Just ask Spotify.

Since the f8 announcement of the Facebook/Spotify partnership, Spotify is experiencing a great deal of growth for its music service, to the tune of a quarter of a million users a day. Since the announcement, AppData reveals (via PC Magazine) that Spotify’s subscription total increased from 1 million to 4.6 million users.

Clearly, Facebook users want their music and Spotify is an effective method for receiving it. The service offers three subscription tiers: Free, Unlimited and Premium. It’s not known how many of the new users are choosing the “free Spotify” option, but considering the fact that the Spotify blog issued a post aimed at those who use the free version, it’s easy to imagine many of these Facebook users who are new to Spotify opted for the one that doesn’t cost anything.

From the post, which details how the free service will go:

…from today, there’ll be no more Spotify Open. Everybody who listens to Spotify for free will simply have a Spotify account.

All Spotify accounts come with a 6-month time-limit honeymoon! During this time, there’s no limit to the amount of ad-supported music you can enjoy. After 6 months, you’ll be limited to 10 hours of streaming a month and a 5-play limit for any individual track. Unless, of course, you’ve subscribed by then!

It’s pretty obvious which direction Spotify is steering its users, and that is directly at the paid versions. For those who haven’t yet joined Spotify, but are curious about doing so, you must have a Facebook account to access the service. That news, however, has not been received with open arms, something a comment from the Spotify blog demonstrates quite well:

Well, that’s all very well and good, but you’ve lost my trust, so for now I’m keeping my spotify account and facebook account separate. Which is a shame, because I liked seeing other peoples public playlists. It doesn’t help that you’ve done this at the same time as other facebook dirty tricks are coming to light, otherwise I’d be more inclined to try it out. But for now, I’m not getting into anything I can’t get out of. Now, when are we getting the Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Whatever the backlash, it’s pretty clear based on the growth Spotify has received since the f8 announcement that complaints like the previous do not rule the day, although, maybe they should. But then again, do casual Internet users even worry about privacy; that is, until these issue falls hit closer to home? Doubtful.

Now anyone can participate in the ad-sharing program . . . almost. Actually, you still have to get thousands of video views to participate. The real change here is that instead those thousands of views can come to just one of your videos, instead of each of them. Before, several of your videos had to be popular to get into the Partnership Program. Now, just one of your videos has to go viral, and Google can invite you into the program—for that video:

Individual video partnerships will not be eligible for many of the benefits of user partnerships, like enhanced channel features or the ability to monetize other videos in your account, so we encourage you to apply to be a member of the YPP. We’ll consider your individual video partnerships when reviewing your YPP application. For now individual video partnerships are available only in the United States, but we hope to roll these out internationally soon.

In addition to making viral hits’ producers more money, analysts believe this move will also let YouTube and Google increase their revenue: they can run more targeted, higher-paying ads against these videos. So is this just the latest in Google’s hunt for profitability from the $1.65B acquisition? If so, at least one analyst disagrees with the move, according to MediaPost:

Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst at Global Equities Research, says Google should have generated a profit from YouTube within three years based on the purchase price. “YouTube should be generating $1 billion in revenue and be profitable for the acquisition to be considered smart and good,” he says. “I don’t think they generated even $20 million in revenue per year so far. It’s a very dumb acquisition. You don’t pay $1.65 billion for a lab experiment.” . . .

Chowdhry says expanding YPP to include videos from individuals demonstrates another failed example, because he doesn’t believe it will add enough revenue to make a difference. He says growing site traffic doesn’t mean anything if it can’t earn revenue and generate profit.

Ouch.

This does add some opportunities for successful viral videos’ producers—which is more than Google has to do—but not a lot of hope. My biggest question for the video producers, however, is whether the deal is retroactive: do you only get your share of the revenue after you’ve signed up (which will often be after the peak of the hype), or will you get a share of the revenue your video generated all along?

What do you think? Will it really pay out for video producers, or mostly for Google? Should YouTube be making $1B/year by now?

