Storify Gets Down to ‘Business’ (SocialTimes)
Storify is expanding its VIP package to new businesses like a mullet in reverse. While publishers put their curated stories on the front page for their readers, other businesses can create private stories to take back to the office.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
Free YouTube App Released for Nintendo Wii (Mashable)
Nintendo Wii owners now have a new way to access YouTube on their gaming consoles. On its YouTube blog, the company announced Thursday that it’s releasing a YouTube app for Nintendo Wii.
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Facebook Faces Shareholder Lawsuits (AP)
Facebook’s fourth day of trading as a public company saw an increase in the company’s stock price and shareholder lawsuits related to the social network’s botched initial public offering. Several shareholders who bought stock in the IPO have filed lawsuits against Facebook, its executives and Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s lead underwriter. Reuters Meanwhile, Facebook is considering a stock-listing proposal put forward by the New York Stock Exchange, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, in the wake of a disappointing initial public offering last week on the rival NASDAQ bourse. Facebook has exchanged phone calls and emails with NYSE Euronext and are considering their pitch, the source said without elaborating on specifics. CNET Facebook plans to open its first Middle East office in Dubai next week, according to the Associated Press. This United Arab Emirates city is considered the Silicon Valley of the region, so it makes sense that the social network would put its Persian Gulf hub here. The Hill Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday began to look into the debacle of what was supposed to be the social networking company’s crowning achievement. Lawmakers want to know whether institutional investors got a sneak peek at an updated analysis, written just before the initial public offering, that gave a more pessimistic assessment of Facebook’s future revenues. AllFacebook Some Facebook page administrators are seeing messages in the top-right-hand corners of their timeline pages urging them to create Facebook ads and containing a “promote your page” button. Have you seen similar messages on Facebook pages you manage? Mashable A Facebook page and a six-minute video tell the story of a 12-year-old girl whose mother died when she was 3 years old, grew up being abused by her father and bullied on her Facebook page. Eventually, the girl commits suicide. There’s just one problem: this is all fake. Read more
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YouTube co-founders Are Working on a Magazine Publishing Service Called Zeen (Fusible)
It looks like you’ll soon be able to discover and create “beautiful” magazines online. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who now run AVOS, posted a “Coming Soon” page on the website Zeen (a take on the word zine, which commonly refers to a narrowly focused self-published magazine). The Next Web The Privacy Policy page indicates that multimedia sharing will be a core part of the service and suggests that there will be a browser bookmarklet available. VentureBeat For now, though, we have relatively few details about how Zeen will work and what ‘zines will look like. You can go to the app’s landing page now to reserve a username and connect the account to an email address, Facebook identity or Twitter account. Business Insider After registering, users get an email to confirm their address, but it becomes a waiting game after that to see how Zeen works and what it’s all about. Read more
Rdio’s charges $4.99 per month for desktop web music streaming and $9.99 for unlimited web and mobile streaming. However, Rdio just announced that free (and ad-free) music streaming is available now if you login with your Facebook account.
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Music intelligence platform The Echo Nest teamed up with on-demand social music service Rdio to assist developers in building music apps, tapping Rdio’s catalog of more than 8 million licensed songs and using technology from The Echo Nest.
The on-demand social music service Rdio has raised $17.5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners and existing investors Rdio co-founder, Janus Friis, through his investment entities, as well as Atomico and Skype.
Rdio has been on our radar since they worked with the Recording Academy on a mobile app for the GRAMMY Awards. To strengthen its ties to the music industry, the company has now added to its board Warner Bros. Records chairman Rob Cavallo, a Grammy-nominated producer who has worked with artists like Green Day, Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morissette. Existing board members include Europlay Capital Advisors CEO Mark Dyne, Atomico co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, and Rdio CEO Drew Larner.
With this recent round of funding, Rdio plans to take the service to new platforms and new regions throughout the year. Most recently, the company partnered with Sonos to bring music to home speakers. “The convergence of many factors, including the pervasiveness of smartphones, network robustness, and consumers accustomed to on-demand content make it an exciting time to lead a company like Rdio,” said Drew Larner, Rdio CEO in a statement. “It says a lot that notable investors share our vision.”
The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards will air on February 13th at 8PM ET/PT on CBS, with or without Kanye West. As part of the “Music is Life is Music” ad campaign, The Recording Academy has partnered with on-demand social music service Rdio on MusicMapper, a location-based application for iPhone and Android.
Users can pick a location, tag a song and write a note to create an audio autobiography that’s pinpointed on a searchable map. Rdio supplies the album art and 30-second song excerpts, as well as powering the music search functionality.
“The Recording Academy is proud to provide music fans with content from Rdio’s vast catalogue through our MusicMapper application and Music Is Life Is Music microsite,” said Evan Greene, CMO, The Recording Academy in a statement. “Rdio proved to be a great partner in this year’s GRAMMY campaign given their like-minded emphasis on the social and mobile music experience, and we’re grateful for their partnership and collaboration.”
Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio added, “it’s extremely validating to have a prestigious organization like The Recording Academy ask Rdio to partner with them on powering the content in their social music discovery application. We have always believed that music is about sharing experiences and we’re glad that industry leaders recognize Rdio as a leader in social music discovery.”
Rdio, an on-demand social music service similar to Pandora, and Sonos, the makers of the Sonos Multi-Room Music System, have partnered to bring Rdio subscribers any artist, song or album from Rdio’s catalog, on demand, to multiple rooms of their homes. In other words, it’s safe to listen to music at home on normal speakers again, but with free reign of Rdio’s digital music selection, which includes 7 million songs from EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group , Warner Music Group and some indie labels. The company expects the service to launch later this quarter.
“By adding Rdio to Sonos, our subscribers can now easily extend their Rdio Unlimited experience to their homes,” said Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio in a statement. “For Sonos customers, we bring a new and unique social approach to music discovery and sharing. At home, online, or on the move, the Rdio experience can now be with you everywhere you go.”
The service is $9.99 per month for unlimited Sonos, Web and mobile access and $4.99 per month for Web only. The Sonos system is also reasonably priced, with options for listeners to either buy speakers or sync up their old ones, buy a remote control or download an app to use their iPhones or iPads to control the system, and a range of other accessories.
Rdio was founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who also founded Skype, which they sold to eBay in 2005. They got their funding from the technology investment group Atomico. Sonos is a privately-held company that’s headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA with offices in Cambridge, MA, Hilversum, Netherlands, Shenzhen, China and Penang, Malaysia.
Twitter announced content partnerships with blip.tv, Instagram, Rdio, SlideShare, and Dipdive, as announced in a post on the Twitter Blog by Jodi Olson of its corporate-communications team. Highlights:
We’re on a mission to give you more great multimedia content on Twitter, and today we’re adding five new companies to bring you independent TV shows, photos, works of art, slide presentations, and entire songs, all right inside the details pane. Twitter users can access embedded media from more than 20 partners in total, including these new companies:
blip.tv: Watch more than 50,000 independently-produced Web TV shows.
Instagram: View mobile photos, personalized with Instagram’s colorful filters.
Rdio: When a subscriber Tweets out a song, you can listen to full-length songs right inside the details pane, for the first time ever.
SlideShare: Read and share entire presentations, directly on Twitter.
Dipdive: See photos, videos and new works from Dipdive’s community of artists.
In the next few months, we’ll integrate with more content partners. For Twitter users, this means that 140 characters can contain a world of multimedia content, and instantly connect you to video, photo, music, and media services all across the Web.
