AllThingsD » songwriter

The Future of Social Media at AllThingsD

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:00:07 +0000

AllThingsD has undergone a lot of changes in the past year that Walt and I are truly proud of, and today we are posting together about changes to social media on the site.

Social media, especially Twitter, has been a major part of the AllThingsD operation since our earliest days. We have always encouraged our writers to be active on the medium — something we continue to do.

That’s why we are launching 15 new Twitter accounts that break out our coverage into categories, as on our site, and also around specialized topics we know our audience follows closely.

Now, in addition to following the main @AllThingsD Twitter account for up-to-the-second updates, our readers can follow accounts that feature only our stories about Apple, venture capital, personnel changes or mobile, to name a few. We hope readers will customize their experience so that AllThingsD can be as useful a resource as possible.

In addition to the Twitter accounts, we also have newly refreshed Facebook pages, and we’ve enabled LinkedIn sharing of our articles as part of becoming one of its recommended news sources.

You can have a look at all the new social features at our brand-new social subscribe page.

We’re adding all of these features while maintaining respect for the personal privacy and data of our readers. Therefore, all social media implementations on AllThingsD require the reader to take an explicit action to share.

You might think this level of disclosure is overboard, but we think it’s the right thing to do.

We’ve also brought on Drake Martinet to be our social media editor.

As social as Walt and I can be, Drake will be your point of contact for questions, concerns and comments about social media and its use on AllThingsD.

If you want more specifics about what we are up to, I encourage you to read Drake’s post on the social media changes. He covers some of the tools and services we are using, as well as explaining a little more about the thinking that went into our new social strategy.

If you have any questions, we encourage you to tweet Drake (he’s @withDrake on Twitter) or reach him at his email here.

Please also see our new features here by clicking this button:

See the new features

Thanks,

Kara and Walt

D7 Multimedia: Singer Jill Sobule Serenades Rupert Murdoch

Beth Callaghan — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:33:44 +0000

At last year’s D6 Conference, singer/songwriter Jill Sobule was introduced to media mogul Rupert Murdoch–and apparently, he made quite an impression. To commemorate the occasion, Jill composed a song about their meeting and performed it from the stage to kick off D7.

[ See post to watch video ]

Here are a few photos from Jill serenading Rupert Murdoch:

iTunes Lives to Sell Another 5 Billion Songs

John Paczkowski — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:24:17 +0000

If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss–which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

– iTunes vice president Eddy Cue

Not that it would ever have happened anyway, but Apple (AAPL) will not be shutting down the iTunes Store in protest over increased royalty rates paid to songwriters and publishers for CDs and digital music downloads. The Copyright Royalty Board Thursday left the rate for royalties unchanged at nine cents a track, paying no mind to a proposal by the National Music Publishers’ Association that would have raised it to 15 cents–a 66 percent hike.

Seems Apple’s posturing paid off. Said Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr, “We’re pleased with the CRB’s decision to keep royalty rates stable.”