Well Google Android is in full swing. Tonight MySpace is announcing the launch of their Google Android application. The first version of this application enables photo uploading, band profiles with tour information, the ability to comment on photos, profiles, and bulletins, the ability to searc hfor new friends, inbox access, and the ability to update and view mood and status.

The bottom line is this is their next smartphone application rollout and it appears to be relatively extensive based on the screenshots displayed below. So what’s the killer part of this application? It integrates directly with Shazam. If you didn’t get a chance to test out Shazam on the iPhone you are truly missing out. The application will tell you what an unknown song is by simply holding up the phone towards the music.

The integration with Shazam will link the band profile directly from the user’s phone when their song is matched. I honestly think this collaboration is bigger than the announcement that MySpace will be available for Google Android. MySpace is one of the first social networks to launch via android but there will be more social network announcements coming in the next 24 hours.

As the first “Google phone” prepares to be rolled out, this is some really exciting news for the company. One interesting thing about this new application is that the design provided by Apple iPhone made many of the applications look similar. This time around applications have a distinct design which I wouldn’t exactly consider the same sort of “clean” look that iPhone has.

I’m guessing this could negatively impact Android phone sales in the long-run. How important do you think design will be for the success of the Android platform?

MySpace may not spin off their Music product into it’s own entity as initially expected, according to Staci Kramer. Why have they decided not to take the joint-venture route as Hulu has done? It’s pretty simple: they see no point. The biggest challenge is trying to separate MySpace Music from MySpace the social network especially since it has been so tightly integrated since early on.

One source at MySpace told PaidContent, “We’re pretty happy with the way things have been working to get us to this launch; the idea we have to do things completely separately doesn’t seem to be as relevant.” Sounds like they are pretty happy as it is! Also of interest is confirmation that MySpace is on target to reach $1 billion in revenue this year. These numbers have been passed on for some time and Matt Marshall has appeared to confirm these estimates.

In comparison, Facebook has projected that they will earn around $300 million in revenue this year. You could argue that MySpace feels more pressure to monetize their site as the social network is part of a large, publicly traded company. Just two months ago we wrote that MySpace revenue should hit $650 million which was based on numbers provided by Peter Kafka. Since then it looks like projections have risen closer to $1 billion.

This is an impressive number for a social network and it highlights the existing revenue potential. While the industry searches for a breakthrough monetization model, MySpace has already been able to produce substantial numbers. One has to wonder if these new revenue projections are based on an increase produced by MySpace Music.

The service already has a built in advertising model and given that they had over 1 billion songs served in the first month, there is a good chance they were able to increase time spent on the site. Ultimately we’ll have to wait for their fourth quarter results to see if the $1 billion projection is reached but these numbers should be relatively encouraging for other social networks.

Back in April I posted about the launch of MySpace Karaoke. Today, the company has announced a redesigned version of the product which includes the addition of video. The video is also available for HD support. This is a pretty substantial upgrade that I’m guessing will increase traffic to their general karaoke product.

One other awesome feature is the ability to embed the karaoke videos that have been recorded! I’ve embedded one of the more popular recordings below. One of the downfalls of the application is that you can’t record from Macs. It’s interesting that nobody has launched a full scale application similar to this on Facebook. I think something along these lines would be extremely successful on Facebook.

I’m interested to see how this impacts MySpace’s traffic in the long run. This service is definitely entertaining and with video combined into the service I could see a lot of people using this. Considering that Fox Interactive owns MySpace it will be interesting to see if there is eventually some sort of integration into American Idol.

If you want to sing along with the other users of MySpace, go check out MySpace Karaoke.

Last month we broke the news that MySpace was launching the MySpace advertising platform. Well tonight, three weeks after we first broke the news, they are officially announcing it. We have more details on the service this time around which MySpace has provided us with:

• The service is officially launching tomorrow morning
• HyperTargeting is 99% accurate as it is cross referenced with U.S. Post Office database
• Range for MyAds is $25.00-10,000.00
• 1100 interest categories to target individuals by
• Since beta opened up, there has been over 3,000 new advertisers register

Now that MySpace has officially opened up the service, it will be interesting to hear advertiser feedback. Facebook has been offering a similar service with demographic and keyword targeting which makes advertising on the site highly targeted. The most significant challenge on Facebook has been attracting more significant click-thru rates.

I would write a more thorough overview of the service but I already did that a month ago. Check out the previous article for all the juicy details.

