Twitter Feels Like Falling in Love, At Least From a Hormonal Perspective

Adam Penenberg, writer of Viral Loop, interviewed Paul J. Zak aka Dr. Love. Dr. Love studes “neuroeconomics” and has discovered that social media, especially fast-moving streams like Twitter, flood our brains with oxytocin, the “hug hormone” that makes us feel empathy and, more important, makes us feel good.
In a number of test cases, the most important involving Penenberg tweeting about “overweight tourists in Speedos,” the hug hormone spiked and stress went down. Twitter, in a sense, is like taking a fat drag on a good cigarette or a eating a sleeve of Thin Mints. As Penenberg tweeted, they measured his hormonal levels with surprising results:

In those 10 minutes between blood batches one and two, my oxytocin levels spiked 13.2%. That’s equivalent to the hormonal spike experienced by the groom at the wedding Zak attended. Meanwhile, stress hormones cortisol and ACTH went down 10.8% and 14.9%, respectively. Zak explains that the results are linked, that the release of oxytocin I experienced while tweeting reduced my stress hormones.

You can read the entire article here but for those in need of a quick social media fix, they also have a video interview for your edification.
The interesting question is this: if companies are able to interact with us on social networks, are they actually dosing us with drugs? And what happens when we adamantly don’t trust an organization? Would their tweets (“Retweet #BPCares to win a free chocolate turtle!”) induce rage hormones? The potential is frightening. I’d better go Tweet this to calm down.

After More Than 10 Years, Indie Music Community GarageBand.com Folds

GarageBand.com the well-known indie music store, discovery & review service and online community, will be discontinued as of July 15th, 2010, more than 10 years after it first saw the light of day.

In an email sent to users this morning, the company that spawned social music discovery service iLike (now part of MySpace), the GarageBand team says users can register for an iLike account to have their music, profile pic and bio automatically linked up and ported over.
(Strangely, you can still sign up for a GarageBand account.)
If you’ve recently purchased music on GarageBand and think you deserve a refund, you can contact the company to request one, but do it before July 31st.
Here’s the email they sent, as forwarded by a reader:

Dear [user],
It’s been over ten years since we started helping discover independent music on the ol’ interwebs. Things have changed a lot since then. Most of those changes have been good and some of them have been bad. Some changes are just bitter-sweet.
It’s with this bitter-sweetness that we are announcing today that Garageband.com will be discontinued as of July 15th, 2010.
The landscape of how music is discovered and delivered has changed drastically over the last decade and we are proud to have been a huge part of that change — first with Garageband.com and then with iLike.com and beyond. Sadly, that landscape will not include Garageband.com anymore.
Link your account to iLike: (action required)
If you want to continue to make your music available for streaming or download on iLike.com and the iLike application on Facebook, please go to iLike.com and login with your Garageband username and password by July 15th, 2010. This will automatically link your account to iLike so we can port your music, profile photo, and biography to iLike.com.
Finally, if you have recently made a purchase on Garageband.com and would like a refund, please email refunds@iLike-inc.com to request a refund. Valid refund requests must be received no later than July 31st, 2010.
Sincerely,
The Garageband and iLike team

The news comes about 2 months after we found out iLike founders (and twin brothers) Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi simultaneously stepped down from their executive positions at MySpace to pursue opportunities as advisors and angel investors.
Likely, this has something to do with the decision to also pull the plug on GarageBand.
May it rest in peace.

Ticketmaster Rival Ticketfly Acquires Music Event Listing And Promotion Service Gigbot

Online ticketing startup Ticketfly has acquired music event listing and promotions site Gigbot.Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Ticketfly, which helps concert promoters sell tickets by leveraging social media, plans to integrate Gigbot’s technology into its portal. Gigbot’s flagship product, Gigbot Pro adopts a similar social media model to Ticketfly, allowing musicians to promote shows via the social networks, schedule auto tweets and syndicate content to event listings sites.
Gigbot also lets fan comment on and share which events they are planning to attend and receive alerts when their favorite artists are coming to town. And musicians can create and send email newsletters to fans and publish music to the site. Sean Porter, Gigbot’s founder and chief architect, has joined Ticketfly as the Vice President of Product.
Ticketfly just raised $3 million in funding from The NYC Seed Fund, High Peaks Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, and a number of angel investors including Howard Lindzon

The top four iPhone 4 hardware issues so far

The first batch of iPhone 4s isn’t exactly wooing the world. The phones seem to be plagued with various deal-breaking issues. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable waiting in line for this Jesusphone right now knowing that these four hardware problems are so rampant. Hopefully the problems are being worked out right now in some Foxconn factory and later shipments won’t have so many issues.

It scratches & shatters like glass

The iPhone 4’s front and back panel are made out of chemically-strengthened Gorilla Glass instead of shiny plastic like older iPhones. Gorilla Glass is tough, and should hold up better than the plastic, but this is a phone we’re talking about. I know my handsets have been dropped hundreds of times and more often than not, have lived with my keys in my pocket. That’s not exactly a safe environment for glass of any sort.

Early reports show that the glass certainly isn’t scratch-proof and can even spiderweb like a windshield if dropped. Scary thought.

