Sabtu, 23 April 2011
Music Reviews
DRAGON FORCE
DragonForce adalah Power Metal Band yang dibentuk pada tahun 1999, dari sisa-sisa yg kesurupan Black Metal di bawah nama Dragon Heart. Namun band ini segera berubah nama menjadi DragonForce sebelum merilis album komersial karena ada kemungkinan masalah komersial dengan band Dragon Heart Brasil. Karir mereka dimulai dengan penerbitan lagu pada inkarnasi pertama MP3.com, mengklaim bagian atas situs Heavy Metal. Lagu hit Valley of the Damned mencapai lebih dari 500.000 download dalam beberapa bulan pertama.
Meskipun demikian, dua anggota awal, Steve Steve dan Scott Williams meninggalkan band untuk membentuk Power Metal Band, Power Quest.
Band ini menikmati meningkatkan popularitas selama bertahun-tahun, menerbitkan empat album dan tur ekstensif sementara mendukung artis seperti Helloween, WASP dan Iron Maiden. 2005 mereka tur untuk mendukung album Sonic Firestorm termasuk dukungan dari Angra dan Mendeed selama perjalanan melalui Inggris.
Pada tanggal 28 Oktober 2005 bassist Adrian Lambert mengumumkan keberangkatannya dari band. (Lambert kemudian diungkapkan dalam sebuah wawancara bahwa ia telah meninggalkan karena perbedaan musik dengan Herman Li dan Sam Totman). Kurang dari satu bulan setelah keberangkatan Lambert, pada 23 November 2005, DragonForce kemudian menandatangani Roadrunner Records yang merilis album mereka Inhuman Rampage pada tahun 2006. Lambert digantikan pada 2006 oleh Frédéric Leclercq, yang membuat anggota resmi setelah kinerja tur.
Through the Fire and Flames adalah fitur sebagai bonus UnlockCable lagu dalam Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock untuk PS2, XBOX360, PS3, Wii & PC. Tidak termasuk download konten, telah secara luas dianggap sebagai lagu tersulit di Guitar Hero franchise.
Anggota :
Herman Li - Gitar (1999-Sekarang)
Sam Totman - Gitar (1999-Sekarang)
Vadim Pruzhanov - Keyboard, Piano (2001-Sekarang)
Dave Mackintosh - Drum (2003-Sekarang)
Frédéric Leclercq - Bass (2006-Sekarang)
Mantan Anggota :
Steve Scott - Bass (1999-2000)
Steve Williams - Keyboard (1999-2000)
Didier Almouzni - Drum (1999-2003)
ZP "Zippy" Theart - Vokal (1999-2010)
Diccon Harper - Bass (2000-2002)
Adrian Lambert - Bass (2003-2005)
Steve Scott - Bass (1999-2000)
Steve Williams - Keyboard (1999-2000)
Didier Almouzni - Drum (1999-2003)
ZP "Zippy" Theart - Vokal (1999-2010)
Diccon Harper - Bass (2000-2002)
Adrian Lambert - Bass (2003-2005)
Diskografi :
Valley Of The Damned (2003)
Sonic Firestorm (2004)
Inhuman Rampage (2006)
Ultra Beatdown (2008)
TBA (2011)
* * *
Koleksi "ROCK" Upex.blogspot.com : Sonic Firestorm (2004)
Inhuman Rampage (2006)
Ultra Beatdown (2008)
TBA (2011)
* * *
Dawn Over A New World download
Starfire download
Through the Fire and Flames download
Trail of Broken Hearts download
Facebook ?
Facebook (stylized facebook) is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] As of January 2011[update], Facebook has more than 600 million active users.[5][6] Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[8] Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[9] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010.[10] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.[11]
The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion. Ultimately, however, the charges were dropped.[15] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final, by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section.[14] He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes.