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A spokesperson for the European Commission — the branch responsible for anti-trust scrutiny in the E.U. — said last week that it “has not been informed about the details of the transaction,” and that it “keeps this sector, as others, under review, but cannot comment further at this stage.” However, Christopher Thomas, a Brussels-based competition partner at law firm Lovells, told ClickZ that Microsoft and Yahoo now “appear to be in discussion with the Commission about the deal.”

The EC will take this position, of course, because there is so much to look at which requires time and more information. What is interesting is how various legal eagles and pundits are looking at this and predicting that there should be no problems. Why? Because the impact on the competitive environment in Europe posed by this partnership will be nominal at best.

Ouch. Two of the biggest names in the Internet and technology space combine forces in a way that is significantly different that ever before and it barely merits a hiccup in Europe?

Douglas Lahnborg, Competition Partner at law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, said, “It is inconceivable that the deal would be blocked by the Commission. I don’t see what competition arguments could be raised against it given the parties’ limited market position. Any investigation will be a formality.”

Lahnborg suggested the combined European market share of the two entities — estimated at around 4 percent — would still be too small to raise concerns. “In an industry where the number two and number three players command 20 percent market share each, the deal wouldn’t be allowed to go ahead. But considering Google has around 90 percent of the market, that argument is inconceivable,” he said. “Google has a formidable market position, and this relationship could offer advertisers a credible alternative,” he added.

So the lawyers’ early look at the situation seems to indicate clear sailing when the time comes. Of course, this begs the question of “What will Google do?”. Does anyone think that Google is just going to let this happen without at least causing Microhoo to work for it in both the US and elsewhere? Why do you think Google has lined up its firepower in Washington DC anyway and likely in other parts of the world? For the common good? If the common good is defined as Google’s good then yes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It is just business after all, right?

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ESPN will be featuring content that is apparently going to be in line with their television programming, although from the sounds of it there won’t be any live streaming, so don’t look to watch games on here (at least for the time being).

ESPN360 content could be an option down the road, but it’s too early to tell at this point. ESPN 360 is the network’s online video offering that actually does offer live streaming of some sporting events (to those whose ISPs support it).

ESPN 360

One interesting aspect of the deal is that ESPN gets to bring their own video player onto the YouTube site. This is not the first time YouTube has allowed a third party to integrate their own video player into the site, though it is one of the first. For example, YouTube has allowed such with Sony’s Crackle.

Dale says they allow this because they want partners to be able to keep the look and feel that their own respective users have gotten used to. He says they want them to "feel at home."

ESPN’s content will also come with pre-roll ads. Dales tells me that these ad spots will feature messages from ESPN’s own sponsors.

He also pointed out that the partnership with ABC/Disney (of which ESPN is a part) has resulted in the Movies and TV shows sections of YouTube, which were announced recently.

The test will run for 60 days. They will gauge demand and see how the service works before determining if and how much they’ll charge.

Southwest has already contracted with Yahoo as a partner. Yahoo will provide a home page for the airline that will include information about the flight and destination.

For long flights this will practically guarantee that I fly Southwest. My only question is, what about plugs or battery supply? As far as I know there’s no place to recharge.

Southwest has been getting a lot of milage out of the announcement on Twitter.

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Yesterday, MySpace’s parent (grandparent?) company, News Corp, discussed its Q3 earnings. While many of the conglomerate’s divisions did poorly, MySpace’s unit still posted a 17% increase in revenue YOY. However, they are feeling the hit of the failing economy, as Rupert Murdoch said:

“We are doing slightly better than the marketplace, but it’s clear from everybody else that there’s a lot of softening in the display advertising marketplace, and we are clearly beginning to feel some of that.”

However, their new ad platform, MySpace MyAds, is doing booming business. Michael Arrington’s sources estimate that the three-week-old platform is raking in on average $140,000 to $180,000 a day—making it a $50M a year business in less than a month. These levels may be sustainable long term, too.

Our sources say that a large number of ad arbitragers are trying out the system, as well as many of the millions of music artists that have MySpace pages. Those artist ads are doubly profitable for MySpace, since the ads link back to MySpace web pages, driving up page views and additional advertising impressions.

