So, I was out at the bar with some coworkers last week, and a guy started talking about “The New Facebook.”

“There’s a ‘new’ Facebook?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Is it bad that I want to go home right now just to try it out?”

“Definitely,” I responded. “Stay here and get drunk. New Facebook will be waiting when the bar closes.”

Facebook has had quite the impact on American pop culture. I mean, really? This guy wanted to leave the bar to try it!? Whenever there’s even a minimal change in the layout and operation of the social network, it causes an uproar.

Remember when mini-feed first popped up? Immediately, groups sprouted all over the internet:
“Down with Mini-Feed!”
“Boycott F/B if They Don’t Get Rid of Mini-Feed Immediately!”
“Facebook Makes Stalking Easier with Mini-Feed!”

You get the point. Of course, now we’re all used to the program, and many of us keep updated via mini-feed every day: “Hey, I saw on Mini-Feed that you got a new job, congratulations!”

So, even though I’m hesitant to add too many applications (I don’t like that we have to check a box giving the ‘application’ full access to the info in our profiles), and even though I’m fully content keeping tabs on my friends the “old way,” I decided to check out the hullabaloo that is The New Facebook. Read More »

Recently, Keith Murray, from We Are Scientists [if you don’t know this band you should sincerely check them out], chatted with me for a bit while waiting in a long European buffet line about his band’s emerging presence and much more.

E: You’re in the middle of a really big tour right now. Do you think that touring plays a bigger role these days in being a band than when you started the band?

K: Um, I mean, I think perhaps, proportionally, no. I don’t think anything’s really changed about touring for us and I’m not sure that the fruits of the touring labor are necessarily more substantive. It does seem like the selling of records has become definitionally less…of a factor in measuring how well you’re doing. I feel like touring is probably about as important as it ever was and the space that…the big gaping chasm that’s been left by diminishing album sales has sorta filtered itself into other things. Like, I feel like, weirdly, licensing now is playing a much bigger role than it used to. And online presence, in general, is sorta replacing sales. I feel like touring is a rock that is not changing.

E: Speaking of online presences, I’m interested in knowing what you think about Myspace since it started getting big in the middle of your career with We Are Scientists.

K: I feel like…and I’m sure there are examples that can contradict what I’m about to say…but in my experience, Myspace seems…..sort of like the free release thing that Radiohead did with In Rainbows…it works really well once people know what they’re looking for. But I’ve never experienced a situation where I was trolling around Myspace and discovered a band. That seems like a reach for me. Read More »

The inner 7th grader in me is SUPER excited today.Why may you ask? Well its the day before Halloween. And whether I’m fourteen or forty-four the day before Halloween is filled with a sense of excitement.

Decorations are up, candy is in position, pumpkins are carved and costumes are ready. Everything is in its place and the young-at-heart-part of me has ants in my pants and is tired of waiting!

But that isn’t the only reason that today feels a bit more like 1999 than 2007. In 1999, you turned on TRL or the Today Show and who did you see?

Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys singing to screaming pre-pubescent girls pronouncing their love with tears of adoration.

Flash forward to October 30th 2007: Turn on the Today Show and who do you see?
Post-pubescent girls still screaming their hearts out for the BSB.

Pull out your butterfly clips and Kipling back-pack purses girls:

Britney’s latest release Blackout and BSB’s Unbreakable (both aptly titled) are hitting stores today! Read More »