What sets a good branded social media application a part from a great one are these four main components: Reach, Utility, Contextual Relevance and Engagement. Conde Nast’s latest, “Vanity Fair Hollywood” iPhone application is an excellent example of a social media app that was designed with all those components in mind… resulting in an app that is, indeed, inherently “social”.

Conde Nast partnered up with L’Oreal to create this “awards pool” social gaming tool for their Hollywood flagship magazine, Vanity Fair. But more importantly, they used this opportunity to re-purpose their editorial content into an app that’s not only useful, but newsworthy and therefore, relevant.

According to Vanity Fair, “The app allows you to match wits with your friends, tells you all you need to know about every nominee (yes, even Avatar’s sound mixer extraordinaire Christopher Boyes), and, most importantly, lets you fill out your picks and see how you stack up against the competition, envelope-by-envelope. Thanks to exclusive Vanity Fair content, you’ll be spending Hollywood’s big night bragging digitally about how right you were.”

It’s true that it could have very well been pretty much any brand in the beauty/lifestyle vertical that could have sponsored this very application i.e. “Vanity Fair Hollywood iPhone app presented by [insert name here]” but, kudos to L’Oreal for stepping up and sponsoring this app – you rolled the dice, and it paid off.

It’s no secret that brands like L’Oreal are interested to play in this social media space as an early adopter. But by L’Oreal using Vanity Fair as a media partner to make the introduction for them, not only do they get to leverage off the magazine’s built-in audience, they also get to build brand credibility.

This is a great example of brilliant media partnership. If L’Oreal (or any brand) created this app on their own, it would not have worked. The media partnership with Vanity Fair was their “in” (-or, “invite”, rather) to this influencer group.

The utilitarian component combined with the user-friendly interface makes this iPhone app a great example of how a brand and media partnership can come together to create a social media tool with a purpose, successfully.

COST: Free

NAME: Vanity Fair Hollywood iPhone app

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

ReverbNation is the music industry’s version of a “Web 2.0 Fairy Godfather”…

If you’re an artist looking to market your music online, but don’t know where to start, ReverbNation is a platform that provides Artists, Labels, Managers and other Industry Professionals with their own set of digital marketing promotional tools.

Now artists have the ability to manage their fan base, create widgets and banners, distribute music on iTunes, create geo-targeted campaigns and send e-newsletters -all from one platform (and did we mention it’s free?)

The most refreshing part about digital distribution on ReverbNation is how they’ve created a business model that puts artists first. For $35.00 per release/per year artists can distribute one song or an album of up to 99 songs – best of all, ReverbNation does not take any percentage of the sales.

ReverbNation offers both a free and premium service. Features include:

• FanReach: fan managements system with customizable and targeted email system

• Widgets & Banners: Music Players, Fan Collectors, Street Team Collectors, Press, Shows, Shows w/ Map, Exclusive Song.  Widgets and Banners are also trackable

• Digital Distribution: distributes music on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and emusic

• RPK (Reverb Press Kit): electronic press kit (EPK) that allows the   recipient to access music, videos, bio and photos. Artists also have the ability to geo-target fans and track number of click-thrus

• Fan360: reveals the contact information for emails e.g. name, age, sex, gender, zip code and how many Friends, Fans or Followers on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter

• Street Team Functionality – every artist gets their own Street Team Program to help activate their fans and make every promotion “viral”. These promoters will help artists gain exposure by talking about the artist on blogs, message boards and by posting music, banners, tour dates, etc.  The platform even tracks everything these Street Team members do and creates a Leaderboard that measures impressions, number of plays, clicks and/or conversions

• Facebook and Bebo Applications – the MyBand Application is currently the #1 Artist Application on Facebook.  It puts almost everything from the ReverbNation profile right into the artist’s Facebook Public Profile page.  Artists can also include “Buy links” e.g. music, tickets, merch on their Public Profiles

Currently there are over 400,000 artists using ReverbNation including 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Pantera, Judas Priest, O.A.R., Natasha Bedingfield, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sara Bareilles, Lamb of God and Jason Mraz. 

“Given the fact that Scion has always worked with DJs and respected their culture, we wanted to give our audience a useful tool for their craft.” - Jeri Yoshizu, Scion sales promotions manager on the release of “Scion Radio 17 BPM Meter” iPhone and iPod Touch application.

The launch of the free Radio 17 Beats Per Minute (BPM) Meter application is part of Scion’s effort to generation brand engagement through a social gaming.

The app, developed by EpicTilt.com, automatically calculates the BPM of a song as users tap the screen to the song’s rhythm.  After recording the song’s BPM, users can create playlists by genre and send their song lists with corresponding BPM info to themselves and others for use in the planning of live sets and recorded mixes.  The Scion Radio 17 BPM Meter also provides a scrolling news ticker that keeps users up-to-date with the current month’s Scion Radio 17 features, as well as information about the latest Scion Audio Visual (S A/V) releases and events.  

By providing the DJ culture with a utilitarian tool, Scion not only builds brand engagement, but also generates brand awareness, but in a relevant way. 

The application is now available at the Apple App Store.

Since using a lighter indoors is considered a fire hazard, technology has come to our rescue again, this time in the form of a lighter that can be used to show our appreciation for a rocking ballad.

According to the product description, The Virtual Zippo Lighter opens with a flick of your wrist and lights with a turn of your thumb. The windproof flame sways as you move your iPhone or iPod Touch and reacts when you blow it out. Choose from a variety of Zippo Lighter images and customize a handful selected lighters.

With over 3 million downloads,The Virtual Zippo Lighter still averages about 100,000 new downloads per week… probably to use at concerts.  

COST: Free 

NAME: The Virtual Zippo Lighter

COMPATIBLE WITH: iPhone and iPod Touch (Requires iPhone 2.0 software Update)

LivingSocial is now officially the top application on Facebook with 20,009,207 monthly active users.

You may be familiar with seeing it on your newsfeed. It’s the one where you get to share your “Top 5” favorite things with your friends e.g. Albums, Books, Movies, Beer, TV Shows etc.

Most recently, LivingSocial created “Picktacular”, a new social gaming app where you get to pick your friends’ Top 5 Favorite things.

A popular “Top 5 Albums” application on Facebook also means for artists getting the word out about their new release, could now be as easy as getting friends to list the album as just a few of their favorite things.