The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident.[16] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[17]
Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[18] The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.[19]
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.[20] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[21] It soon opened to the other Ivy League schools, Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[22][23]
Facebook incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.[24] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[21] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[25] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[26]
Facebook launched a high-school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[33] At that time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.[34] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[35] Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of age 13 and older with a valid email address.[36][37]
On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.[38] Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook.[39] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[40] In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time.[41] In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies, Facebook's value was $41 billion (slightly surpassing eBay's) and it became the third largest US web company after Google and Amazon.[42] Facebook has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.[43]
Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.[44] Facebook also became the top social network across eight individual markets — in Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam — while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea, and Yahoo!'s Wretch.cc in Taiwan.[citation needed]
In March 2011 it was reported that Facebook removes approximately 20,000 profiles from the site every day for various infractions, including spam, inappropriate content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.[45]
In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[46][47]
Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. Banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole.[59] This means that a smaller percentage of Facebook's users click on advertisements than many other large websites. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches),[60] Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).[61]
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, confirmed that successful advertising campaigns can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks.[62] Competing social network MySpace's CTR, in comparison, is about 0.1%, 2.5 times better than Facebook's but still low compared to many other websites. Explanations for Facebook's low CTR include the fact that Facebook's users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, that users are younger and therefore are better at ignoring advertising messages, and that MySpace users spend more time browsing through content, while Facebook users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements.[63]
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts.[64] Involver, a social marketing platform, announced in July 2008 that it managed to attain a CTR of 0.7% on Facebook (over 10 times the typical CTR for Facebook ad campaigns) for its first client, Serena Software, managing to convert 1.1 million views into 8,000 visitors to their website.[65] A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads.[66]
Facebook's homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users, and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages", until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.[69]
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile.[70] The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.[71] Facebook requires a user's name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.[72]
Profile shown on Facebook in 2011.The media often compare Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization.[73] Another difference is Facebook's requirement that users give their true identity, a demand that MySpace does not make.[74] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.[75] Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see;[76] Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked);[77] Photos, where users can upload albums and photos;[78] and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions.[79] Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user's profile can also view that user's Wall. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.[76]
In response, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.[83]
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[84] on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.[85] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[86]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[87] Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.[88][89][90][91]
Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to "tag," or label, users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.[92]
Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005
Facebook profile shown in 2007Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services.[36] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based[93] instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,[94] which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift.[95][96] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.[97] Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are seen only by users in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.[98]
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look.[99] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.[100] On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.[101]
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan," Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.[103][104]
In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or mapping applications.[105]
As of April 2011 Facebook users now have the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. This feature which is provided free through T-Mobile's new Bobsled service lets the user add voice to the current Facebook Chat as well as leave voice messages on Facebook.[106]
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada,[113] the United Kingdom,[114] and the United States.[115][116][117][118] In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), followed by Middle East-Africa (67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent).[119]
The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,[120] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[121] In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.[122]
On March 2010, Judge Richard Seeborg issued an order approving the class settlement in Lane v. Facebook, Inc., the class action lawsuit arising out of Facebook's Beacon program.
In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie “Best Overall Startup Or Product” the third year in a row[123] and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.[124] However, in a July 2010 survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook received a score of 64 out of 100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. Reasons for why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the website's interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam.[125]
In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants. It is believed to be the world's first legal judgement that defines a summons posted on Facebook as legally binding.[126] In March 2009, the New Zealand High Court associate justice David Glendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the company Axe Market Garden via Facebook.[127] Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic Airways) have also used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over posts they have made.[128]
By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb "facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's own.[129] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as their new Word of the Year.[130] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared their word of the year to be the verb "unfriend", defined as "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, 'I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.'"[131]
As of April 2010, according to The New York Times, countries with most Facebook users are the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia.[132] Indonesia has become the country with the second largest number of Facebook users, after the United States, with 24 million users, or 10% of Indonesia's population.[133] Also in early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody website (and privacy advocacy website)[134] that enables text-based searches of those Wall posts that are available to "Everyone", i.e. to everyone on the Internet.
Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'. Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms".[135]
Some studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been questioned and refuted by other commentators.[148]
Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.[149][150][151] Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups organized around specific topics, register to vote, and message questions.[152]
Over 1,000,000 people installed the Facebook application 'US politics' in order to take part, and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates.[153] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already experienced: Facebook was an extremely popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "facebook effect" has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election.[154]
In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[155] In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government websites, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.[156]
In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching Syphilis, linked and attributed a rise in Syphilis cases in areas of Britain to Facebook. The reports of this research were rebuked by Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and causation."[157]
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[8] Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[9] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010.[10] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.[11]
History
Main articles: History of Facebook and Timeline of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not, and "used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person".[12][13]To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard's computer network and copied the houses' private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student "facebook" (a directory with photos and basic information). Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[12][14]
The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion. Ultimately, however, the charges were dropped.[15] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final, by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section.[14] He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes.
