Believe it our not, UX (user experience) is a HUGE focus at MySpace right now.

To help crystallize what that UX is to become, Mike Macadaan and his team took over a better portion of Floor 1 at our office in Beverly Hills to create The MySpace UX Studio.

The idea is something new for MySpace, a place where anyone in the company can see what’s coming up next, see what ideas are literally “on the drawing board”. It’s an open and transparent format that produces great results and a few epic debates. They also tend to have candy or snacks down there so it’s usually a good place to hang out.

For some crazy reason they even let the Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher down there recently. With her trademark flip cam in hand this is what she found:

So I’ve watched the Tron Legacy trailer a dozen or so times, totally normal right? I even went and made a bunch of screen captures, once again totally normal right? Either way, I hope you enjoy them:

Here’s the trailer in case you missed it:

Tron: Legacy in HD

Since I joined up with MySpace everyone keeps asking me ”What’s next?” and of course “What the hell is going on over there?”.

So far we haven’t been able to say or show much. That’ll change soon enough as we incrementally roll out what the teams have been working on. In the meantime we gave a sneak preview to some press recently, here’s what they had to say:

From The Los Angeles Times MySpace looks to the past for its future

Self-expression has long differentiated MySpace from the more stripped-down look of Facebook. On MySpace, an individual’s profile page can be customized to the point of neon garishness. To aid in refining the look, MySpace has recruited contemporary artists Shepard Fairey and Buff Monster to design profile page templates to allow for a more polished presentation.

From USATODAY Once-fading MySpace undergoes youthful reincarnation

MySpace is moving back to its original DNA: appealing to self-expressive, creative under-35-year-olds who are into games, music and movies. More than half of MySpace’s estimated 100 million users are 25 and younger.

The rebranding is illustrated in design mockups splashed across the walls of a user-experience lab here: Simple, clean pages with vibrant looks designed to draw artists, hard-core social-media users, brand managers and others. There is even talk of a new company logo.

MySpace is not only reinventing itself, but recasting the competitive climate. ”When we think about Twitter and Facebook, we don’t think about competition as much as we think about partnership, distribution and synchronization,” Hirschhorn says.

Kara Swisher made a bunch of weird references I’m way too young (or not Jewish enough) to understand in her article and video: New MySpace Co-Presidents Hirschhorn and Jones Talk About the Past (Troubled!), Present (Work in Progress) and Future (Revival?)

Thus, here’s a video interview I did with Hirschhorn and Jones–at their joint desk, like some digital Oscar Madison and Felix Unger–where we talk about all this and more, including whether or not Hirschhorn is akvetcher or not.

Top cartoon that illustrates my view of where MySpace is headed by Gaping Void.

Look! It’s a big ol’ blank iPad thanks to the iPad Omnigraffle Template from iA. What do you want to see there?

Your Ingredients.

/via @ratherfancy

Sharing content in MySpace was always a bit wonky.

Basically you could post content into a new blog or the ”About Me” section of your profile. While that type of sharing may have worked once, it’s pretty clear that it is not ideal today. Instead users prefer to share content directly into their activity streams like good little fishes.

So I’m happy to see some upgrades to the MySpace sharing process which include pushing content directly into the MySpace activity stream. You can test it out for yourself on the button below:

Oh, and good news for webmasters: if you already have MySpace share buttons in place the legacy code will continue to be supported through this new UI. No need to make any changes. It can’t hurt to check out some of the new buttons though.

Read more on the MySpace developer blog.

A Super Bowl commercial from Dockers pants is offering free pants. Learn more at http://dockers.com/freepants

Dockers: Wear the Pants

2010 Super Bowl Commercials

It’s Super Bowl time and that also means SuperBowl commercial time as well. The Super Bowl profile over on MySpace is tracking all the news and streaming videos of the Super Bowl commercials as they air.

