Facebook to launch music service

It’s no secret that Facebook have been toying with the idea of getting in on the music streaming business and it looks like their offering will be announced during its F8 developer conference this month.

According to sources, Facebook will be bucking the trend by not actually hosting music but merely allowing their service to act as a platform for other products, much like it does for gaming apps.

Apparently the discovery came from software engineer Jeff Rose taking a closer look at the code behind Facebook’s video chat release. In there was reference to ‘Facebook Vibes’ believed to be the app that will be used for streaming music.

We already know that Facebook has teamed up with Spotify and a further partnership with MOG and Rdio has formed the final piece of the jigsaw.

While Facebook have declined to confirm the rumours, they have stated that supporting music streaming is nothing new and they will continue to look at how they develop their support of popular music services.

Facebook will be streaming the F8 conference live at http://www.facebook.com/f8

Digital agency fees on the up

For all the digital marketers out there it seems we are working in the right industry. Following a report from Econsultancy, Digital agencies are seeing a significant increase in their chargeable rates from junior PROs to those working at director level.

And this trend is set to continue with agencies anticipating growth of around 26% in 2011. While the increase is naturally more significant for London based agencies, the trend is being replicated in all areas of the UK with the South East seeing the second largest increase.

There could be many reasons for this, many of us felt the squeeze on in house PR and marketing functions and for a lot of companies these were the first hit by the financial downturn. This meant that more companies are choosing to outsource their activity to agencies rather than employ their own staff.

With the fast growing developments in digital media, its’ often difficult for an in house PRO to keep abreast of the tools and services on offer. This is something that agencies are better able to overcome as they usually work on a variety of projects at the same time and give time dedicated to testing new technology. They also avoid the trap of getting bogged down in a company’s culture and politics, avoiding the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ attitude.

Whatever the reason, its great news for agencies and freelancers as it seems the demand is outweighing the availability so it’s a seller’s market.

Econsultancy have a full report on offer if you’re a member, if not they have a useful summary too.

Sony tablet launched

Sony has launched two new tablets, set to go on sale this Autumn. The two devices Sony, says are set to be an alternative to the iPad rather than replacing it in the market. This is probably a wise move given the problem’s other tablet manufacturers have experienced.

Sony’s S model has two key features which it says sets the device apart from other devices. Firstly it comes with a built in infra red allowing it to act as a remote control for numerous systems including hi-fis and TVs. Sony says this is key to its USP as it means the device is not ‘locked’ to its own products.

The second feature is the ability to hook into digital media stored on a user’s computer or hard drives in their home. The device uses wifi to scan for any available media and direct it to a device that can play it back, meaning the tablet becomes an interface which links up many different systems.

The P model offers all of the above but in an attractive clamshell design, making it highly portable and it looks very cute too. It makes for a great alternative to the Kindle with the added bonus of being a smart little web device too.

They are both nice looking machines and clearly some thought has been given to where Sony can offer something unique. However I’m struggling to see the appeal of what is basically a glorified one for all remote and something else that looks very much like a Nintendo DS with web access for the same price an iPad. Yes that’s right, the price will be virtually the same!

I appreciate I’m a die hard Apple fan but I’m sure most people will agree that if they had a spare £500 in their pocket for a mobile device it probably wouldn’t be going on one of these.

If you’re tempted though, you can watch a short video showing the key features of both.

 

Episode 36, We look at Page Turning solutions, the great way to turn your pdf to flash to create a great page flip solution for your readers.  We share with you some great tools for creating page turners for free, and share our thoughts flash and Html 5 options plus share our top tips on  how to create an engaging page flip experience.

Rectoverso by @BradEstey
HTML 5 page turner app that is under 10k!
http://10k.aneventapart.com/Uploads/325/

Do also check out the other under 10K apps entered into the competition, there is some amazing html 5 stuff. ( keep hitting the explore more apps button- there is lots here!) :-
http://10k.aneventapart.com/

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!
www.facebook.com/decathalonportugal ( seems to be down- so find live page turner here… check out pulsating tent on P13 / 14)
http://goo.gl/Mzt0I
Google think quarterly
Format defining digital publication
http://thinkquarterly.co.uk/

Issuu -  an amazingly great free page turner solution
http://issuu.com/

Hype – a mac html 5 authoring tool
http://goo.gl/1g2LA
Zmags - High end page turner solution with some amazing premium features including custom e-commerce integration. Since recording this show we have been in touch with them to discover  little more. They have offices in US, UK and Europe, and they do a lot more than we realised, having just launched an CommercePro solution which supports IOS device options and has some of the best analytics on this type of platform we have ever seen. We loved their page turner heat map feature!  They also run some great free online webinars and have an really helpful support team. ( possibly more on this in a future episode)
Definitely worth taking a look at what they offer!
http://www.zmags.com/

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How to get in Touch:

daniel@targetinternet.com

http://www.twitter.com/danielrowles

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Digital-Marketing-Podcast-2785308

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketingpodcast

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

 

This entry comes from many years of practical experience of working with agencies and freelancers, but also a bit of an insiders view having been a director at a digital marketing agency for 4 years.

First of all here’s the main differences between working with an agency and a freelancer:

Freelancers are generally the cheapest option (although some very experienced high quality freelancers may be the same price as an agency). With a freelancer you are dealing with an individual – this in itself can have pros and cons. You are talking directly to the person doing the work so there is no incorrect channeling of communications or messages getting lost between people. It also means that if you’re freelancer is on holiday, off sick, or down the pub, there is nobody to speak to. They also wont generally have a finance or admin team and they probably wont have an office. This means meeting will happen at your premises or in a public place such as a cafe. This is a nice idea in theory but being surrounded by other people when you are discussing you top secret plan for launching the next Facebook or Twitter isn’t ideal (although the coffee is often good). It’s also unlikely you’ll be their only client, so you need assurances in regard to how much of their time you are getting and their availability for discussing and feeding back on a particular project. All this aside, working with a freelancer can be very cost effective, and if you pick your freelancer well, the work can be excellent.

