Thus Spake Spiek

Despite all of the great innovation happening in online music, there are 3 frustrating things for consumers that need to be addressed by Apple, Google, Facebook and others.

It’s been an eventful week for online music, with the launch of Apple’s iTunes Match and the public unveiling of Google Music (along with a new MP3 store in the Android Market). This follows on from continued innovation in the music streaming market, in particular the integration of Spotify and similar services into Facebook. It’s great to see so much action in the online music space. But… there are some major problems with these services. Here are the top three issues, in my opinion.

In a post on the Facebook developers’ forums, Manager of Facebook’s Preferred Developer Consult Matt Trainer wrote that they had “made some changes to our Page posts ranking system, which added more signals to determine Page post quality.” Yet he also wrote the following: “We will continue to add in more Page post quality signals over time to ensure that people are always receiving engaging and relevant content in their News Feed.” Does this mean that the News Feed no longer penalizes third-party apps?

News360 just launched updates to its Android and iPhone apps that bring them up to speed with the tablet and Web versions. Now the personalized news reader, which uses semantic data to read for stories you like, rather than just assuming from your social graph, syncs across all devices and platforms.

Prior to today’s launch, the mobile versions of News360 lacked the login and personalization features on the tablet and the Web. But now Android and iPhone users can log in and view their personalized headlines while on the go.

Troy Thibodeaux is the Editor for Newsroom Innovation at the Associated Press and has written a terrific post on resources for data journalists. Now, you probably aren’t a journalist, but you should pay attention anyway, since there are plenty of things you can do to manipulate data in interesting ways for your management and others who are far less technical than yourself. Take a look at that piece, and connect that with what Jason Hiner at TechRepublic wrote last month and you will see a potential job opportunity.

Today Facebook released its long-awaited Facebook Platform on mobile, which brings all of the social channels to mobile apps and websites. It will be easily accessible on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and the mobile site, and arrives on the same day as the Facebook iPad app. Previously all Facebook games and apps were only available from a computer; now they can play from any device with a Web browser, especially if it’s an Apple iOS device.

Two-year-old social network enhancing service Friend.ly has been acquired by Facebook, announced the Friend.ly blog earlier today.

Friend.ly is a place where people can get to know each other based on random questions you might have in common. Answer a question posed by the service, and you’ll be able to see how other people have answered that question. You can also search for a question by typing it into the site’s search bar.

So, are you ready to get even more friend.ly with Facebook?

lilly:

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about Steve Jobs the last few days — thinking about the man and his legacy. I’ve been having some trouble even understanding the way I feel, let alone being able to put it into words. Lots of folks have asked me what I think, and have been surprised that I…