Here’s the list so far:

• McDonald’s 2010 Superbowl Commercial with LeBron
• The Last Air Bender Trailer from 2010 Superbowl
• Boost Mobile Shuffle Super Bowl Commercial
• Bud Light Asteroid Superbowl Ad
• Doritos Watch Yourself 2010 Superbowl Commercial
• Simpsons Mr. Burns Coca-Cola Commercial
• Doritors Dog Collar Super Bowl Ad
• T-Pain Auto Tune Superbowl Commercial
• CareerBuilder Underwear Commercial
• The Wolfman Super Bowl Trailer
• Docker: Wear the Pants
• Dr. Pepper Cherry with Little Kiss Super Bowl Commercial
• Cars.com Growing up 2010 Superbowl Commercial
• Robin Hood 2010 Super Bowl Commercial
• Monster Job Hunt Super Bowl Commercial
• FLO TV: My Generation Commercial
• Dodger Charger 2010 Superbowl Commercial
• Harry Potter Superbowl Commercial
• Bud Light: Light House Commercial
• Papa Johns Delivers Super Bowl Video
• Megan Fox in a Bathtub Superbowl Commercial
• Denny’s Free Grand Slam Super Bowl Commercial
• Bridgestone: Tires or Wife?
• Google Search On Superbowl Commercial
• Census 2010 Super Bowl Commercial
• Kia Toy Fantasy Superbowl Commercial
• Audi Green Police Commercial
• Doritos Gym Ninja Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Denny’s Chickens Freaking Out

What commercials were your favorite?

The MySpace Music team and Shira Lazar are hosting the 2010 Grammy Awards Live Stream today. Check it out!

This seems to be a big week for me. After announcing our first kid is on the way, I’m also happy to announce that I’ve accepted the position of Director of Content Socialization at MySpace.

Some of you may not know but I actually have a pretty long history with MySpace. When the service launched I was actually one of the first 3000 users to setup a profile. I can really remember the atmosphere back then, the almost feeding like frenzy so many of us went through. Of course, the concept of social networking and building online friends was somewhat new, but it was clear these platforms represented the future of communication and content distribution.

It was also pretty clear to me that platforms like MySpace represented the future of online marketing, both for big brands and the scrappy upstarts. Almost right away I started helping companies market themselves in this new social landscape. Today that’s pretty standard stuff, and it’s usually called social media marketing or SMO. I have some great memories of helping those first brands and personalities launch profiles and build their own social network. I went on to share my experience and techniques in the book MySpace Marketing by QUE publishing.

Of course a lot has changed between then and now. The social networking space has evolved so much it’s not even really called social networking anymore. Instead it has become more distributed, with people moving through a myriad of new services like micro-blogging and geo-location apps. Yet despite everything that is new and shiny today, MySpace still remains a huge force in the online social space. With this new role I’ll help influence the product internally, but more importantly, I’ll also help empower the millions of MySpace users to find and share our best content.

I look forward to telling you more soon. In the meantime you can be my friend at www.myspace.com/seanpercival.

You can see the official announcement from my new boss Angela Courtin on the MySpace Press room or read more on TechCrunch.

Of course you can be too if you head over to http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo.

There you can make your own video with 50 and a few other artists. This very slick effect is from MySpaceUK, I’m trying to find out a few more details about this.

Update: Looks like this thing really took off and the servers couldn’t handle it. Hopefully it’ll be back online soon. I also got the following background via our MySpaceUK Editor Will Francis.

The application was created by top London advertising agency BBH and production company Pulse Films. Post production came from Absolute Post and digital partner Domani Studios in New York created the magic of the photo integration.

In case you missed it earlier, Laurie and I are happy to announce our first born is indeed on the way. Now excuse me while I exhale, it has been really tough keeping this news under wraps for the last 3 months! If anyone knows me then you know I love to over share with my friends and followers. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve built a career out of such behaviors.

So it’s a relief the news is officially out, tweeted and now blogged some more. This is pretty standard for us. However I can only assume some might thinking, or asking yourself, what type of life is this child going to have in our hyper connected world? One might even go as far as to say our kid is literally going to be tweeting from the womb. I mean really? That’s nonsense.