The markets in Japan may be getting crushed right now, but one lucky developer will be celebrating with a $30,000 cash prize at the Tokyo Game Show. The application, which was ironically developed by a company called “Contests2Win.com”, is called youCharades and “is a Video Talent Platform where users can guess various titles acted out by their friends and fellow users.” Contests2Win.com appears to be a fairly large organization rather than a small developer.

Other finalists include Crazy Life, The Ninja Webcam Game, and SmartBaby!. According to the release, MySpace will translate the application into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese and promote it as a “Featured Application” for free, meaning they won’t have to pay $75,000 for one week of promotion.

For those of you looking to participate in the MySpace gaming competition domestically, tough luck! The company has yet to announce any plans to launch a similar competition here in the United States. The next interesting test for these applications will be user adoption. So far, SmartBaby! has attracted almost 17,000 active users, whereas the other applications have all attracted less than 1400.

Interestingly shoved into this press release was a quote from Mitch Liu, the co-founder and VP of Product at Offerpal Media (who is also a sponsor of this blog). Offerpal and other competing lead-generation ad networks have been highly successful with social games. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues.

As an internet entrepreneur one of the most significant fears you can have is that Google will begin offering a competing product or service for free. Both small and large companies fear the day Google will launch a competing free product. Just ask Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer his thoughts on Google Docs, I’m sure he won’t be enthusiastic about it.

If you are an executive at a mobile social network compny, any new service rolled out by Facebook and MySpace would most likely have the same effect. There is a large group of competing social networks that have built sizable audiences including Mocospace, MyGamma, Peperonity, Itsmy, and a few others. The biggest challenge facing those networks? I would suggest Facebook and MySpace are the largest challenges.

According to a study released yesterday, out of all users of mobile social networks “nearly 70% have visited MySpace and another 67% had visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15% adoption mobile adoption.” This is substantial and it appears that Facebook and MySpace are simply blowing by the competition in a short period of time.

According to the research, the most popular activities on mobile devices is checking messages and comments followed by posting status updates. This also goes to show how Facebook and MySpace are rapidly substituting many of the features provided by Twitter, a company which has yet to find a sufficient business model.

One of the core takeaways from the study is that mobile social networks, and not email, are becoming the central hub for communication for those connecting on mobile devices. This has huge implications for the future of social networks as it suggests that the social networks are becoming a more integral component of users’ every day communication.

I for one receive business communications via Facebook on a regular basis. While the average users may not have hit that point, the trend is in that direction. The only remaining question is not whether users will continue to adopt social networks on their mobile devices, but what social networks they will use over the next 12 to 24 months.

I would suggest that we will continue to see a shift that significantly favors Facebook and MySpace. Given that the data in this study is from the second quarter, new data will most likely suggest a continuation of this shift. Do you think competing mobile social networks have a chance? If so, where are the largest opportunities?

Last night MySpace Music went live and I’ve spent the morning playing around with the new service. The most important thing about this new service is that it is built on top of MySpace’s existing music service. There are a number of competing services when it comes to MySpace music and the most obvious are iLike and imeem. MySpace Music aims to be the top social music service.

In exchange for granting the music labels ownership in the new venture, MySpace is paying a discounted amount on each song that’s streamed. It’s not a bad model but such a system has never been tested before. Just like all the other leaders in digital music, MySpace is trying to figure out how to successfully navigate the space. With MySpace music comes two new key features: personal playlists and song purchases.

Personal Playlists

One of the key new features is personal playlists. For the first time, users will be able to create personalized playlists from all the songs in the MySpace Music directory and listen to those playlists on demand. They will play full songs with no limits. This is a huge step forward from what already exists and it’s a large step in what many consider to be the shift toward free on-demand music available everywhere.

Whether or not personal playlists accomplish that has yet to be seen. What also has yet to be seen is whether or not the number of songs sold will cover the total cost of playing all the songs for free. Part of the cost is being subsidized by advertisements which are displayed next to the music players but the model remains unproven.

Personal Playlist Player

Song Downloads

Songs will now be available for purchase. While not all songs are currently available (such as the ones included in the screenshot below), many will be immediately accessible via Amazon’s MP3 service. Not only will artists be able to sell their music but they will also be able to sell tickets and merchandise to fans.

Amit Kapur was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying “We’re not only going to be their home on the Web, we’re going to be the place they make a living.”