The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident.[16] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[17]
Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[18] The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.[19]
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.[20] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[21] It soon opened to the other Ivy League schools, Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[22][23]
Facebook incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.[24] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[21] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[25] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[26]
Facebook launched a high-school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[33] At that time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.[34] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[35] Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of age 13 and older with a valid email address.[36][37]
On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.[38] Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook.[39] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[40] In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time.[41] In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies, Facebook's value was $41 billion (slightly surpassing eBay's) and it became the third largest US web company after Google and Amazon.[42] Facebook has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.[43]
Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.[44] Facebook also became the top social network across eight individual markets — in Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam — while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea, and Yahoo!'s Wretch.cc in Taiwan.[citation needed]
In March 2011 it was reported that Facebook removes approximately 20,000 profiles from the site every day for various infractions, including spam, inappropriate content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.[45]
In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[46][47]
Company
Ownership
Mark Zuckerberg owns 24% of the company, Accel Partners owns 10%, Digital Sky Technologies owns 10%,[48] Dustin Moskovitz owns 6%, Eduardo Saverin owns 5%, Sean Parker owns 4%, Peter Thiel owns 3%, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners own between 1 to 2% each, Microsoft owns 1.3%, Li Ka-shing owns 0.75%, the Interpublic Group owns less than 0.5%, a small group of current and former employees and celebrities own less than 1% each, including Matt Cohler, Jeff Rothschild, Adam D'Angelo, Chris Hughes, and Owen Van Natta, while Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus have sizable holdings of the company, and the remaining 30% or so are owned by employees, an undisclosed number of celebrities, and outside investors.[49] Adam D'Angelo, chief technology officer and friend of Zuckerberg, resigned in May 2008. Reports claimed that he and Zuckerberg began quarreling, and that he was no longer interested in partial ownership of the company.[50]Management
Key management personnel comprise Chris Cox (VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg (COO), and Donald E. Graham (Chairman). As of April 2011[update], Facebook has over 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries.[51]Revenue
Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,[52] and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft, but considerably less than Yahoo!.[53] In 2010, the security team began expanding its efforts to reduce the risks to users' privacy.[54] On November 6, 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Beacon, which was an ultimately failed attempt to advertise to friends of users using the knowledge of what purchases friends made.Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. Banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole.[59] This means that a smaller percentage of Facebook's users click on advertisements than many other large websites. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches),[60] Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).[61]
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, confirmed that successful advertising campaigns can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks.[62] Competing social network MySpace's CTR, in comparison, is about 0.1%, 2.5 times better than Facebook's but still low compared to many other websites. Explanations for Facebook's low CTR include the fact that Facebook's users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, that users are younger and therefore are better at ignoring advertising messages, and that MySpace users spend more time browsing through content, while Facebook users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements.[63]
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts.[64] Involver, a social marketing platform, announced in July 2008 that it managed to attain a CTR of 0.7% on Facebook (over 10 times the typical CTR for Facebook ad campaigns) for its first client, Serena Software, managing to convert 1.1 million views into 8,000 visitors to their website.[65] A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads.[66]
Mergers and acquisitions
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired FB.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed 8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history.[67]Operations
A custom-built data center with substantially reduced ("38% less") power consumption compared to existing Facebook data centers opened in April 2011 in Prineville, Oregon.[68]Website
Main articles: Facebook features and Facebook Platform
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile.[70] The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.[71] Facebook requires a user's name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.[72]
On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user's friends.[80] This enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause.[81] Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for others to track individual activities (such as relationship status changes, events, and conversations with other users).[82]
In response, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.[83]
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[84] on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.[85] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[86]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[87] Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.[88][89][90][91]
Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to "tag," or label, users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.[92]
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift.[95][96] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.[97] Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are seen only by users in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.[98]
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look.[99] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.[100] On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.[101]
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as
http://www.facebook.com/facebook as opposed to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.[102] Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. An official Facebook application is available for the iPhone OS, the Android OS, and the WebOS. Nokia and Research In Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. More than 150 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan," Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.[103][104]
In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or mapping applications.[105]
As of April 2011 Facebook users now have the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. This feature which is provided free through T-Mobile's new Bobsled service lets the user add voice to the current Facebook Chat as well as leave voice messages on Facebook.[106]
Reception
According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[107] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.[108] According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 2nd.[109] Quantcast ranks the website 2nd in the U.S. in traffic,[110] and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.[111] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively.[112] In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of which responded that they believed that Facebook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.[54]Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada,[113] the United Kingdom,[114] and the United States.[115][116][117][118] In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), followed by Middle East-Africa (67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent).[119]
The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,[120] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[121] In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.[122]
On March 2010, Judge Richard Seeborg issued an order approving the class settlement in Lane v. Facebook, Inc., the class action lawsuit arising out of Facebook's Beacon program.
In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie “Best Overall Startup Or Product” the third year in a row[123] and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.[124] However, in a July 2010 survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook received a score of 64 out of 100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. Reasons for why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the website's interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam.[125]
In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants. It is believed to be the world's first legal judgement that defines a summons posted on Facebook as legally binding.[126] In March 2009, the New Zealand High Court associate justice David Glendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the company Axe Market Garden via Facebook.[127] Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic Airways) have also used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over posts they have made.[128]
By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb "facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's own.[129] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as their new Word of the Year.[130] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared their word of the year to be the verb "unfriend", defined as "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, 'I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.'"[131]
As of April 2010, according to The New York Times, countries with most Facebook users are the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia.[132] Indonesia has become the country with the second largest number of Facebook users, after the United States, with 24 million users, or 10% of Indonesia's population.[133] Also in early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody website (and privacy advocacy website)[134] that enables text-based searches of those Wall posts that are available to "Everyone", i.e. to everyone on the Internet.
Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'. Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms".[135]
Criticism
Main article: Criticism of Facebook
Facebook has met with controversies. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including the People's Republic of China,[136] Vietnam,[137] Iran,[138] Uzbekistan,[139] Pakistan[140] Syria,[141] and Bangladesh on different bases. For example, it was banned in many countries of the world on the basis of allowed content judged as anti-Islamic and containing religious discrimination. It has also been banned at many workplaces to prevent employees wasting their time on the site.[142] The privacy of Facebook users has also been an issue, and the safety of user accounts has been compromised several times. Facebook has settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property.[143]Media Impact
In April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and creative agencies to help them develop brand promotions on Facebook[144]. The company began its push by inviting a select group of British advertising leaders to meet Facebook’s top executives at an “influencers’ summit” in February 2010. Facebook has now been involved in campaigns for True Blood, American Idol, and Top Gear[145].Social impact
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. It can reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after Watson found her facebook profile.[146] Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.[147]Some studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been questioned and refuted by other commentators.[148]
Political impact
 | Wikinews has related news: Egyptian man names daughter 'Facebook' |
Over 1,000,000 people installed the Facebook application 'US politics' in order to take part, and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates.[153] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already experienced: Facebook was an extremely popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "facebook effect" has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election.[154]
In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[155] In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government websites, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.[156]
In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching Syphilis, linked and attributed a rise in Syphilis cases in areas of Britain to Facebook. The reports of this research were rebuked by Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and causation."[157]
Media
| Wikinews has news involving Facebook: |
- At age 102, Ivy Bean of Bradford, England joined Facebook in 2008, making her one of the oldest people ever on Facebook. An inspiration to other residents of the care home in which she lived,[158] she quickly became more widely known and several fan pages were made in her honor. She visited Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, in Downing Street early in 2010.[159] Some time after creating her Facebook page, Bean also joined Twitter, when she passed the maximum number of friends allowed by Facebook. She became the oldest person to ever use the Twitter website. At the time of her death in July 2010, she had 4,962 friends on Facebook and more than 56,000 followers on Twitter. Her death was widely reported in the media and she received tributes from several notable media personalities.[160]
- "FriendFace", a December 2008 episode of the British sitcom, The IT Crowd, parodied Facebook and social networking sites in general.[161]
- American author Ben Mezrich published a book in July 2009 about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, titled The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.[162]
- In response to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day controversy and the ban of the website in Pakistan, an Islamic version of the website was created, called MillatFacebook.[163]
- "You Have 0 Friends", an April 2010 episode of the American animated comedy series, South Park, parodied Facebook.[164]
- The Social Network, a drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, was released October 1, 2010.[165] The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, and Armie Hammer as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book. The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures. No staff members of Facebook, including Zuckerberg, were involved with the project. However, one of Facebook's co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich's book. Mark Zuckerberg has said that The Social Network is inaccurate.[166]
- On February 22, 2011, an Egyptian baby was named "Facebook" to commemorate the vital role Facebook and other social media played in Egypt's revolution.[167]
M.U.S.E
Muse adalah grup musik rock alternatif asal Inggris. Band ini dibentuk di Devon pada tahun 1994. Anggota band ini terdiri dari tiga orang, yaitu Matthew Bellamy (vokalis, gitaris, pianis), Dominic Howard (drummer), dan Chris Wolstenholme (bassis). Muse memiliki genre musik yang memadukan rock, rock progresif, musik klasik, dan elektronika. Muse juga dikenal dengan konser live yang memukau, bercirikan permainan yang energik dan efek visual yang mengagumkan.[1] Muse telah merilis empat album rekaman, dimulai dengan Showbiz pada tahun 1999, diikuti Origin of Symmetry di tahun 2001, Absolution di tahun 2003, Black Holes & Revelations di tahun 2006 dan album terbarunya The Resistance di tahun 2009. Sepanjang kariernya, Muse telah memenangkan berbagai penghargaan termasuk 5 MTV Europe Music Awards, 5 Q Awards, 4 NME Awards dan 2 Brit Awards.
Pertemuan ini akhirnya dilanjutkan dengan rekaman resmi pertama Muse, yaitu E.P. Muse yang menggunakan label Sawmills, Dangerous. Lalu E.P. ke-2 mereka, Muscle Museum, meraih peringkat ke-3 pada tangga lagu indie dan mendapat perhatian dari jurnalis musik Inggris yang berpengaruh, Steve Lamacq, serta majalah musik mingguan Inggris, NME. Dennis Mills lalu membantu membangun perusahaan musik Taste Media, yang dibuat khusus untuk Muse (Muse menggunakan label ini untuk 3 album pertama mereka). Ini merupakan hal yang sangat menguntungkan untuk Muse karena mereka dapat mempertahankan keunikan musik mereka pada awal karier mereka.
Walaupun E.P. ke-2 mereka cukup sukses, banyak perusahaan rekaman Inggris tetap enggan mendukung Muse, dan banyak orang di industri musik menganggap musik Muse terlalu mirip dengan Radiohead sebagaimana halnya band-band baru asal Inggris lain saat itu. Namun, perusahaan Amerika Serikat Maverick Records mempromosikan Muse untuk tampil beberapa kali di Amerika Serikat hingga akhirnya mengontrak mereka pada tanggal 24 Desember 1998.[5] Sepulangnya dari Amerika, Taste Media mendapatkan kontrak untuk Muse di perusahaan-perusahaan rekaman di Eropa dan Australia. John Leckie, yang menjadi produser album untuk Radiohead, Stone Roses, "Weird Al" Yankovic dan The Verve, dijadikan produser album pertama Muse, Showbiz.[6][4]
Peluncuran album ini diikuti dengan penampilan pendukung pada tur band Foo Fighters dan Red Hot Chili Peppers di Amerika Serikat. Pada tahun 1999 dan 2000, Muse bermain pada beberapa festival musik di Eropa dan Australia, dan mengumpulkan banyak penggemar baru di Eropa Barat.
