Updated: Twitter #Music App Launches

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Twitter, which released its music application to a handful of celebrities last week, announced today on “Good Morning America” and via a blog post that the rest of the world can now pile in. Twitter #Music is now available athttps://music.twitter.com and as a separate app for the iPhone through the App Store in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
The application, as previously reported, lets users discover music through artist and others’ Tweets, listen to their music using Spotify or Rdio, watch their videos on YouTube or Vevo and buy songs via iTunes; the company said in the blog post they will “continue to explore and add other music service providers.” There is no Android app yet, although the company said in the blog post “over time, we will bring the service to Android as well as to more countries.”
The #Music app is based on four pages or tabs, which you can swipe through to access. The Emerging tab shows “hidden talent found in tweets,” while Popular page displayes music that’s trending across Twitter.  The other two tabs focus on who you follow and your personal music taste.
Twitter Music is yet another attempt by the platform to branch out beyond the confines of its self-imposed 140-character limit and delve into the world of richer media. In January, it released Vine, a video blogging app that lets users capture and post videos lasting six seconds or less. A year ago, it bought Posterous to help enhance its photo sharing capabilities.
The free music app, available on both Web browsers or on mobile devices, is a separate download from the main Twitter platform. Instead of showing all updates, the music app presents a subset of the main Twitter stream that’s related to artists and their music. And instead of showing trending topics for the entire Twitter sphere, it shows charts of trending songs, albums or artists.
The charts are based upon technology developed by We Are Hunted, a small Australian company that Twitter recently acquired and relocated to San Francisco. We Are Hunted’s software continuously scours the Web for songs and artists that are generating buzz. The original We Are Hunted Application presented a constantly refreshed list of 99 hot new artists – based on its analysis of various online activities, such as search queries, blog reviews, plays on YouTube or SoundCloud, for example.
As Twitter prepares for potential initial public offering, the company must quickly ramp up its revenue sources beyond sponsored text Tweets. Providing avenues for photos, videos and now music multiplies the potential channels for the company to build a real business. The company is also reportedly negotiating with Viacom Inc. and Comcast Corp.’s NBC to secure additional video content for its Twitter TV effort, according to a report from Bloomberg. It’s unclear, however, how advertising revenue would be divided with its content partners, including Vevo, YouTube and others. Twitter spokeswoman Shavone Charles did not respond to several inquiries requesting comment.
For now, Twitter needs to first build an audience for its new music application before it can start selling advertising. To do that, it took a page from the music industry itself, copying a strategy that Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, and hip hop producer Dr. Dre pioneered in leveraging celebrities to launch their headphones company, Beats Electronics, in 2008.
Twitter let a handful of celebrity influencers such as Jason Mraz, Ryan Seacrest and others play with the app in advance of a public release. Seacrest naturally Tweeted about “lovin” the app.
Now that the velvet rope has been removed, everyone else can now see if they feel the same way.

Updated: Twitter Music App ‘Invite-Only,’ For Now

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Twitter has indeed launched music.twitter.com, but for the time being it’s “invite-only.” According to AllThingsD, it will initially only be available to a select handful of “influencers” before its launch next week. At press time, a rep for Twitter had not responded to Billboard.biz’s request for comment or confirmation.
Yesterday, Ryan Seacrest tweeted briefly about the app, and we’re likely to see other celebs talking about it in the coming days. One of the tweets said the app “shows what artists are trending, also has up and coming artists.”
As of Friday, the site consisted only of a simple sign-in page that displays the popular #music hashtag. Signing in prompts the user to authorize “Trending Music Web,” which according to the description is the web version of the trending music app. The app authorization permissions include “read” and “write” permissions, suggesting that the application will contain the ability to survey user listening habits and post them, perhaps automatically, to Twitter. A feature such as this would be akin to listening services like Soundtracking, which provide users with easy ways to share what they are listening to to friends and their networks.
According to a report issued Friday by TheNextWeb, an analysis of the website’s code reveals that the service will feature “following” and “tweeting” features, and also will integrate with Spotify, Rdio, iTunes, Soundcloud, VEVO and YouTube. Other notable features include artist biographies, charts and shows, and the ability to buy songs.
A few hours after the page’s launch, music.twitter.com was updated with an “invite only” note. Myspace’s new music-centric site was in invite-only Beta mode until earlier this year, although its audience was apparently aimed more at music-business insider.

