facebook application development

Earlier this week we noticed that Facebook no longer has music in their gift shop, a feature that was relatively popular among Facebook users. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the service was pulled as part of Apple’s decision to shut down Lala on May 31st. While pundits have speculated about the reason behind Lala being shut down, many Facebook users don’t care what the reason is as they are disappointed that music has disappeared from the gift shop.

After being one of the most buzzed about Facebook partnerships, it’s interesting to see the service pulled only 7 months after first launching. There’s no doubt that music gifts present Facebook with a significant source of revenue potential (the exact figure we’re not sure of). Now the question is whether or not Facebook will start searching for another partner to fill this void.

Right now Facebook is in the midst of trying to push out the Open Graph as the platform for the semantic web and while revenue is extremely important, the bigger question is whether or not there is a strong enough business to justify other partnership discussions. My guess is that Facebook easily sold millions of dollars in music gifts each year, but with Lala most likely taking a significant cut, there’s no telling how lucrative it was for Facebook.

Here’s what a Facebook spokesperson told us about Lala’s disappearance:

We recognize that sharing music plays an important role in how people stay connected and express common interests on Facebook, however, as a result of Lala being shut down as of May 31st, the service will no longer be available in the Facebook Gift Shop.

People who purchased a websong from the Facebook Gift Shop will be reimbursed with credits that may be used towards other Facebook Gift Store purchases, or to spend on games and applications on Facebook that accept credits. We will not be reimbursing MP3 gifts, since they were already downloaded by the recipient.

Sheila Marikar is a writer based in New York. She covers entertainment and lifestyle for ABCNews.com, The Huffington Post and more. Follow her on Twitter.

Summer concert season calls, with its far-flung fairgrounds, scorching sun, and pricey passes. But on the horizon, something bigger beckons.

Big Live, which launches in June, might just be a social networking, online video force to be reckoned with. The site, which fuses Facebook chat-style features with concert video, promises to change the way people consume music online by making it a social experience. Got an appetite for live jam sessions and streaming status updates? Think of Big Live as a multi-stage cornucopia where you and your friends can gorge on thousands of gigs.

Find Friends Through Music

Unlike YouTube, iTunes, Pandora and similar services, Big Live endeavors to establish connections between like-minded users through music.

“You can recognize who you’re watching a piece of video with, sort on that crowd, and find the person who you might be most interested in speaking with … and making some kind of connection with,” explained Big Live founder Mike Rudoy. “We’re a social networking site and we’re using video as the medium [for] making a connection, as opposed to a fact, like what school you attended, as Facebook does.”

Users can also toggle between multiple stages to watch several live shows or pre-recorded performances at the same time, or to share in a concert experience with multiple different friends over many different styles of music.

Social Networking Enhances Concert Watching

The logic behind the site is that if you’re watching Jay-Z rock out at Madison Square Garden, you might be inspired to bond with a fellow viewer over his awesome rendition of “Empire State of Mind.” The idea is to bring that shared concert experience into the online realm. But Big Live’s chat function isn’t only intended to foster friendships — it’s also designed to keep users engaged.

“It’s really easy to watch an episode of ‘The Office’ in bed on your computer because it’s a passive experience and there’s a narrative arc,” Rudoy said. “If you’re watching something like a concert, there isn’t necessarily a narrative arc. It can be difficult to keep someone’s attention for an hour. So the question was, what do you need in a video platform for someone to be able to stomach long-form video without a narrative arc?”

The answer, it turns out, is your friends. Chatting with your compatriots while taking in a show helps keep concert watchers invested and more likely to stick around through the whole set.

Would You Follow Your Friends or Your Favorite Acts?

While Big Live has been in development for months, it took a recent 20-person test drive of the site for Rudoy to realize one of its coolest features. Because users can see what their friends are watching, they often pick concerts to watch based on popularity.

“We have a very similar feature to Facebook in the ‘friends online’ tab,” Rudoy explained. “But with Facebook, there are no collaborative environments. There are no places to meet up. Now, we’re allowing people to recognize where their friends are so they can go and meet up with them. Over time, people migrate to the same video because they’re able to recognize where people are across the site. Given a number of choices, people are going to go where their friends are despite whether or not that’s their first choice of content to watch. They’re choosing what their friends do over what they want to do. That’s a factor we’re going to play up.”

It’s Not Just For Concerts

Despite the Facebook comparisons, Big Live doesn’t seek to replace that social networking site or any other — it’s designed to sync information from users’ profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google Buzz and elsewhere.

Though the site has yet to launch, it’s already gained attention in the social media sphere. At SXSW, Big Live was honored with the Pepsi/SoundCTRL award for “Most Innovative Business in Music and Technology.” And their business plan extends beyond music. Rudoy believes fashion shows and news events could play well on Big Live too.

