I wont be hosting next seasons XFactor which is a shame but I cant complain as I’ve had a great time. Good luck to everyone on the show.

— Steve Jones (@SteveJones) January 31, 2012

Show creator Simon Cowell has this to say:

“I don’t think he did a bad job, but there is a Brit limit on the show.”

As of yet there is no news on who may replace Jones, but Cowell commented saying there would be changes coming to X-factor U.S.A.

Also, reportedly popular singer Nicole Sherzinger will not return to the show either, she says she wants to work more on her own personal music career and doing X-factor nearly everyday has halted her from doing so. Surprising enough Paula Abdul will not come back either. She did not leave on her own, rather she was asked to leave; I guess that’s a nicer way to say Donald Trump’s famous line “you’re fired”.

AT&T’s 4G network is dual-layer, meaning that it uses both LTE and HSPA+ technology. This makes it compatible with a larger number of phones and prevents users from experiencing a sudden drop in data speeds when transitioning out of an LTE-covered area. This also gives AT&T a competitive advantage over Verizon regarding the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S is HSPA+ compatible, but not LTE compatible, which means that Verizon iPhone users have no access to their carrier’s 4G network. AT&T iPhone customers, however, will get at least a partial speed boost from AT&T’s new network.

According to AT&T’s press release, they expect deployment of their 4G network to continue throughout 2012, and be mostly done by the end of 2013.

Are you in one of AT&T’s new 4G markets? Tell us about it in the comments.

[Source: AT&T Press Release]

Kiip, an advertising network, plans to implement such a system. Their website tagline explains how it works – “Real rewards for virtual achievements“. Here’s a video going into a bit more detail about how Kiip works:

Kiip isn’t the first to offer real world rewards for playing a video game. However, their network has the potential to bring the idea of real world rewards for gameplay achievements to the mainstream.

If you’ve played free games on your mobile devices, chances are they are plagued with in-game advertising, which allows them to remain free. More often than not this really brings down a gaming experience, especially if the ads ruin your concentration. However, Kiip works like an achievement system so a pop-up wouldn’t occur until you actually complete a stage or objective.

According to Wired.com, the system simply requires a user to submit their email address to have their reward sent to them. Players aren’t required to sign up for a Kiip account, so the emails are only used to send them their branded reward. The network is based on HTML5 coding, so any system is compatible with the service. The only requirement is that it’s connected to the internet.

Though Kiip sounds interesting in theory, will it translate to success in real life? According to limited trials, players signed up for the achievement deals over 50 percent of the time. When’s the last time an advertising campaign saw those kinds of click-through rates?

At the head of Kiip is an internet prodigy, Brian Wong. If you’ve heard of Wong, it’s because at 18 years old he was able to land a job working for Digg. Upon leaving the company, he came up with the idea for Kiip.

To help keep a balance of how often rewards can be utilized, developers are provided a set amount of opportunities to utilize Kiip. Also, the system is set on a rotating variable so users aren’t going to be presented with a reward every time the same achievement is earned.

Upon reading about Kiip, I sent them a question in regards to how detailed developers could get in terms of which advertisers would be presented in their game. I presented a scenario where Coca-Cola released a game, and wouldn’t want a Pepsi reward popping up.

Here’s Wong’s response, “Users don’t choose what rewards they’ll see. The brands are able to set criteria for their target market. With verticals, through frequency capping, we’re able to guarantee that no competing products in the same space will appear in the same session.”

I think Kiip has a an interesting idea which could not only evolve in-game advertising, but mobile advertising as a whole. Imagine if such a system were utilized for check-in services as well, where surprise rewards would pop-up for checking in certain places.

The only roadblock keeping them back would be heavy saturation of their system on the market. There’s no set list of games where Kiip is being featured; they want their network to integrate naturally into the market. Coupled with their limiting algorithms and allowing developers a set amount of rewards to provide, they look to have all their ducks in a row.

Anyhow The Social Network film features an ensemble cast which consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Malese Jow, and Joseph Mazzello.

The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film is distributed by Columbia Pictures and is set for an October 1, 2010 release. None of the Facebook staff, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, will be involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich’s book.

