MySpace Upgrades Global Music Offerings

MySpace users all over the world should have a much easier time discovering music thanks to some new changes. This afternoon, MySpace overhauled its approach to playlists, eliminating (or at least cutting back) limitations that might have affected the way people shared songs.

A key point before we get much further: this development involves all MySpace territories other than the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, meaning the rollout's pretty huge.

As for some specifics, Rebekah Horne, Managing Director & GM of MySpace International, explained in a statement, "MySpace users worldwide can create an unlimited amount of multi-song playlists (up to 100 songs) which they can broadcast and share on their public profiles."

Furthermore, "Each playlist a user creates will have its own page to share with friends," and users can "manage playlists using a new product called My Music and check out Public Playlists to hear playlists created by artists and other MySpace users."

These changes could do a lot to keep bands and music lovers coming back to MySpace. If not, well, MySpace did ask for feedback and hint that more upgrades are in the works, demonstrating that it's committed to finding other solutions. source: webpronews.com/topnews/

How Social Media and the Web Helped Avatar Make $1 Billion

The Simulcam and Fusion 3D camera inventions were not the only technologies that made James Cameron’s Sci-Fi epic Avatar a massive box office success. While smaller films have used social media to spread the word guerrilla-style, no other major blockbuster has employed a full-on social web marketing assault quite like Avatar.

The results in its case were a $232 million opening weekend, a total of one billion dollars in revenue by year’s end, and the rank of #2 highest grossing film of all time. Cameron’s $500 million act of hubris has paid off. Here’s an outline of the social media moves Avatar’s team made to achieve success.

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The Basics: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace

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Avatar has its own Facebook (), MySpace (), and Twitter () pages. That’s getting to be standard these days. The 18,000-follower Twitter account has tellingly not been updated since a few days after the film’s theatrical release; once the word was out, the job was done. While it was active, though, its followers would retweet updates to their followers, who (if interested) would do the same, spreading the word all over the web. The Facebook Page is even more impressive, with over 700,000 fans.

Facebook’s updated Page features make it the place to be for brands seeking exposure. The site allows brands to push updates to fans. Those fans see the updates in their personal news feeds, and they can then share them with others, just like on Twitter.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/08/avatar-social-media-web/