Of course I’ll tweet on the baby’s behalf over at @percivalspawn until he or she can work an iPhone. Seriously though, we’ll change that Twitter name upon birth to something official (we don’t know the name or sex yet) and give the kid a head start with something that will actually benefit them in the future, an audience.

Oh and just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the amazing response to our news. Literally leveled by how many of you took the time to comment and say congrats. And to our local friends who may of been wondering why we haven’t been very social lately, now you know. I even quit smoking and didn’t buy that Porsche I was literally drooling over. It’s almost as if I’m getting wiser as a father.

Bonus Photo in IMAX 3D:

“How Babby is Formed” is of course in reference to the classic internet meme.

No I’m not talking about turning those stacks of business cards into real life “let’s go to the park and play catch” friends. That’s silly. Who has time for more friends anyway when we have things like Twitter?

No I’m talking about taking all those business cards you collect at conferences and mixers and turning them into new friends and followers across social media sites.

Let’s face it, you can’t possibly do business with everyone you meet at these events. You can however connect online and share those ever important status updates with these folks. Who knows, maybe down the line you can turn those tweets about what you had for lunch into a big business deal.

Here’s how it’s done in a few simple steps.

1. Dealing with dead tree data: The first problem of course is that business cards are not friendable. In fact they are very analog. You can’t put them in your computer or easily import them into, well, anything. Until now that is thanks to CloudContacts. They’ll take your stacks of cards and turn them into something even prettier, structured data you can use and in our case, abuse.
2. Exporting: Once CloudContacts receives your order they process the batch and notify you via email when the job is done. From there you can login to their website and grab your data in several different formats. They offer specific formats for sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and more general purpose .CSV formats. Worst case you can also dump this data directly into Gmail which is compatible with our next step on just about every social media website.Protip: Setup a new Gmail address to use for these types of data import/export jobs, that way your main account doesn’t get unnecessarily bloated
3. Importing: Finally it’s time to match up those once lifeless squares of paper with their online counterparts. Just about any social service will give you the option to “Invite Your Friends!”. Locate this section and simply point it to your data file or loaded Gmail address book and fire away! The invite application searches it’s own records for a match and starts the connection process.

Here’s a look behind the scenes at CloudContacts. Notice all the export options along the left side.

(click to enlarge)

Introducing the official Sean Percival iPhone app, yes folks I have my own iPhone app now. This is all thanks of course to the good folks at Mobile Roadie (Disclosure: I’m a consultant).

Now you may be saying “Wow Sean, that’s horribly egocentric, even for you”, and you’re right. However there probably is some market for what I like to call “ego apps” like this.

At the end of the day I’m a publisher and a producer of content, if you enjoy said content you now have yet another channel to view it.

The app is free and includes the following features:

• My latest blog posts both here and from my Posterous
• My latest 140 character of less masterpieces on Twitter
• Fan Wall where you can talk about how nice my hair is
• Latest photos from my Flickr
• Latest videos from my YouTube

Download the app now and add what’s surely a great looking icon to you iPhone home screen.

The MySpace Developer Challenge is now officially open for submissions. In total there is $50,000 worth of cash prizes to be won along with other opportunities. You can learn much much more on the official MySpace Developer Blog and PC World.

If you have any interest in the challenge please feel free to reach out to me directly. I’m happy help get you started or make an introduction to the platform team at MySpace.

In addition to the cash prizes, this is a great chance to get your work in front of an EPIC group of judges like:

• Mike Jones – MySpace COO and Serial Entrepreneur
• Robert Scoble – Blogger and Tech Pundit
• Ron Conway – Legendary Silicon Valley Investor
• David Glazer – Director of Engineering at Google

Visit http://www.myspace.com/developerchallenge for more info or contact me directly.