There are yellow bands and/or dots on the screen

Steve Jobs proudly talked about the iPhone 4’s retina 960 x 640 LCD and after checking it out for ourselves, we gladly drank the kool-aid. It’s awesome. Well, at least it’s awesome when it doesn’t have yellow bands and dots on it.

Some are speculating that these areas of pale yellow are related to how the phone is being held, but so far Apple hasn’t stated anything on the subject. Perhaps it was just a bad batch of screens and later version won’t have this issue. It certainly speaks to Apple’s quality control, though. Gizmodo so far has 27 examples of this issue documented and that’s likely just a small sampling.

Reception is lost when touching the bezel

The iPhone has never been called a reliable calling device. Oh no, but that’s more because of AT&T’s piss-poor service than the device itself. However, this version was supposed to help by moving the antenna to the bezel, rather than behind a backplate.

I’m sorry to say, though, the iPhone 4 is still dropping calls. In fact it seems that bars are lost when the phone is held by its bezel, because apparently your hand is bridging the antennas located on both sides of the the bezel. But if you slip on a cover, therefore killing any connection between your conductive skin and the metal bezel, the issue goes away.

Again, hopefully these problems are being resolved right now. I would seriously think twice about getting one within the next week or two, though. Apple will likely acknowledge at least the reception and yellow banding issue soon and suggest a workaround for early buyers. But if you do happen to get one from the first batch, make sure you take full advantage of AT&T’s 30-day return and exchange policy. It might be best to actually hold off contacting AT&T for a week or two with the hope that you’ll get a device from another batch rather than the first round — or better yet, don’t buy one at all for a few weeks.

Update: The discolored screens are reportedly due to still-wet glue, but now there’s a new issue: some cameras are crashing the devices. Almost certainly a software problem, but still worth mentioning here.

 

Live From The iPhone 4 Launch At SF’s Flagship Apple Store

t’s finally here. After months of anticipation, the launch of Apple’s iPhone 4 is upon us, and dozens of people are currently lined up in front of San Francisco’s flagship Apple store to get their hands on one.
Of couse, not everyone is fortunate enough to live close to an Apple Store (or has the time to go stand in line at this ridiculous hour). Which is why I’m braving the early morning once again to give you all a vicarious taste of Apple’s devotees at their finest.

I’m equipped with a Nexus One live streaming with Qik. Last time I faced this line during the launch of the iPad, I had an Apple sticker covering the Nexus’s Google logo to throw any particularly rabid Apple fans off the scent. Unfortunately it seems that I’ve exhausted my supply of Apple stickers — this could get nasty.

Online Panel Company uSamp Takes DMS Insights Off AOL’s Hands

Internet panel company uSamp has just announced that it has acquired research and sampling technology DMS Insights (aka Digital Marketing Services) from AOL. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Founded in 1995, DMS Insights, which was acquired by AOL in 1999, created “river sampling” methodology and developed Opinion Place, a portal for random, real-time recruitment of survey respondents via the web.
In a memo to staff, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wrote:

“While data and research certainly play an important role in the work we are doing today and in our efforts to provide the best experiences to our consumers and advertisers going forward, creating and administering online sampling isn’t an area AOL needs to own to succeed. As we stay true to executing our strategy, it only made sense that we look to combine DMS with another group in the research industry – a move that will benefit DMS and allow the company and its employees to thrive and grow.”

According to the release, AOL will remain a strategic partner of DMS Insights, “continuing to support both traffic and AOL credit incentives for Opinion Place” and AOL will also remain as a research client of DMS.
Usamp just raised $10 million in funding to further development of its Web-based panel management platform and other social media technology enhancements. The company currently boasts a database of 2 million active global panelists for the market research industry. Top segments are said to include automotive, entertainment, financial services, food and beverage, gamers, telecommunications and travel.
Clearly the sale of DMS Insights is a part of an overall strategy of unloading properties that don’t fit into AOL’s current vision of its business model. Of course, the sale of DMS Insights comes on the heels of AOL’s sale of Bebo to hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners for less than $10 million after the company bought the social networking site for $850 million in 2008.

Rebtel Makes International Calling Free With New Android App

VoIP company Rebtel is launching a new version of its Android app that allows users to make free Android-to-Android international calls between more than 50 countries.
While the international part of the call is free, the caller and recipient still may have to pay for local calling minutes determined by their mobile phone plans. The app runs in the background and will intercept users making a more expensive long distance calls by automatically converting the number to a cheap local number. So when the user dials an international number from the native Android dial pad, or selects a contact with an international number from the address book, the call is automatically intercepted and routed via Rebtel instead of their carrier. Also since Rebtel works on the standard cellular network using local phone numbers, no WiFi is needed to make calls.
Rebtel’s us reporting a 100% jump in revenue grew in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period last year, increasing revenue from $8 milllion to $16 million. Rebtel’s annual revenue run rate is just over $40 million, and the service has logged more than one billion minutes in international calls. The company also just acquired Talkster earlier this year.
But Rebtel faces a formidable competitor in the VoIP space: Skype. Skype’s share of international calling minutes and traffic are growing rapidly. And Skype’s quarterly revenue is a whopping $185 million.