in ‘I like your face, fancy a shag’ type situations, or the type that just like to keep all their options open. Why try to entice single horny guys to your site where they’ll spend about 3 minutes before disappearing back to Myspace?

Until then, I’m not interested.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Facebook planned to launch its own IM service, REM try yet again to be down with the kids, Yahoo’s European office moves from London to Switzerland, there are 34,700 registered black and white TV licenses still active, 40 years after colour ones first became available, Top Gear is going global, Google Sky is available to all, toasters are banned in Cuba, and God help me I can’t wait, Bioshock 2 is official. A prequel to the first? Bring it on.

And with the news that Myspace adverts will soon be based on your own personal information in your profile, I’ve decided that I can’t take it anymore. I officially give up with Myspace. I will be deleting it very very soon. It makes Match look like the best site ever.

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