Shortly before news broke yesterday about the service’s imminent release, Twitter confirmed it had acquired We Are Hunted, a San Francisco-based music startup that tracks the most popular songs across the Internet and social media.

“While we are shutting down wearehunted.com, we will continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team,” We Are Hunted wrote on its  website. “There’s no question that Twitter and music go well together. Artists turn to Twitter first to connect with fans, and people share and discover new songs and albums every day. We can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on at Twitter.”
Music networks online usually require two things; an active and engaged community and an element of curation. Twitter has that community of active music listeners, but other than a trending-topics list is limited in its curation capabilities. At the time of its acquisition, We Are Hunted’s emerging and Mainstream chart — which users can still access via Spotify — was just a tool without a community that was largely abandoned by its founding staff (note the special thanks to its founding staff found in the note on We Are Hunted’s Website). Twitter’s acquisition makes sense because it combines its active user base with We Are Hunted acclaimed curation asset.
AllThingsD reported that the service may be introduced in junction with the beginning of the Coachella festival, which kicked off in California today, but Paul Tollett, president of Goldenvoice (the company behind Coachella), told the New York Times that Twitter had nothing official planned with the festival.

Twitter’s foray into music has the potential to be one of the world’s most popular music apps and destinations for music discovery. The service passed the 200 million active user mark in December and has over 500 million registered users worldwide. Music identification apps Shazam and SoundHound have more than 300 million and 130 million registered users, respectively.

Selfies, Likes and Instagram

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I know that I am the only person who is slightly addicted to instagram. It seems people post things on instagram and just wait for the likes. A lot of us post more “selfies” than anything else. How much time do you spend at the gym posing and taking “selfies?” Then you tag the picture with the line “gettin it in” followed by #gymflow when in reality you spend more time taking the pic than you do working out? Check out this video which describes it perfectly:

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10 Natural Anti-inflammatory Foods

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Do you suffer from pain in your joints, arthritis, injuries or stiff joints?

Inflammation in the joints can limit your mobility and be very painful.  When the pain is too severe, it can stop you from playing sports, strength training or weightlifting.

Scientists have discovered that eating certain foods can boost the body’s ability to help with joint inflammation. Additionally these are foods that are rich in vitamins, antioxidants, proteins, healthy fats etc.

Try these 10 natural anti-inflammatory foods in your diet for a few weeks. I guarantee that you will start to notice a change. Sometimes the best solution is natural and does not come from a pill bottle. Give these foods a try!

atlanticsalmon

1.   Alaskan Salmon (wild is best)

2.    Fresh whole fruits/vegetables

3.    Bright multi-colored vegetables

4.    Green tea

5.    Olive oil

6.    Lean poultry

7.    Nuts, legumes and seeds

8.    Dark green leafy vegetables

9.    Old fashioned oatmeal

10.  Spices: especially Turmeric and Ginger

Looking for more diet and exercise tips? Follow me on twitter or check out my website.

How To Fight Cold and Flu Season

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Its Cold and flu season and no one wants to get sick. The following are some tips to keep your immune system fighting off the symptoms.

– Remember to take your vitamins

– Get 6-8hrs of sleep a night

– Increase your water intake

– Eat a healthy well rounded diet consisting off foods that are:

1) High In Vitamin C: Including strawberries, oranges, brocoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, spinach, bell peppers.

2) High In Vitamin A: Red leaf lettuce, dark leafy greens such as kale or spinach, butter nut squash, carrots and sweet potatoes.

