Via Scoop.it – Social Music Gaming

Today’s f8 conference keynote has to count as a big win for Spotify, even though more than a dozen other music services have partnered with Facebook on its new attempts to socialise media and entertainment.
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Via Scoop.it – Social Music Gaming

… Mr. Zuckerberg said the company was updating the Open Graph, the company’s developer platform. These updates will create “real-time serendipity,” allowing people to engage with their friends’ activities online beyond just “liking” something. For example, if a friend updates his Facebook status to note that he is listening to a song on Spotify, the online music service, you will be able to click on the link and listen to the song together, at the same time. The Spotify track will also play directly within the Facebook page. But the new developer updates go beyond music to include videos, gaming and news. Facebook has partnered with more than a dozen developers and music platforms including Spotify, iHeartRadio and Rdio. The company’s video partners include Netflix, Hulu and Blockbuster…
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Via Scoop.it – Social Music Gaming

Before I lost my voice earlier today (yes, that’s me up there asking all those questions, NOT Marge Simpson), I sat down with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek at F8. Ek and I spoke about today’s “launch” of Facebook Music, which wasn’t a music console built on top of Facebook like some had conceived, but rather a partnership built around a dozen music apps — like Rdio, Mog and Iheartradio — through Facebook’s now extended Open Graph. In addition to sharing their own and seeing their friends’ music listening activity in the new Facebook News Ticker, users will eventually see and share all music-related activity in a Music Dashboard in the left hand corner of their Facebook profiles, if they or their friends are using a partner app like Spotify. Users can access the “Listen with a friend” feature we reported on yesterday through either feed by hitting the Play button on their friend’s update. Responding graciously to my pressing about the rumor I heard that Spotify was to power Facebook’s universal music player, an idea which eventually got scrapped, Ek went on to reveal that, because of the new Facebook integration, Spotify will be removing its invite-only barrier — In addition to giving non-paying users six months of unlimited music listening.
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Via Scoop.it – Social Music Gaming

Developer Adobe is ready to release its next suite of multimedia software in the Flash family that’ll take Flash games into new territory on multiple platforms. Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be available on October 4. Speaking to Inside Network, Adobe Director for Product Marketing Anup Murarka walked us through a slideshow presentation of what the new software can do for games. By the developer’s estimates, more than 70% of all casual games on the web (including those available on social networking sites) are written in Flash. Demands from Flash game developers include improved graphics capabilities, faster download times, quicker rendering, support for more gameplay features, and a smoother cross-platform transition experience. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, Murarka says, addresses many of these demands and ultimately change the nature of Flash game development. “We’re enabling a completely new generation of apps,” he explains. “Social games have a lot of data that has to get downloaded and it’s got to be rendered. [Cross-platform] development is all siloed and that gets to be an unmanageable cost. And we’ve had mobile developers tell us that they want to port games to desktop and web. You can save time [...] and support a wider range of features with [Flash Player] 11, depending on the platform.”
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