Origin of Symmetry memperoleh penilaian yang beragam dari berbagai kritikus musik. Dean Carlson dari Allmusic menilai permainan Muse terlalu menyerupai Radiohead, dan menganggap lagu-lagu mereka terlalu berlebihan dan sulit diterima."[8] Sebaliknya, Roger Morton dari NME memberikan nilai 9/10 untuk album ini, mengomentari sisi yang gelap dan berani dari Muse, bahkan menilai bahwa Bellamy lebih 'gila' dari Thom Yorke, vokalis Radiohead.[9] Album ini berpotensi untuk membuat Muse semakin terkenal di Amerika Serikat, tapi Maverick tidak setuju dengan gaya vokal Bellamy yang dianggap tidak cocok untuk penyiaran radio dan meminta MUSE untuk mengubah beberapa lagu mereka sebelum dirilis di Amerika Serikat. Muse menolak permintaan ini dan meninggalkan perusahaan rekaman Maverick, yang mengakibatkan tidak dirilisnya album Origin of Symmetry ini di Amerika (album ini akhirnya dirilis di daerah tersebut pada 20 September 2005, setelah Muse menjalin kontrak dengan Warner).
Penampilan Muse selama promosi album Origin of Symmetry berhasil menarik banyak pengemar dan membangun reputasi Muse sebagai band dengan penampilan live yang luar biasa. Reputasi ini membawa Muse untuk merilis Hullabaloo Soundtrack, DVD yang berisi penampilan mereka di Le Zenith di Paris,Perancis pada tahun 2001. Lalu secara bersamaan, mereka juga merilis album ganda yang berisi B-side dan rekaman dari penampilan di Le Zenith. Album ganda single A-side juga dirilis, dengan dua lagu baru yaitu In Your World dan Dead Star, yang berbeda dengan gaya opera lagu-lagu lain pada Origin of Symmetry.
Pada edisi Februari 2006 majalah Q Magazine, album Origin of Symmetry berhasil menempati peringkat ke-74 pada daftar 100 album terbaik sepanjang masa menurut penggemar.
Band ini juga tampil di Festival Glastonbury pada bulan Juni 2004. Setelah festival, band ini menggambarkan konser ini sebagai "konser terbaik dalam hidup kita".[12][13] Namun, ayah drummer Dominic Howard, William Howard, yang berada di festival untuk menonton band, meninggal karena serangan jantung setelah band tampil. Single Butterflies & Hurricanes didedikasikan untuk ayah Howard. Muse kemudian melanjutkan tur mereka. Mereka memenangkan dua penghargaan MTV Eropa, termasuk "Best Alternative Act" dan Q Award untuk "Best Live Act".[14] Muse juga menerima penghargaan sebagai "Best Live Act" pada BRIT Awards tahun 2005. Muse kehilangan dua kali untuk penghargaan Best British Band dari NME, pada tahun 2004 dan 2005. Pada bulan Juli 2005, Muse berpartisipasi dalam konser Live 8 di Paris.[15]
Matthew saat di Curiosa Festival, Randalls Island, New York .Tahun 2003 band menuntut Nestlé, yang menggunakan cover Nina Simone "Feeling Good" pada sebuah iklan untuk Nescafé tanpa izin band. Mereka menyumbangkan uang kompensasi untuk Oxfam
Mereka juga mempunyai DVD yang dirilis oleh band pada 12 Desember 2005, disebut Absolution Tour. Rilis resmi berisi editan Festival Glastonbury 2004 dan sebelumnya cuplikan dari London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, dan Teater Wiltern di Los Angeles. Dua lagu, "Endlessly" dan "Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist", sebagai trek tersembunyi pada DVD yang diambil dari Wembley Arena. Hanya lagu dari Absolution yang tidak muncul di DVD live adalah "Falling Away With You", yang belum pernah dilakukan live sampai saat ini.[16] Absolution mendapatkan sertifikat Emas di AS.[17]
Single pertama dari album, "Supermassive Black Hole", dirilis sebagai download pada Mei 2006. Hal ini kemudian diikuti oleh rilis umum sebagai satu bulan berikutnya, semua menjelang rilis album utama. Single kedua, "Starlight", dirilis pada bulan September 2006. "Knights Of Cydonia" dirilis di Amerika Serikat pada bulan Juni 2006 dan di Inggris pada November 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" terpilih nomor 1 di polling musik terbesar di dunia Radio Australia Triple J Hottest 100 untuk tahun 2007 dan 18 di Triple J's Hottest 100 dari All Time pada tahun 2009. Single keempat dari album, "Invincible", kemudian dirilis pada bulan April 2007. Satu lagi single, "Map Of The Problematique", dirilis untuk download digital hanya pada bulan Juni 2007, saat band tampil di Wembley.[25]
