There's been quite a bit of buzz about Blip.fm recently. For those of you who don't know, Blip.fm is "a music sharing site where you post short messages (blips) with a track attached. The timeline builds up a story accompanied by music documenting your friends’ day. You play the timeline and have music on all day selected by your friends." (Hat tip: Becky McMichael)
You can even upload your own music and give people "props" if you enjoy a particular song they've blipped. You can also share your music on other sites, such as Last.fm and Twitter (check their FAQ to find out more). It's a great site which I'm sure - as more people join - will become an alternative, if not a direct competitor, to Last.fm.
But the ability to share what you're listening to on other sites - normally a definite plus point for emerging services - may actually threaten the success of Blip.fm. Some people have taken to cross-posting every single one of their blips to Twitter, meaning that some people's Twitter streams end up covered with muscial notes and Tinyurls to someone's Blip.fm stream.
This has annoyed a lot of people on Twitter, most notably Bobbie Johnson:
Sorry people - the bliprage has hit me. Please, no more ♫♪ LISTEN TO MY STATION ON COCK.FM!!!!! ♪♪
(Good luck with the move to San Francisco by the way Bobbie - hope it all goes well!)
The reason it annoys people? Tweeting every single one of your blips is spam. Twitter is a platform for conversations, for useful links and for interesting thoughts. Unfortunately, the majority of blips don't fall into any of these categories.
Blip.fm operates just like Twitter, meaning that you can follow other "DJs" and they can follow you back. You can also do @ replies, so you can get a conversation going with any contacts you make on there. The only reason that some people aren't using Blip.fm like Twitter is that the audience isn't there yet. No one is listening to what you have to say on Blip.fm, but by cross-posting to Twitter you instantly gain a much bigger audience.
But, unfortunately, the people who tweet every blip will find that their audience on Twitter will decrease - I've stopped following at least 3 people because of their blip spam.
It's an interesting example of where cross posting can go wrong and I'm sure (and hope) that Blip.fm won't fail because of this.
What are your thoughts on Blip.fm? A good service or do you still favour Last.fm? Do you tweet your blips?
If you fancy finding out about the music I listen to, you can add me as a favourite DJ at blip.fm/benrmatthews. I promise I won't spam you with 80s glam rock!
13 comments:
Nice one - what's you're DJ name though...I was also a little disappointed by the lack of Michael Bolton in there...
I've got a friend whose DJ name is DJ Bla Bla - quite appropriate for Twitter spammers!
A few suggestions:
DJ Tweet-So-Sweet
DJ Bliprage (Hat tip: Bobbie Johnson)
DJ Ginger Monkey
DJ Michael Bolton
What's yours? Anyone else got a good DJ name?
a number of good suggestions there...may I shorten DJ Michael Bolton to DJ MB (like MJ for Jackson)...
I think I'd have to go for DJ TOM (not inventive huh? well when you're initials spell your first name...that's pushing boundaries!)
Yeah I decided not to continuing with Blip spam after I saw the first beginnings of a backlash. The one thing that really saddens me about the whole platform however, is that there's no way to Rickroll using blip.fm - gutting!!
A pressure group has been set-up to try and persuade blip.fm's founders to enable a Rickrolling function.
Read more about it here: http://tinyurl.com/2q9j9y
Blip spam is driving me mad, it's certainly not what I signed up to Twitter for. I'd add people on Last FM if I wanted to share my music taste with them. I hated that I'd signed up to Twitter for conversation and idea sharing, but now it'd had become a music channel.
I like the Blip list of what's being played, and being able to comment on it. It's just a pity that Last Fm doesn't offer the same thing.
@Tom - Tom O'Lordy Malcolm?
@Dom - I'm not clikcing on that URL - that's definitely a RickRoll link!
@Helen - Someone suggested that Last.fm should have started with a service similar to Blip.fm. Perhaps if Blip.fm takes off then Last.fm will inegrate the service or provide their own one?
I'm sorry but people who stop following others because of a trend like blip.fm or mangatars really need to sort themselves out.
I don't like Crocs, I think that people who wear sunglasses inside look like complete arses, I don't like tattoos but a number of my friends have tattoos or wear Crocs or wear sunglasses inside and I'm not going to stop being friends with them just because they do those things.
