“When something’s gone / I wanna fight to get it back again” shouts Eddie Vedder in the already-smash-hit The Fixer from Pearl Jam’s new and long-awaited album Backspacer. We know they’ve been gone a long while, but we hate to have to break this to him: Eddie’s not going to have to fight to get anything back, because it’s definitely apparent that Pearl Jam still has it.

It’s been almost 4 years since Pearl Jam’s last album and as Josh Modell at Spin writes, it’s like “the explosion at the end of an extremely long fuse.” He couldn’t be more correct. We’re already on our second time through. Ear buds tucked tight, volume maxed out, and reminiscing about our younger days listening to Ten and Vs. in our garages on clunky, beat-up single disc boom boxes. We think it’s safe to say these albums, along with Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream and Nirvana’s Nevermind, helped define a good chunk of the 90s generation. A few of us admittedly took a fan’s leave-of-absence after Vitalogy to pursue our taste in other music genres, but it’s good to be back. And Backspacer has definitely welcomed us with open arms.

We’d be hard pressed to find a track on this album we didn’t like, and if we had to choose our favorites, the tracks that will be the most responsible for the soreness in our necks tomorrow, they’d definitely have to be: Got Some, The Fixer, and Johnny Guitar. All 3 take on a notably more upbeat and optimistic tone, which might not sit well with some long-time fans who prefer the more grungy, melancholy sound characteristic of their earlier albums. But some of us think it’s a nice departure. If nothing, it shows that Pearl Jam is still capable of experimenting with their sound, refusing to be pigeon-holed into a single, limited category. An early Rolling Stone review noted “the more you listen, the more it just sounds like Vedder’s spending a nice day surfing. After toughing out the Bush years, Pearl Jam aren’t in the mood for brooding; at long last, surf’s up.” Oh, and we can’t forget Amongst The Waves. “Love ain’t love until you feel it / Up riding high amongst the waves / I can feel like I / Have a soul that has been saved / I can see the light / Coming through the clouds in rays.” The weather today might be a little depressing, but Backspacer has made our morning anything but. If only we could go surfing…

If you haven’t heard the album, the band has apparently cut a deal with MySpace where you can listen to it for free (with a few commercial interruptions, naturally). What do you think? Has Pearl Jam exploded out of their hiatus with a hit? Take this poll and tell us what you think.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s the video for The Fixer. Does anyone else think Eddie looks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski in this video? Just sayin’. Enjoy!

Here at LivingSocial we're all about keeping things fresh and appealing, which is why we're proud to introduce you to the newly-redesigned LivingSocial! We appreciate your patience as we roll it out and welcome any comments you have at feedback@livingsocial.com.

We've been hard at work on a design that makes it easier to interact with your collection and see recommendations both from our community and your friends. Read on to learn more about all of the improvements we've made to the LivingSocial experience.

The first thing you'll notice is our new look. Gone are the days of the dark LivingSocial bar running across the top of your screen. In its place you'll find a nice bright green header, with a sleek silver navigation bar beneath it that lets you view your profile, collection, recommendations, leaderboards, settings, and our newest exciting feature: trends! The trends feature enables you to see what's most popular on LivingSocial by week, month, or all time. It also shows the the biggest movers, so you'll never be out of the loop on what's hot!

The next feature change you'll notice is the way you add items to your collection. When you visit an item page, you'll notice a beautiful blue button that says "Add to my collection." When you click it, you'll see a drop down that let's you add it to your collection as easy as 1-2-3!

Speaking of numbers, you're also going to notice that all item images on LivingSocial now have a number at the lower right hand corner. These numbers are there to show you what percentage of people like that item.

The last major enhancement we've added will improve the quality of recommendations we give you by basing them on the type of things you like in your collection. You can find our recommendations in three places: 1) click on the "recommendations" tab in the navigation bar at the top of the page; 2) scroll to the "Try Something New!" section at the bottom of the homepage; 3) you'll notice that sometimes we'll surface recommendations directly to you when you're on an item page. We hope you'll find our recommendations relevant and useful!

We know change is hard, but we think in this case it's definitely for the better and hope that you'll agree! We appreciate your patience as we roll the site out this week and work through any issues. We also want to know your thoughts and encourage you to share them with us at feedback@livingsocial.com. Until next time, keep LivingSocial!

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An update:

We know that there are some bugs in the current site, and our development team is working to fix them as quickly as possible. A few things that will be back in the next couple days (some of them broke during the push yesterday, others are still being re-worked):

• Scrolling carousels on profile pages only
• More interaction with your friends (friends list, what your friends are doing, etc)
• Commenting/Discussions
• Updated profile tab in Facebook
• User medals on profile pages

...as well as several new features. Again, we appreciate your patience as we perform this massive upgrade. This new design is enabling us to bring more relevant content to you and will enable us to expand to include several of the most requested features from users.

Hi everyone,

There have been a few articles and posts in recent days that claim LivingSocial sells or shares private user information from Facebook or our applications with advertisers. The claims are untrue, and are based on (false) assumptions and unchecked facts.

LivingSocial does not sell or share data with brands or advertisers.
We don’t share, sell or expose individual user data, Facebook profile information, or even anonymized aggregate data to others. Period.

Here’s how we work with advertisers: we allow them to request that we display advertising around specific areas of interest, like movies and music, in our application screens and on our main web site. An example of this would be if you're browsing lists in our music section, you might see an advertisement for a concert tour of a band. This is similar to how a sports site might have an advertisement for sporting tickets. But we do not pass, send, or sell any of your private data to them as part of that process.

We value your trust, and will continue to respect your privacy. As always, thanks for being part of LivingSocial.