Sejumlah penampilan live juga ada pada tahun 2008. Pada bulan Maret, mereka bermain konser di Dubai, Johannesburg, dan Cape Town.[28] Pada tanggal 12 April. Mereka memainkan satu kali konser di Royal Albert Hall dan Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse hadir di Rock in Rio Lisboa pada tanggal 6 Juni, bersama band lainnya seperti Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring dan Linkin Park.[29] Band juga tampil di sebuah acara baru di Marlay Park, Dublin pada tanggal 13 Agustus dan telah diatur untuk bermain di sebuah pertunjukan di Belfast pada 14 Agustus. Namun, Belfast dicoret menurut The Telegraph Belfast.[30] Mereka juga mengisyaratkan kemungkinan akan tur atau konser di Amerika Selatan.[31]
Pada tanggal 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard dan Wolstenholme menerima gelar Honorary Doctorate of Arts dari Universitas Plymouth atas kontribusi mereka terhadap musik.[32][33]
E.P. dan Showbiz (1998-2000)
Setelah beberapa tahun membangun komunitas penggemar, Muse memainkan konser-konser pertama mereka di London dan Manchester. Band ini lalu bertemu dengan Dennis Smith, pemilik perusahaan rekaman Sawmills, yang bermarkas di Cornwall, Inggris.Pertemuan ini akhirnya dilanjutkan dengan rekaman resmi pertama Muse, yaitu E.P. Muse yang menggunakan label Sawmills, Dangerous. Lalu E.P. ke-2 mereka, Muscle Museum, meraih peringkat ke-3 pada tangga lagu indie dan mendapat perhatian dari jurnalis musik Inggris yang berpengaruh, Steve Lamacq, serta majalah musik mingguan Inggris, NME. Dennis Mills lalu membantu membangun perusahaan musik Taste Media, yang dibuat khusus untuk Muse (Muse menggunakan label ini untuk 3 album pertama mereka). Ini merupakan hal yang sangat menguntungkan untuk Muse karena mereka dapat mempertahankan keunikan musik mereka pada awal karier mereka.
Walaupun E.P. ke-2 mereka cukup sukses, banyak perusahaan rekaman Inggris tetap enggan mendukung Muse, dan banyak orang di industri musik menganggap musik Muse terlalu mirip dengan Radiohead sebagaimana halnya band-band baru asal Inggris lain saat itu. Namun, perusahaan Amerika Serikat Maverick Records mempromosikan Muse untuk tampil beberapa kali di Amerika Serikat hingga akhirnya mengontrak mereka pada tanggal 24 Desember 1998.[5] Sepulangnya dari Amerika, Taste Media mendapatkan kontrak untuk Muse di perusahaan-perusahaan rekaman di Eropa dan Australia. John Leckie, yang menjadi produser album untuk Radiohead, Stone Roses, "Weird Al" Yankovic dan The Verve, dijadikan produser album pertama Muse, Showbiz.[6][4]
Peluncuran album ini diikuti dengan penampilan pendukung pada tur band Foo Fighters dan Red Hot Chili Peppers di Amerika Serikat. Pada tahun 1999 dan 2000, Muse bermain pada beberapa festival musik di Eropa dan Australia, dan mengumpulkan banyak penggemar baru di Eropa Barat.
Origin of Symmetry dan Hullabaloo Soundtrack (2001-2002)
Album ke-2 mereka, Origin of Symmetry, dengan John Leckie sebagai produser, berisikan musik yang lebih berat dan gelap, dengan suara bass yang dalam dan terdistorsi. Muse bereksperimen dengan alat-alat musik yang tidak biasa digunakan, seperti organ gereja, Mellotron, dan peralatan drum tambahan. Muse lebih banyak mengandalkan suara tinggi Bellamy, dengan alunan arpeggio gitar dan permainan piano yang terdengar jelas, yang terinspirasi dari gerakan romantisme khususnya musikus Rusia Sergei Rachmaninoff dan Tchaikovsky. Beberapa lagu seperti "Space Dementia" memiliki unsur klasik yang lebih kental oleh musik Rachmaninoff. Bellamy juga menyatakan adanya pengaruh dari gitaris ternama Jimi Hendrix dan Tom Morello (gitaris Rage Against The Machine dan Audioslave) dalam melodi gitar pada beberapa lagu terakhir dalam album ini.[7] Terdapat pula daur ulang dari lagu "Feeling Good", yang aslinya dibuat oleh Anthony Newley dan Leslie Bricusse dan dipopulerkan oleh Nina Simone.Origin of Symmetry memperoleh penilaian yang beragam dari berbagai kritikus musik. Dean Carlson dari Allmusic menilai permainan Muse terlalu menyerupai Radiohead, dan menganggap lagu-lagu mereka terlalu berlebihan dan sulit diterima."[8] Sebaliknya, Roger Morton dari NME memberikan nilai 9/10 untuk album ini, mengomentari sisi yang gelap dan berani dari Muse, bahkan menilai bahwa Bellamy lebih 'gila' dari Thom Yorke, vokalis Radiohead.[9] Album ini berpotensi untuk membuat Muse semakin terkenal di Amerika Serikat, tapi Maverick tidak setuju dengan gaya vokal Bellamy yang dianggap tidak cocok untuk penyiaran radio dan meminta MUSE untuk mengubah beberapa lagu mereka sebelum dirilis di Amerika Serikat. Muse menolak permintaan ini dan meninggalkan perusahaan rekaman Maverick, yang mengakibatkan tidak dirilisnya album Origin of Symmetry ini di Amerika (album ini akhirnya dirilis di daerah tersebut pada 20 September 2005, setelah Muse menjalin kontrak dengan Warner).