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Fashion forward sport earphones @yurbuds

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I recently came across these earphones in a fitness magazine. They are fashion forward and seem very functional. I can’t wait to try them out. They come in multiple colors and as a bonus they are affordable. Check them out!

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Google+ Lags Far Behind Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in Latest Study (Updated)

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content by The Wrap
By Lucas Shaw at TheWrap
Tue Feb 28, 2012 11:50am EST
Google+ became the fastest growing social network within months of its debut last June, but a recent study casts doubt on whether most of its users are spending much time on the site.
According to ComScore, users spent an average of just 3.3 minutes on Google+ in the month of January, a decline from its recent figures and a tiny sliver of Facebook’s total.
On average, users spent 5.1 minutes on Google+ in November and 4.8 minutes in December while Facebook’s passionate audience logged between six and seven hours each of the past few months.
Most of the prominent social media companies site fall well short of Facebook by this measurement, but still lure their users for far longer than Google+. That even includes MySpace, which has an audience that is 27 million visitors smaller than Google+’s, but one that spend almost three times as much time on it.
This study only accounts for visitors using personal computers, so mobile is usage is not considered. But Facebook also has a large and active audience on the mobile platform – albeit one it needs to better monetize.
A Google spokeswoman gave this statement on the report: “The reality that Google+ is much more than a destination site makes it exceedingly hard for any third-party research firm to monitor or measure its performance. Google thinks about the service not as a site but as a deepening of its relationship to billions of existing users who are already committed to Google’s services like Search, YouTube, Android, etc. By this measure, engagement is already enormous.”
Google CEO Larry Page has struck an optimistic tone ever since the Mountain View, Calif.-based company debuted its social networking platform. In its most recent earnings call, he boasted of its 90 million users.
Also Read: Google 4Q Earnings Miss the Mark, Google Plus Hits 90M Subs
“I’m super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally — well over double what I announced just three months ago,” Page told analysts.
Early ComScore studies lent support to Page’s confidence by demonstrating its expanding user base.
This latest report would seem to take a lot of air out of the balloon, but Google’s vice president of product management, Bradley Horowitz, downplayed the report to the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal also quoted many of Google’s partners expressing concern about the growth the service, such as social gaming company Zynga and chipmaker Intel.
Zynga’s COO told the Journal that Google+ has been “slow on the uptick with users,” suggesting that in those three minutes on Google+, people are not playing much “Cityville.”
Despite the report, Google’s share price is up almost 1.5 percent on the day.

Related Articles:  ‘Free Ride’s’ Robert Levine on ‘Spooky’ Google and Hollywood’s ‘Offensive Excess’ Google 4Q Earnings Miss the Mark, Google Plus Hits 90M Subs

Twitter Hires Tatiana Simonian to Specialize in Music Partnerships

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TWITTER  MUST HEAR MY FOOT STEPS,LOL !

By Glenn Peoples (@billboardglenn), Nashville

Twitter has hired former record label marketing manager Tatiana Simonian (@drtatiana) to handle music partnerships for the company’s Content and Programming team, a rep for the company confirmed to Billboard.biz today. She was previously manager for social media, mobile and app campaigns for Disney Music Group and has a background in journalism and social media.Twitter’s Content and Programming team is headed by Chloe Sladden (@ChloeS), a former vice president at Current TV. To help the department’s goal of integrating Twitter with TV, news, sports, music and entertainment, her group offers resources and advice to TV producers, newsrooms and sports teams. Along with Simonian, Sladden also brought in a person for a position dedicated to newsrooms and expects to add four more positions in the next three months, according to a New York Times article that details Twitter’s relationship with TV shows.

Billboard’s Twitter 140: Music-Industry Characters You Need To Follow

One example of how Twitter is working more closely with music companies is its partnership with the TV show ” The X Factor.” The Simon Cowell-produced music competition will allow viewers to vote for their favorite singers once voting commences November 2.

 

HOW TO CONNECT GLOBAL14 AND TWITTER

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