For now, though, it’s all about the concerts. Big Live has lined up “a number of venue partnerships” through which they’ll stream live shows, and they’re bulking up their database by filming more content and packaging existing performance video. By launch time, Rudoy hopes Big Live will be a music-lover’s mecca as bountiful as Cochella or Bonnaroo.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” [PRIVACY]
- HOW TO: Spring Clean Your Twitter Account
- Tim Ferriss: 7 Great Principles for Dealing with Haters
- 5 Reasons Google and Search Won’t Dominate The Next Decade
- How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change

Tags: concerts, facebook, music, social media, social networks

Every once in a while a Facebook music app comes along that looks great and is easy to use, and RootMusic’s new BandPage app for music marketing seems to fit the bill. If you are a band looking for tools to help promote your group on Facebook, this is one that you have to check out.

It’s a given that Facebook is a great way for music bands to promote themselves — just the number of music player apps for Facebook alone suggests how important music is to Facebookers, as does the existence of Facebook’s Music Page. A search for “band app” on Facebook shows no shortage of choices, some of which AllFacebook has previously covered (e.g., ReverbNation’s Best Bands app, etc).

RootMusic’s BandPages app might not be the last of its kind to appear on Facebook, but its slick, easy-to-use interface makes me wish I still had my array of guitars, basses and synths — just so that I could record some tracks and “wow” my Facebook friends through my own Facebook Page.

BandPage has several great features for promoting your band. Here are just a few:

• Add songs for fans to listen to or download.
• Upload band pictures.
• Allow fans to send email.
• Display and manage info about upcoming shows: date, time, city, venue, ticket cost.
• Pull in your band’s Twitter feed to display your tweet stream.

The setup process is relatively simple:

1. Make sure that the Facebook Page where you want to add band content to has already been created, and that you are an admin of that Page.
2. Use the Get Started button from RootMusic’s site. This uses Facebook Connect to log you in. (You can take the tour or watch the video on their home page, before you get started.)
3. Select the Facebook Page to add band content to. Once you’ve logged in, Band App will display all the Facebook Pages where you’re an admin. Pick the one you want.
4. Now follow the video or text instructions on how to add content from the BandPage editor. Once the video stops playing, the BandPage editor will show.
5. Export your content. This is probably the most complicated step, relatively speaking (there’s a video in the BandPage Editor page on how to do this). Since your band page content is actually being created on RootMusic.com, you’ll need to embed this over on your Facebook Page. RootMusic calls it “exporting.” You do this by pulling the content into your Facebook Page via the RootMusic BandPage installer. You can customize your Facebook Page tabs after you’ve finished exporting.

RootMusic’s BandPage app looks exciting enough to make me want to run out right now and buy a guitar. If, unlike me, you’re in the music entertainment biz, this is an app you need to see. What might make this app really “sticky” for fans, as well as help bands, is if there was a corresponding directory of bands and musicians using the app, possibly with recommendations based on music genres, or even voted on by fans.

Have you ever been walking down the street and suddenly a song comes on that resonates with you? Suddenly you’re dancing in the middle of the street or on the subway and all you want to do is tell your friends about the song that you’re listening to right then. Thanks to Social Player, a new iPhone application, you’ll be able to keep your friends up to date with all the music you’re listening to. While you could theoretically publish every song you’re listening to, it makes much more sense to only share your favorites.

Social Player does one simple thing: let’s you share with your friends on Facebook any song you’re listening to. Currently featured on the homepage of the iTunes app store, Social Player does nothing more than keep your friends up to date about your latest listening habits. While I would have expected Apple to integrate similar functionality directly into their iPod application, Social Player is a layer directly on top of the existing iPod application.

That means Social Player will function in the background, letting you open it up anytime you want to share the song you’re currently listening to with your Facebook friends. The idea is so simple that I think it could become a pretty big application. Developed by Andreas Doll and Sven Geisler, Social Player is the first application to launch out of the duo’s new startup project.me. If you like sharing your music listening habits with friends, the Social Player is the best application I’ve seen to do so.

While I’m not sure how the developers intend to expand this application, it appears that the company is collecting data about each song a user listens to. Perhaps the company is looking to develop a new version of last.fm, one of the largest social music products on the internet. Whatever their keeping the information for, providing users with the ability to share their music on Facebook is a simple yet useful feature. You can download the application in the app store right now for $0.99.

One downside of the application is that when you publish a story to your Facebook Page, the story doesn’t link to the actual song. The result is that your friends are notified of the song title, artist, and album, as well as the album cover. With a few added upgrades, I think this application could really take off.

How about this for an incentive: become a fan of Alicia Keys’ Facebook Page and you’ll immediately get access to her album which is being released next week. This is the first artist we’ve seen to make their album completely available via Facebook prior to going on sale. With “Empire State Of Mind” having been such a hit, the album exclusive “Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down”, should help drive sales starting next week.

Alicia Keys currently has over 1.3 million Facebook fans and many more are joining in order to gain access to the exclusive promotion which is sponsored by American Express and powered by Involver. In the past, MySpace was the destination of choice for most musicians to debut their album, however with Facebook’s larger audience, MySpace music should clearly feel threatened.

Facebook Pages have been previously used for hosting live music events, however album debuts are not exactly a regular occurrence on the site, despite having over 350 million users. What will be interesting to see is whether or not this decision by Alicia Keys’ marketing team will inspire other musicians to follow suit. Whether or not they do, you can take advantage of this new campaign by becoming a fan of the Alicia Keys page and listening to her new album.