Since 2010 (pronounced ‘twenty-ten’) is here, I wanted to share ten tools I’m going to use this year to kick ass. Just like Michael Arrington’s annual list, these are web services or gadgets that I love right now.

Let’s get right to it:

1. Wordy

Do you bad write sometime? Me too. Actually, I write beautifully and proofread poorly. So, Wordy to the rescue: these guys will copy-edit any text within about ten minutes.

2. Evernote

All my technohipster friends seem to love this service so I’ve decided to give it a try. With Evernote you can easily create and store notes about all those weird projects floating around in your head. I think Tim Ferris uses it and that guy only works four hours a week, two hours of which are spent hitting on Shira Lazar.

3. iPhone

The iPhone is still my most powerful weapon for 2010 (lord that sounds nerdy). Until Apple releases their much anticipated tablet device I don’t see my usage dropping much.

4. FreshBooks

Being a free agent the last few months I’ve had to actually invoice a few people. FreshBooks makes that about as easy as possible. Bonus: If you only invoice a few clients you can use their service completely free of charge.

5. Seesmic Desktop

As far as social applications go, Seesmic Desktop is still my favourite. I’ve tried using the native Windows client but it still needs some work so I’m typically on the Adobe Air version.

6. oDesk

Tired of asking your friends to do your programming or search engine optimization (SEO) for you? Well, you should be–that shit is annoying. Instead, hook up with oDesk and find yourself a remote worker bee. They can handle just about any task. Bonus: You can spy on them in a ‘Big Brother’-like way thanks to the monitoring software each oDesker uses to track their hours.

7. SocialToo

Now that social platforms have become a major time suck, you really need to optimise some of their maintenance. That’s where SocialToo comes in. This service helps me easily manage my Twitter followers and more. I use this for every Twitter account I help maintain–at this point that’s well over a dozen.

8. foursquare/Gowalla

Yes, I like these location based apps, what can I say? I’m going to continue using both to see where this space is headed. Are you telling me you haven’t worked out free deals for your mayorships yet? I know I certainly have.

9. Mint

For me one fun thing about having a lot of money is watching it bounce around virtually. Mint offers me the prettiest way to enjoy such a thing. It’s the dashboard into my financial life where I can track all my accounts and my stocks. Bonus: The Mint iPhone app is full of win.

10. Paper

Finally, we have paper. No, I’m not talking about some cleverly named web app (it would be called Papr). I’m talking about the old fashioned paper–dead trees, baby. I’m finding my computer increasingly more distracting these days. Between the emails, tweets and everything else sometimes it becomes hard to focus, to really problem solve. So I’m hoping in 2010 to get a lot more time away from the screen, sketching and plotting on paper like the ole’ days.

What tools are you using this year to kick ass? Let me know in the comments.

The iPhone is a wonderful device, not just for its healing powers and time travel functions, but because it also takes photos!

So here is my look back on 2009 through the lens of my iPhone.

Enjoy!

TMZ is publishing a photo they claim features former president John Kennedy on a boat with a bunch of naked girls. Since they didn’t have photoshop during his era we can only assume this is totes real.

Click the above photo to enlarge JFK on a boat.

I must have too much free time this vacation break because I’m thinking about web page layouts over the last few years, mainly blogs and news related content. How have they changed and what trends have managed to endure?

I wanted to know so I dug through my own memories of yesteryear and of course the Internet Archive. I put together my findings in the below Prezi.

For best experience go full screen mode and use the arrows to navigate. Or get crazy and move around freestyle with your scroll wheel and click+drag movments.

What other trends have you noticed over the years?

It looks like the official iPhone app for LeWeb has been a huge success. We’re seeing a lot of great feedback both on the show floor and Twitter. As I look over peoples shoulders I can also see them using it and from what I can tell enjoying it. For me that in itself is pretty cool.

Michael Arrington caught up with CEO Michael Schneider to talk more about the app in the below video. Check it out and please don’t ask me about the secret funding they are about to announce. Just know some really big players are VERY interested in Mobile Roadie.