Outsiders are estimating that MySpace revenues for the fiscal year ending June 2009 will reach $1 billion. It’s clear that MyAds will be a significant driver of revenue growth. 2008 revenue was estimated to $750 million.

Finally, MySpace Music, which launched in September, is shopping for a CEO. AllThingD’s Peter Kafka notes, however, that the job doesn’t carry as much prestige as the title normally would, since it’s only a divisional CEO position. He says Courtney Holt, head of Viacom & MTV’s digital music, will be announced as the MySpace Music CEO tonight or tomorrow.

In the tech blogosphere, MySpace is often treat as if it’s “so yesterday”—now even its biggest challenger has lost its media darling status. But MySpace continues to innovate for users and advertisers—which probably has a lot to do with why they’re still the most popular social network online.

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What Happens In Ask Doesn’t Stay In Ask

Ask may be deleting the information from their servers, but a partnership with Google to serve up search advertising means that Google knows what people are searching for on Ask.com. And Ask has no control over what remains on Google’s server.

This technicality is made quite clear, a little way down the list of FAQs:

"We cannot delete your search activity from the servers of third-party companies that receive your search queries to provide you with certain aspects of our search results (for example, current weather conditions, stock market summaries, etc.), sponsored search results and other product features."

In short, Google (and possibly others) have access to that information and are subject only to their own privacy policies. Luckily, Google has a fairly good track record on this, even if the amount of data the company stores is unnerving to many.

But the very next question in the FAQ reveals something else: even when AskEraser is turned on, Ask may hang on to search activity data if the government demands it:

"Ask.com must abide by the laws and regulations of local, state and federal authorities. Even when Ask Eraser is enabled, we may store your search activity data if so requested by law enforcement or legal authority pursuant to due process. In such case, we will retain your search data even if AskEraser appears to be turned on."

So, just to review what information is turned over to Google and, under the right circumstances, the feds, here’s a list of what information AskEraser is supposed to delete: information about the pages you visit on Ask.com, including the terms you search for, the links you click, your IP address, and any user or session identifier. 

After all, upon first hearing of the partnership, I tried to be polite, but the obvious just had to be stated: “sounds like a joke.”  People tend not to look for political news on Facebook, and that’s precisely what ABC News tried to supply.  Then, after getting their fill on the social network, folks were supposed to head to the main ABC News site.

Michael Learmonth has details of the project’s results, writing, “ABCNews.com self-reported a 28% spike in unique visitors in November to 16.3 million from the same time a year ago; page views increased 7% to 148.1 million.  But they also reported a 21% jump in October while Nielsen NetRatings says traffic to ABCNews.com was actually down 4% in October.”

He then adds, “They’re not getting much help from Facebook, which reports just 10,300 daily users of the ABC News application.”

Admittedly, the 2008 presidential election is still a long ways off, so there’s plenty of time for the ABC-Facebook arrangement to save itself.  “12-Pound Tumor Consumes Man’s Face” is one of the current ABC News “Top Headlines,” though, and that makes me think some other news site might be more deserving of traffic.

The application’s feature set is complete, if not entirely impressive – users will get the standard resize, crop, change exposure, and red-eye removal tools, along with some “special effects” like black and white, sepia, frames, shapes, soften, and text.  What’s truly interesting about this development is that it’s all taking place within Flickr’s site.

Flickr members will now see an “Edit Photo” button for every picture they upload, and this will allow them to access all the aforementioned features without making any extra moves.  That means no additional log-ins, no hopping over to Picnik – just click and edit.

As a result, Andy Stern asks, “Will the incorporation of Picnik’s user-friendly photo editing tool make Flickr more attractive to mainstream photographers and social networking content producers?”  If so, the development could definitely be one of the more important ones in Flickr’s history.

If not, Flickr’s current users will still benefit, and the application should at least make it that much harder for competing services to gain an edge.

Times Select operated as a subscription service from September 2005 to September 2007, when the publisher reopened that walled content to readers. They had plenty of motivation to do so, as Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer observed in August 2007:

The top website visited after www.nytimes.com last month was select.nytimes.com, receiving 8% of the site

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