Unreal. Me want. Now.
iPhone
Fantastic campaign by JvM – MINI Getaway
iPhone 4 – This changes everything. Again.
Spotify Mobile and Spotify Premium
Spotify Mobile has been out for roughly two weeks now, it’s still in the top ten of the most downloaded free apps in the Swedish app store – currently at number four to be precise. The app has been rated as many times as 1806 at the time of this writing. Quite remarkable.
Spotify Mobile really hit the media (and social sphere) when the story was published. I don’t think there’s a single medium where the story haven’t been posted/dugg/liked/whatever. It spread like a bushfire in a summer breeze throughout Twitter and Digg – they really got everyone excited. Including me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to build up some “but”-action here; I love Spotify, and I love the app. I have to say though, that what’s really interesting in all of this is to monitor search patterns on both mobile and premium. Premium being Spotify’s (paid) member service which offers no ads, higher sound quality, unlimited travel access, and exclusive access to pre-releases. So why is this interesting? For one, Premium is of course required in order for you to use Spotify Mobile. The second reason is a killer; search volume index for Spotify Premium is actually greater than the volume for Spotify Mobile:
Not only was it greater during the actual release (when the bushfire spread); it spiked higher, it lasted longer, and it has maintained on a higher level. Of course, as the disclaimer indicates “several approximations are used when computing these results”. Still a good indication of what’s happening.
Is Spotify finally making (decent) money?
(Spotify Mobile picture from Press/Images on Spotify.com)
Some updates to the blog
It’s been a while since WordPress 2.8 aka. “Baker” was released. Even though I think “Coltrane” was a more fundamental change to the usability and backend of WordPress, Baker proved to be the perfect excuse to complete some other improvements that have been on my to-do list for ages.
To start things up I’ve implemented disqus for handling comments. It’s an excellent framework that allows users to login using e.g. their Twitter or Facebook identities. As you might recall, I did some ‘ugly hacks’ to enable a Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect earlier. Disqus also has a neat feature called social media reactions which monitors conversions around your posts, so no need to use the backtype plugin or similar to bring the conversation back. I’d also like to reserve some extra kudos to the DISQUS-team, especially Giannii – they’re absolutely fantastic at getting back to you if you have a problem and seem to monitor conversations regarding disqus in every space.
I’ve also finally got around to writing somewhat decent about me and follow me pages as well as mashed up my social presence to a lifestream page by using the excellent wp-lifestream plugin. Following a tip from Andreas Karman (Swedish post), I cleaned up the archives a bit using smart archives reloaded.
And as a bonus to all iPhone users, you now have an iPhone optimized site if you visit this blog in Safari on your iPhone, compliments to wptouch. Rumours also has it that the feed wasn’t working earlier, that’s now solved.
Puh. Maybe it’s finally time to create some content? It’s just that WordPress is to fun to mess around with.