(The MySpace leweb presentation done via Prezi)

MySpace made a few announcements today at LeWeb, the biggest one being that they now plan to open up the massive MySpace data stream to developers. Much like Twitter’s “firehouse”, this data feed can be used to develop a wide variety of applications.

There is a $50,000 prize out there to someone who creates the most interesting experience with this data. Find out more about that at developer.myspace.com.

Learn more about today’s announcements on:

• The Official MySpace Dev Blog
• TechCrunch
• ReadWriteWeb

clicky to zoom

I’m gearing up for the LeWeb conference in Paris France, here’s what I’m taking with me.

From top left to right-ish.

1. Kindle DX
2. Nikon D5000
3. Zoom Handy Recorder H2
4. Nokia N85 for rent-a-SIM
5. iPhone 3Gs (expensive to use in France)
6. OWLE
7. Kodak HD Camcorder
8. Flip Mino
9. AT&T Wireless Card (even more expensive to use in France)
10. Old School iPod
11. GPS Unit
12. Macbook Pro

]]> http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2009/12/05/leweb-gear-roundup/feed/ 5 leweb-gear http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2009/12/03/myspace-music-launches-in-uk/ http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2009/12/03/myspace-music-launches-in-uk/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:04:04 +0000 Sean Percival http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/?p=3382

MySpace just launched MySpace Music UK, similar to the offering here in the states, our UK members now get all the same goodies like:

• The new MyMusic personal music management system
• Free and unlimited ad-supported, full-length audio and music video streaming
• Fully licensed content catalogue and artist discographies from majors and indie partners
• Free and unlimited playlist functionality organized in a user friendly ‘drag and drop’ way
• Exclusive audio, video, and playlist content from top UK artists and icons
• DRM-free downloads via iTunes
• Free artist access to the MySpace Music Dashboard – a unique and free analytics tool which allows artists to have a much greater insight into what their fans are doing.
• Charts – a front door to the most popular artists, songs, albums and videos on MySpace Music from all artists globally

Here’s a short video that takes you through everything. Cheers!

Learn More:

• Official Blog
• TechCrunch

From: Cyber Monday Deals | Mobile Roadie Blog

the first 5 customers to use the code CYBERMONDAY during signup get 50% off their own custom iPhone app from Mobile Roadie. So if you’ve been waiting for the right time to get started, well, this would be that time.

Or better yet, give an iPhone app as gift this year. Just imagine how that could play out for you:

You: Hey dude, I got you an iPhone app for Christmas.

Friend: Oh ya, which one? Is it the one that farts? I really hope it is.

You: No dude, it’s your own iPhone app, you can build it yourself and put whatever you want in it.

Friend: You are the greatest friend and always will be the greatest friend.

You: I know

Not bad huh?

Get started today

A few months ago the guys at OWLE reached out me about this new device they hoped to build and sell. They were looking for a few contacts and I was happy to make some introductions for them. Turns out it helped, their prototype and various dreams have now become a reality. In fact just yesterday one of the first OWLE units showed up at my front door.

Basically it’s an add-on for the iPhone that turns the Jesus phone into a series video device. Included is a new (and AWESOME) lens, a directorial microphone and solid case to house it all.

If you want to learn more about OWLE head over to their website. To see me unbox mine checkout the video below:

MySpace Twilight Saga: New Moon Red Carpet Live Stream

Yes I already know you’re crazy excited about the Twilight New Moon Red Carpet Premiere, or maybe that’s just my wife? Oh I’m so getting trouble for letting that slip.

In any case, should you be into such things you’ll definitely want to check out the above live stream starting at Monday 6:00pm PST. MySpace is streaming the entire event live over on the Twilight New Moon page as well.

Thankfully we are out of town tomorrow, otherwise I’m sure I would be begging MySpace PR for a spot on the red carpet for my wife. She like so many Twilight fans has been dying to meet Robert Pattinson. I’m only slightly threatened by this, mostly because I’m pretty sure I have better hair.