It's possible to simply ignore blips isn't it rather than get into a strop and say "oooh I'm not following you anymore cos you happen to be telling me what music you're listening to"
A number of people stopped subscribing to my RSS feeds cos I was anti Boris Johnson and pro Ken Livingstone and they said my blog was becoming too political. I was so pleased they stopped following me and was more than happy to see them go.
And for the record I actually do prefer last.fm and won't actually be using blip much myself.
"Twitter is a platform for conversations, for useful links and for interesting thoughts." who knows what Twitter is for the founders don't even know themselves.
@Annie - I think my sentence on "What Twitter is for" should have said "Where I find value in using Twitter".
It just struck me that the people I stop following are the ones that don't add value to the Twitter community, e.g. Seth Godin who only tweets his blog posts. Blip.fm spammers fall into this category.
Mangatars are fine by me - they don't detract from the community and is a meme that I'm sure will pass soon. If Blip.fm is around for a while and grows in users, it is far more likely to become a spamming problem for the Twitter community.
As for blogs, I think people use them differently to Twitter and so requires a seperate conversation.
My comment about my blogging is kinda relevant though. It's the assumption that you are all about one thing just because you happen to spend a some time focussing on one thing for a short period of time. The people stopped subscribing to my RSS feeds got into a strop cos they didn't like my politics but had been happy to read my blog for years prior to that and still got into a strop when I had said that Boris wasn't going to rule my blog and I wouldn't be spending my entire blogging life writing about him.
Blip and mangatars are quite clearly trends and trends come and go. Last.fm may look at doing something similar to blip they might not.
So what if they do? Will you stop following people who "spam" you with their last.fm music choices or will you simply glance over or ignore it?
Seth Godin IMO blogs enough and with "twitter-like" conversations for them to be extremely interesting in their own right (I subscribe to his feeds separately) and again I'm raising my eyebrows at the thought of him not adding value to any community.
Anyway I ranted enough and am probably the lone voice in the wilderness here, but your post annoyed me so much that I had to comment. But strangely enough I'm not going to stop following you as a result ;-)
@Annie - I agree totally with your points re blog readers.
Seth's blog posts are great and I subscribe to them too, but I just don't think by automatically posting links to every blog post to the Twitter community is that helpful. Although, I guess if someone spots a post on there that they think might be interesting, then it is useful. And who am i to question the great Seth Godin? ;)
Thanks for the rant - I appreciate your thoughts. Blogs, as with life, would be so boring if everyone agreed with each other!
I am starting to get fed up with the Twitter blips too! Its a great service, but there is certainly much to improve.
Have you seen this POV?
http://www.crackunit.com/2008/08/18/10-things-i-love-about-blipfm/
Saw this post from mr Matthews and it did strike a chord. Must admit I was one of the Blip tweet spammers I guess for no other reason than the functionality was there within Blip and also it crossed over with Twitter followers that were perhaps not on Blip.fm having said this I can see that the blip tweets have become increasingly annoying and I think in hind sight Blip.fm should be treated as a separate entity. I think it is different to last.fm as it is a lot simpler as an interface and i like the fact it is similar to twitter in the @replies aspect and also the ability to give props. A fad I think perhaps yes but time will tell but if it does annoy Twitter followers who you enjoy getting updates and sharing info with then I think there is no harm in disabling the twitter function. Not sure you lose anything by doing this anyway in all fairness. You can still share specific songs directly to Twitter just not every blip. Once your Tweet friends are listening to you in Blip.fm then The necessity to tweet every blip is not really there. The only thing I will say is that Twitter is obviously used more regularly so sharing the songs and messages you like will obviously receive more instant exposure but perhaps people do not want to be listening to music at that point in time. Watch this space. bottom line I have stopped the spam I did ask my followers politely and they agreed it was a good idea. over and out
@Amelia - Thnaks for the flag, am reading it now
@Duncan - Cheers for the lengthy comment. I hang my head in shame as I was also one of those spammers! You're right in thinking that you don't lose much if you don't cross-post to Twitter and I think the odd blip doesn't do anyone any harm. But it's that element of instant exposure that you describe which is the reason I think a lot of people Blip.
Check out @tommalcolm's good use of sharing on Twitter - he uses his blip-tweets to continue the conversation, e.g. replies to someone's question with a song.
Blip.fm is a service with relatively new uptake. IT may be a while before we see its real implications.
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