thinkpublic top 5…the widget below provides a live chart of what music we are listening to in the thinkpublic studio.
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Last fm is one of the few major web applications coming from the uk and uses a mixture of innovative services popular on sites like You Tube, my space and facebook. Bringing people together through a shared interest in music is one thing, but where Last fm is different is its ability to recommend (very accurately) artists and songs you may like, as well as linking you with people with similar music tastes.
The idea of multiple services supplied in a single place is something we can definately learn from when looking at public services. The recently launched NHS Choices website has started to embrace aspects of this but I feel there is still some way to go before people are using the web to talk about healthcare, education etc in the same open and collaborative way people currently discuss music, film, games etc.
Aug 24th, Marc Fonteiijn said:
Last.fm is the perfect office radio station
Aug 24th, Amy said:
I see Peter Bjorn & John are the favourite of the day!
The clever thing about Last FM is that they’ve made this information more accessible. Music maps have been around for years, but they’ve used the same information and done something more useful with it. i.e: http://www.music-map.com
This site tells you all linked artists, but there’s no sound bites or user network. Leaving the question that is any good or successful idea original, or just an improved copy.
…Sorry, drifted from the subject.
Aug 24th, Cassie said:
I don’t seem to be able to see Take That on there Paul!!???
Aug 24th, Paul Thurston said:
Cassie, If you view my profile you will see that Take That are by far the most popular artist in the studio…
We’re just having a break from the lads today!
Sep 2nd, Paul Thurston said:
Hi Amy, thanks for the post and I like the music map…perhaps we could do something similar with public services?
I think you pose an interesting point about ideas and originality, although I’m not too sure what you mean in terms of last fm & music map as I feel that they are worlds apart with what they can be used for.
I would say that no idea is truly original, inspiration has to come from somewhere but it’s how you design and develop that idea which is really interesting. The current court battle over Facebook is a great illustration of this, the idea of facebook itself is not an amazingly original idea, it is how the application has been designed developed and built into the monster it is today.
The key thing with what’s happening with the web at the moment is that it’s not about having one killer idea, it is how you turn lots of ideas into something people can use. These are the things which will be successful, like I said in my post…Last fm is successful because it works with the idea of one person telling another person about a great new band. The idea isn’t new but the delivery of content around this idea is new.
The perpetual beta’ always developing!
Sep 3rd, Alice said:
Thats interesting comments Paul and Amy! In terms of the subject of ‘originality’. I have always thought that the original ‘idea’ behind something was always the most important aspect of new concepts. Now the idea of ‘new’ seems less important, theres plenty of ‘new’ (sometimes useless) ‘stuff’ around already. Lets combine the ideas out there and the sharing of thoughts and concepts to improve what we already have.
Since looking at examples of user creted content of sites such as wikipedia and the manipulation of that content as in facebook or last fm, it is clear to see not new ideas but very impressive use of the ideas combined with user content.
Now though I want to see more useful outputs from these ideas, NHS Choices I think is trying to do this, but more emphasis needs to be on user content and the importance of understanding what people want and how they are feeling and what we can learn from this.
…Sorry, I may have also drifted from the subject.
Sep 3rd, Ivo said:
The last part of your post is exactly what we need to be thinking about Paul, we need to work on making it useful for people to discuss healthcare, education etc on line: When you discuss music online you can quickly get something back, ie download a track by that artist and potentially listen to something you really like within minutes. Discussing health or education online you don’t really get the same type of return. There are many online support groups, for cancer patients for example, that do share ways of coping, finding out information etc.. but they are not directly connected to formal care pathways and so cannot provide the same directness that last FM does. I think what we need to investigate is ways of formalising and incorpating these networks into our public services.