Agencies will tend to have better facilities, including a range of staff for different tasks. This means there will generally be somebody to speak to when you need to  – but don’t make any assumptions about this and see if you will get a SLA (Service Level Agreement) that guarantees availability, turnaround time,etc). One of the great joys of working with an agency (or pitfalls when its not working properly) is your account manager. An account manager will be your first point of contact within a mid-large size agency (many  agencies don’t have account managers, particularly the smaller ones) and is generally responsible for channeling your requests to the right member of the team, getting feedback and reports for you, and generally fighting your side within the agency. This is great if you have a good account manager that you get on with. If you don’t, it’s a recipe for disaster as you main point of contact and communications channel will essentially be broken. Make sure you meet your account manager before signing a contract, and ask to speak to another client that has worked with the agency and has used the same account manager.

Agencies can be anything from a couple of freelancers working together to multi-national companies with dozens of offices worldwide and teams of staff in the hundreds/thousands. Correspondingly, they can offer very different levels of service. Some key things to check before you commit:

Some Question to Ask (all points should apply to freelancers as well):

Have they worked on exactly this kind of project before? A lot of us like challenges and interesting work, but do you really want to pay for your suppliers’ learning curve? Although if you doing something truly original there will be some learning to do.

Who specifically will be working on the project and what is their experience? Very often you meet the top consultant but they won’t actually be doing the work. I always struggled with this when I worked in the agency environment as I would be pitching the work but somebody else would be delivering it. This meant a project that was signed on the basis of my communication and relationship with someone delivering on the promises I made – all fine when it works but can be difficult when it doesn’t. The key solution to this is clear and structured briefings and clarity early on about who is doing what.

Are they just pushing the work out to a freelancer themselves and marking up the cost? Although this can also work if they are adding value in terms of project management, communication and quality control.

Will they need to interact with other suppliers and are they experienced in doing this? Ask to see examples of whom they have worked with on what work. This most often happens when design and development is done by different companies/individuals. My best advice on this is to assign a lead agency/freelancer who is responsible for the overall project. This means they must make sure all parties have the correct communications, adhere to deadlines and attend the relevant meetings. This will save you a lot of administrative work as well making someone responsible for the fact everyone knows what is going on.

How much are they willing to do to pitch for your work? An individual or company that goes the extra mile in the pitch is hungry for the work and will generally pay you more attention when you are a client. By the extra mile, I mean the pitch you receive should not be generic. An SEO/PPC pitch should highlight some key issues that are particular to you and your industry, a design pitch should at least have some wireframes or ideally some initial very high level concepts* and a development pitch should have some sort of structure or process included.

*I caveat this with the fact that many design agencies wont do initial concepts before you sign on the dotted line. This is because they quite often loose work if the client doesn’t like the initial concept, even if it is just that, an initial concept.

What happens if you can’t agree on design? The problem with design work is that it can be subjective in part, so discuss what will happen if after you have signed up they can’t come up with a design that you like. Generally the agreement you sign will offer you a number of design concepts to choose from. Make sure this is clear, and then see how much the design of choice can be tweaked and changed. Is this limited in the contract? You can find yourself in an endless loop of design tweaks that lead to a very average design. Choose a designer that has produced work you like, has studied design professionally and thoroughly understands usability – then let them do their job. Unfortunately most designs are ruined by one of two things, they were no good in the first place, or they started off well and then one or more people on the client side made changes until there was nothing interesting left. If you or somebody in your organisation doesn’t have a professional understanding of design then don’t act as if you do! Its amazing how many MD’s and CEO’s are experts in web design!

How detailed will the specification be? In my experience, the more time spent on this stage of a project the more likely the project is to succeed. This is because you’ve spent the time thrashing out what you as a client expect and what the agency or freelancer is expecting to deliver. The specification work is such a big topic we’ll come back to this in a later blog post.

What are the timescales? What happens if the agency/freelancer miss their deadlines? What are your responsibilities and when do they need to be delivered? What happens if you miss your deadlines? I generally look to add a discount clause to any contract that gives you a discount if the supplier misses the deadline by more than an agreed amount. This will depend on you signing things off and providing content at the appropriate time but it serves to make sure the supplier sets a realistic schedule in the first place.

Can you pay based on results? More and more search campaigns can be paid for on a results basis. You generally pay a small retainer, or nothing at all, and pay an agreed amount when the agreed results are achieved. Be aware of two things in these scenarios; firstly, you need to make sure you are setting qualitative and quantitative targets. It’s all very well getting lots of traffic but its needs to be the right sort of traffic. Secondly, you can be sure if the agency/freelancer is swilling to offer payment on results, that they believe they can achieve these and that they will make more money this way than if you paid a straight retainer. This is fair however as they are sharing the risk.

Conclusions:

I hope this gives you some initial insight into some of the pitfalls and some of the questions to ask when kicking off a new web project. I have worked as both a freelancer and within an agency as well as using both as suppliers, so I have tried to be reasonable from both sides. Essentially you need to strike this balance to achieve a good working relationship. I know many people working client side that pride themselves in squeezing every last drop out of their suppliers. The problem is, if you become the difficult client, people will loose all enthusiasm for working with you and the relationship will stagnate. Set detailed expectations, agree a fair price and stick to what has been agreed to keep everyone productive and happy.