Penampilan Muse selama promosi album Origin of Symmetry berhasil menarik banyak pengemar dan membangun reputasi Muse sebagai band dengan penampilan live yang luar biasa. Reputasi ini membawa Muse untuk merilis Hullabaloo Soundtrack, DVD yang berisi penampilan mereka di Le Zenith di Paris,Perancis pada tahun 2001. Lalu secara bersamaan, mereka juga merilis album ganda yang berisi B-side dan rekaman dari penampilan di Le Zenith. Album ganda single A-side juga dirilis, dengan dua lagu baru yaitu In Your World dan Dead Star, yang berbeda dengan gaya opera lagu-lagu lain pada Origin of Symmetry.
Pada edisi Februari 2006 majalah Q Magazine, album Origin of Symmetry berhasil menempati peringkat ke-74 pada daftar 100 album terbaik sepanjang masa menurut penggemar.
Absolution (2003-2005)
Album ke-3 mereka Absolution (diproduksi oleh Rich Costey) diluncurkan pada tahun 2003 dan debutnya nomor satu di Inggris. [10] Album ini menghasilkan single pertama yang memasuki sepuluh top hits mereka "Time Is Running Out" dan kemudian dua puluh top hits: "Hysteria", "Sing For Absolution" dan "Butterflies And Hurricanes". Muse kemudian melakukan tur internasional pertama mereka. Ini terus selama sekitar satu tahun dan Muse mengunjungi Australia, Selandia Baru, Amerika Serikat, Kanada, dan Perancis. Sementara itu, band ini merilis enam single ("Stockholm Syndrome", "Time Is Running Out", "Hysteria", "Sing For Absolution", "Butterflies And Hurricanes" dan "Apocalypse Please"). Di AS dari tur 2004 mulai tidak menyenangkan karena Bellamy melukai dirinya sendiri di panggung selama pertunjukan pembukaan di Atlanta.[11] Tur dilanjutkan setelah beberapa jahitan dan beberapa hari.Band ini juga tampil di Festival Glastonbury pada bulan Juni 2004. Setelah festival, band ini menggambarkan konser ini sebagai "konser terbaik dalam hidup kita".[12][13] Namun, ayah drummer Dominic Howard, William Howard, yang berada di festival untuk menonton band, meninggal karena serangan jantung setelah band tampil. Single Butterflies & Hurricanes didedikasikan untuk ayah Howard. Muse kemudian melanjutkan tur mereka. Mereka memenangkan dua penghargaan MTV Eropa, termasuk "Best Alternative Act" dan Q Award untuk "Best Live Act".[14] Muse juga menerima penghargaan sebagai "Best Live Act" pada BRIT Awards tahun 2005. Muse kehilangan dua kali untuk penghargaan Best British Band dari NME, pada tahun 2004 dan 2005. Pada bulan Juli 2005, Muse berpartisipasi dalam konser Live 8 di Paris.[15]
Mereka juga mempunyai DVD yang dirilis oleh band pada 12 Desember 2005, disebut Absolution Tour. Rilis resmi berisi editan Festival Glastonbury 2004 dan sebelumnya cuplikan dari London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, dan Teater Wiltern di Los Angeles. Dua lagu, "Endlessly" dan "Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist", sebagai trek tersembunyi pada DVD yang diambil dari Wembley Arena. Hanya lagu dari Absolution yang tidak muncul di DVD live adalah "Falling Away With You", yang belum pernah dilakukan live sampai saat ini.[16] Absolution mendapatkan sertifikat Emas di AS.[17]
Black Hole & Revelations dan HAARP (2006-2008)
Pada tahun 2006, Muse merilis album keempat mereka, Black Holes & Revelations, diproduksi oleh Muse dan Rich Costey. Judul dan tema album adalah hasil dari daya tarik band dengan fiksi ilmiah dan kemarahan politik.[18][19] Album ini mencapai No 1 di Inggris, sebagian besar Eropa, dan Australia. Ini juga sukses di Amerika Serikat, mencapai nomor sembilan di chart album Billboard 200.[20] Sebelum merilis album baru, band ini membuat pertunjukan live, yang sempat terhenti ketika sedang merekam, membuat sejumlah penampilan promosi dimulai pada tanggal 13 Mei 2006 di BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. Tour Black Holes & Revelations dimulai tepat sebelum mereka merilis album dan awalnya kebanyakan terdiri dari penampilan festival, terutama slot headline di Reading dan Leeds Festival pada bulan Agustus 2006.[21] Jadwal tur utama band dimulai dengan tur di Amerika Utara dari akhir Juli awal Agustus 2006. Setelah terakhir dari festival musim panas, tur Eropa dimulai, termasuk tur arena besar Inggris.[22] Black Holes & Revelations dinominasikan untuk Mercury Music Prize 2006, namun kalah dari Arctic Monkeys.[23] Album itu, memperoleh Penghargaan Platinum Eropa setelah menjual satu juta kopi di benua itu.[24] Pada bulan Agustus 2006, Muse mencatat sesi live di Abbey Road Studios untuk Live from Abbey Road.