Updated Music Player

Conclusion

It’s unclear as to whether or not this is really going to solve the problems facing the music industry. For the most part it appears that this new service simply highlights the massive problems facing the industry as a whole. For now we will have to wait and see if it works. Thankfully, while we’re waiting we can go listen to as much free music as our hearts desire.

Earlier this week MySpace announced that they have released support for OpenSocial 0.8. The service will also be backwards compatible which means existing applications will still run on the platform as-is. With the release of OpenSocial 0.8 MySpace is also announcing a few new features including:

• New Permission Model (”OpenCanvas”) - Similar to Facebook who lets users visit an application prior to adding it, the new permission model will “allow users to control whether or not applications can read their Basic Info on the canvas page without having to intall or ‘add’ the application.”
• Upload Photos - In this new release, developers will be able to upload photos directly to a user’s photo albums. This is something Facebook has been offering since the launch of their platform. MySpace has finally added this feature.
• Publish Activities - Developers will now be able to publish the activities of users within applications to friends of a given application user. These activities are published through MySpace’s relatively new feed feature.

There are a few other notes that MySpace published in their blog post about the updates so check it out if you’d like to know more details. Given that MySpace is the largest implementation of OpenSocial, this is a pretty big deal for OpenSocial as a whole. hi5 was the first to support the new OpenSocial version but many developers have complained that the new implementation isn’t fully functional.

I’m sure MySpace developers will be pleased with this update. Having activities published also adds a new viral channel to the MySpace platform. I’m guessing that developers will take advantage of this immediately.

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On the heels of the MySpace Music launch, MySpace has launched a self-service advertising site which appears to be targeted specifically toward musicians. You can access the service by visiting advertise.myspace.com. The site functions similarly to Facebook’s advertising solution except that advertisers can create custom banners that are either 728×90 or 300×250.

The service also provides targeting by gender, age, location, and specific interest categories. The current categories are Auto, Books, Fashion, Health & Fitness, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Sports, Television, and Video Games. Rather than typing specific keywords, advertisers are forced to select from a pre-defined set of “Genres” within each category.

As the demographics are refined, the total number of users targeted is updated with an accurate estimate of the number of people that the advertisement will be visible to. Campaigns are run on a cost per click basis rather than a cost per impression basis. Users can also specify the dates that the campaigns are run during.

Advertisers then proceed to set up an account or user their existing advertiser account. These accounts are separate from other MySpace accounts. While all the ad templates were targeted at bands, it appears that anybody could use this new service. We will update this page with any statements from MySpace.

Note
You may want to be careful which browser you access the site in. The page crashed my Firefox but it seemed to run smoothly in Safari.

MySpace Ads Homepage

Ad Template Selection Page

Ad Creation Page

Ad Targeting Page

Last week MySpace announced the launch of the MyDebates site which takes politics on social networks to a new level. There is an interactive quiz which lets users see where they stand on issues in relation to each of the candidates. There is also a section which lets users see results of the polls. So far the results are definitely interesting with 45 of 50 states going to Barack Obama according to the latest poll.

While I don’t know the exact statistics on the people that took the quiz, it appears that the 21-34 years olds appear to have the most influence over the poll currently. One of the coolest features of the site is that there will be live coverage of the national debates and the ability to talk with others that are following the debate as they happen.

I actually found the poll to be extremely useful for judging my position although I wasn’t completely surprised by the results. Social networks are rapidly becoming a central place for political discussion. Just last week CNN covered how Facebook is being used to encourage users to register to vote:

“We need your help more than ever,” the Obama campaign said in a Facebook update Thursday which touted an updated version of the campaign’s application on the popular social networking site. The revised application is now headlined by a large module that allows users to check whether they are registered to vote, to request an absentee ballot, and to locate their polling place. The new module replicates functionality available on a Web site launched by the Obama campaign soon after the Republican convention.

The Obama camp’s effort to encourage registration and absentee voting on Facebook comes less than a day after the McCain camp rolled out its own application on the site to encourage its supporters to vote early or obtain absentee ballots.

“Now more than ever, your vote is critical,” the McCain-Palin update said. “Voting early, or with an absentee ballot, is the best way to avoid the long line on Election Day and get your vote counted.” The new McCain application takes users to a page on the campaign’s Web site where they can fill out a form to request an absentee ballot or register to vote.

While it’s difficult to measure the impact of political activities on the various social networks, it’s clear that both parties are taking social networks seriously as they demand a large portion of young voters’ attention. It will be interesting to see how much traffic is generated to these sites as the Presedential debates take place over the coming weeks.