Here’s a trailer for The Social Network Movie:

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The show’s premise itself is interesting, but what adds to the intrigue of the entire program is that they are pursuing a very smart strategy to let anyone take part in this social experiment by signing up for an online simulation of a global pandemic, that uses your own Facebook friends as characters in the "unfolding drama of the survival of humanity." This technique of using your real friends as the backdrop for a fictional experience created online is something that has been growing in use through efforts such as the popular "Elf Yourself" holiday greeting card campaigns last holiday season.

  As this virtual experience around The Colony unfolds, it will be interesting to watch how it adds a real dimension to viewers of the show and (hopefully) synchronizes the experience so what is happening in your virtual version of The Colony mirrors what is happening in the show. The virtual experience so far has a combination of fake updates from your friend networks intermixed custom videos that seem to have been created to support the show from people like Cali Lewis. If this part of the social experiment works to engage viewers, we will likely see more networks and programs in the fall using this fictional virtual experience as a way to engage their most passionate fans. Assuming we all survive, of course.

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The BBC has produced an attractive visual display on the rise and fall of social networks using metrics from market researcher Nielsen in June as its source.

As the chart here on the top five social networks by country shows, Facebook dominates in six of the seven countries the BBC highlights – USA, Australia, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy. The difference in Brazil, where Orkut is the leader with Facebook a distant second.

Yet even as Facebook is king, and not even well liked in some countries, look at the other social networks. In Germany, for instance, 8.5 million people are members of VZNet Netzwerke which includes StudiVZ, the big network for young people. In Spain, 6.6 million are with Tuenti. Brazil, too, where 5.9 million are in iG Comunidades. And let’s not forget MySpace (which recently underwent a facelift) – it’s in second place in the USA, UK, Australia and Italy and third in Spain.

My point is simply a reminder that, from a business perspective in particular – notably, if you’re planning any kind of outreach or engagement activity in these countries – recognize that the dominant social network isn’t necessarily the only place where your engagees spend their time and exercise their influence – sizeable niche communities are elsewhere too.

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A glance at the world map of social networks 2010 you see above shows a clear picture of the colonization (for want of a better word) of Europe, for instance, where Facebook has displaced its competitors in France (Skyrock used to be #1) and Germany (StudiVZ, although they might argue the rank).

Map author Vincenzo Cosenza provides an additional view, showing the top three social networking sites (SNS) in nine countries:

An interesting aspect is how Twitter appears in this list: in second place in Australia, Canada and the UK and third place in France, Spain and the US. I’ve always seen Twitter as a social network as opposed to simply a micro-blogging tool; it looks like many others do as well.

Still, in global domination of online social networks, it looks very clear that Facebook reigns supreme.

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In his own statement, Pandora founder Tim Westergren said they has been working on making the service more social for some time. "The idea behind today’s update is to make it really easy to share your Pandora stations and music discoveries with your friends – and vice versa," according to Westergren "To make this truly easy for you, we’ve partnered with the experts at Facebook. Starting today, you can easily link your experience on Pandora with your friends on Facebook. This quickly brings your Facebook friend list into Pandora along with your Facebook profile picture. It quite literally puts a whole new face on Pandora."
 

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But, then, maybe this all makes sense. Since Facebook is so popular, it’s not entirely surprising that they serve one out of every twelve online ads. Even better? At least some proportion of their on-site CPC ads lead to another page on the site—so they’re getting money and traffic.

This isn’t a recent development, of course—we’ve all seen ads to “Become a Fan” of something on Facebook. But as smart as it sounds to make your advertisers pay for generating traffic to your site, the underlying logic is pretty much a stroke of genius:

Facebook is an Internet unto itself.

Facebook has long been accused of being a “walled garden”—with its fan pages, apps and other utilities, FB is almost a subset of the offerings of the Internet. If your brand is prominent enough, you’re on Facebook (or you should be!). Driving paid traffic from a personal page (personal) to a branded page only makes sense on that kind of paradigm.

Of course, that kind of advertising is good for advertisers, too, or they wouldn’t do it. JCPenney went from 22,000 fans to 500,000 fans with these advertisements in the run-up to back-to-school shopping (though Bloomberg didn’t say if JCP saw increased revenue from this).

And something seems to be working for FB, too. Last month, Bloomberg said the most popular social network in the world should post at least $500 million in revenue this year.

What do you think? Is Facebook a subset of the Internet, and is internal paid advertising a natural extension of that mentality? Can Facebook sustain this kind of revenue?

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