Single pertama dari album, "Supermassive Black Hole", dirilis sebagai download pada Mei 2006. Hal ini kemudian diikuti oleh rilis umum sebagai satu bulan berikutnya, semua menjelang rilis album utama. Single kedua, "Starlight", dirilis pada bulan September 2006. "Knights Of Cydonia" dirilis di Amerika Serikat pada bulan Juni 2006 dan di Inggris pada November 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" terpilih nomor 1 di polling musik terbesar di dunia Radio Australia Triple J Hottest 100 untuk tahun 2007 dan 18 di Triple J's Hottest 100 dari All Time pada tahun 2009. Single keempat dari album, "Invincible", kemudian dirilis pada bulan April 2007. Satu lagi single, "Map Of The Problematique", dirilis untuk download digital hanya pada bulan Juni 2007, saat band tampil di Wembley.[25]
Band ini banyak menghabiskan bulan November dan Desember 2006 untuk tur Eropa dengan Noisettes band Inggris sebagai pendukung. Tur dilanjutkan di Australia, Selandia Baru, dan Asia Tenggara pada awal tahun 2007 dan sempat konser di Indonesia pada tanggal 23 Februari 2007 sebelum kembali ke Inggris. Mungkin penampilan mereka terbesar sampai saat ini adalah dua pertunjukan di Stadion Wembley yang baru dibangun kembali pada tanggal 16 dan 17 Juni 2007. Kedua konser Wembley direkam untuk sebuah DVD / CD berjudul HAARP, yang dirilis pada 17 Maret 2008[26] in the UK and 1 April 2008[27] di Amerika Serikat. Tur berlanjut di Eropa pada bulan Juli 2007 sebelum kembali ke Amerika Serikat pada bulan Agustus di mana tiket mereka terjual habis saat mereka bermain di Madison Square Garden, New York. Mereka. mendapatkan tempat pada malam kedua dari Austin City Limits Music Festival pada tanggal 15 September 2007, setelah The White Stripes batal tampil. Tidak lama setelah itu, mereka juga tampil di Vegoose Oktober 2007 di Las Vegas bersama band-band seperti Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk, dan Queens of the Stone Age. Muse melanjutkan tur di Eropa Timur, Rusia, dan Skandinavia sebelum pindah ke Australia dan Selandia Baru. Muse memainkan pertunjukan terakhir mereka dari tur Black Hole and Revelations sebagai temanya di KROQ Almost Acoustic Natal.
Sejumlah penampilan live juga ada pada tahun 2008. Pada bulan Maret, mereka bermain konser di Dubai, Johannesburg, dan Cape Town.[28] Pada tanggal 12 April. Mereka memainkan satu kali konser di Royal Albert Hall dan Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse hadir di Rock in Rio Lisboa pada tanggal 6 Juni, bersama band lainnya seperti Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring dan Linkin Park.[29] Band juga tampil di sebuah acara baru di Marlay Park, Dublin pada tanggal 13 Agustus dan telah diatur untuk bermain di sebuah pertunjukan di Belfast pada 14 Agustus. Namun, Belfast dicoret menurut The Telegraph Belfast.[30] Mereka juga mengisyaratkan kemungkinan akan tur atau konser di Amerika Selatan.[31]
Pada tanggal 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard dan Wolstenholme menerima gelar Honorary Doctorate of Arts dari Universitas Plymouth atas kontribusi mereka terhadap musik.[32][33]
Personil band
- Matthew Bellamy – vokal, gitar, piano, keyboard, synthesizer
- Christopher Wolstenholme – bass, vokal pendamping, keyboard, synthesizer
- Dominic Howard – drum, perkusi
[sunting] Personil tambahan
Berikut personil tambahan yang sering muncul pada beberapa penampilan konser Muse:- Morgan Nicholls – keyboard, vokal pendamping, bass, ukulele (2004, 2006 - sekarang)
- Dan "the Trumpet Man" Newell – terompet (2006 - sekarang)
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