Tim O'Shaughnessy
CEO

It’s a sad day for millions all over the world today as we cope with the loss of Michael Jackson, the undisputed “King of Pop,” who passed away yesterday at 50 years of age. Jackson was not breathing when the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a call at 12:30pm (PST) yesterday, June 25, 2009. They attempted to resuscitate him, but to no avail. Jackson was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center at 2:26pm (PST).

The media has covered this extensively in the last 12 hours and major TV networks even canceled regularly scheduled primetime programming to run specials highlighting his life and times last night. Vigils were said to have taken place in multiple cities across the globe, honoring the late great pop star and proving that despite his increasingly reclusive nature and admittedly strange behavior in recent years, Michael Jackson had a tremendous impact on millions of people.

Jackson’s death comes at a time when he was gearing up to start another world tour including shows in London’s O2 stadium that were widely regarded as the “Hottest Tickets on the Planet”, selling some 750,000 tickets at rates of 11 per second, 657 per minute, and 40,000 per hour, prompting this comment from a Ticketmaster representative: “We often talk about unprecedented demand, but this week we have witnessed a live entertainment phenomenon. Today, we saw well over 250,000 fans hitting the Ticketmaster site at 7am for the general sale tickets. This was undoubtedly the busiest demand for tickets for an event which we have ever experienced.”

His musical career spanned nearly 4 decades, beginning in 1971, and included sales of 750 million albums, 13 grammy awards, and 13 number 1 singles, earning him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Most Successful Entertainer of All Time.” He was known as someone who was very generous with charities and had an affection for children he claimed to be innocent, but that raised many eyebrows and actually landed him in court a few times. His life certainly seemed to be a rollercoaster with some great highs and some awful lows, which might explain why it was a heart attack that ultimately put an end to it. And yet, despite all the controversy surrounding him, one thing is certain: he will go down in history as a legend, the King of Pop, forever. He is survived by his three children, Prince I, Paris, and Prince “Blanket” II.

It’s not surprising that LivingSocialites love Michael Jackson as well. His major records show up in 15,209 collections and have been reviewed 700+ times. We’ve also got a whole host of books written by or about MJ in our Visual Bookshelf. Have you had the chance to review your favorites? If not, visit our Michael Jackson albums section to catalog your King of Pop albums and review them, or the Michael Jackson books section to do the same for literature.

We’re also seeing a lot of activity in our Pick Your Five and Polls applications, with many people picking their favorite Michael Jackson songs and videos. If you’d like to do the same, follow the links below!

Pick Your Top 5 Michael Jackson Songs

Pick Your Top 5 Michael Jackson Albums

What’s the Best Michael Jackson Album?

What’s the Best Michael Jackson Video?

And of course, you’ve always got the option to create your own Poll in honor of Michael Jackson to share with friends.

One part of LivingSocial that you have probably never seen is our LivingSocial Events page. Our events page help bring LivingSocial users in New York City, and soon others cities, together for free cocktails.

This event at China 1, is just one of our many upcoming events where you can meet other LivingSocial users away from the computer or just get all of your friends together for a free drink. Just RSVP to any of these events online, print out your code and show up for free drinks and a lot of fun.

If you attend one of these events or you have any suggestions, let us know what you think by emailing us at feedback@livingsocial.com or tweet us @LivingSocial.

Cheers from the team at LivingSocial!

A lot has been going on here at LivingSocial lately. You already know all about our nine LivingSocial categories and the PickYour5 Facebook application. Recently you might also have noticed our

Here is one example of the many polls you can take and share on Facebook. Plus, if you can’t find a Poll you want to take you can just create it yourself and share it with all of your friends. Once you take or finish creating a poll you can choose to display it in your Facebook feed so your friends can comment and take the poll themselves.

Some of our most popular polls include:

• Who is better Messi or Ronaldo
• What’s the best soda?
• Nike or Adidas?
• Who is your favorite comedian?
• Which actor is best?

Between the nine LivingSocial categories and the PickYour5 application on Facebook, a lot of things (from albums to video games) are being rated, reviewed, picked, and added to collections by the LivingSocial community. That begs the question: Which things are popular lately? Based on various stats from April, we’ve compiled popularity rankings for a few of our subject areas as well as the LivingSocial app.

Artists (based on LivingSocial: Albums)

1. Metallica
2. Pink Floyd
3. U2
4. Nirvana
5. Led Zeppelin

Beer

1. Corona
2. Heineken
3. Guinness
4. Blue Moon
5. Budweiser

Movies

1. Twilight
2. Titanic
3. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
4. The Notebook
5. The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring

TV Shows

1. Lost
2. House
3. Friends
4. Heroes
5. CSI

Video Games

1. Call of Duty 4
2. Final Fantasy XII
3. Halo 3
4. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
5. Resident Evil 4

Pick Your Five lists (based on LivingSocial Pick Your Five)

1. Favorite movies of all time
2. Best TV shows
3. 5 Things i don’t leave the house without!
4. Favorite Sports Teams
5. Favorite beer

Eminem to Perform at 2009 MTV Movie Awards Sunday May 31st at 9pm

Just the other day I was listening to an Eminem tune on my iPod and I thought to myself, "Where in the World is Marshall Mathers?!" The potty-mouthed rapper known as much for fueling controversy as spitting out rhymes at incomprehensible speeds hasn't put out an album since the critically acclaimed Encore in 2004. It seems as though the answer to my question has arrived, as Mr. Em is set to release his latest album, Relapse, on May 19th, according to MTV.com. He's also been tapped to perform at MTV's 2009 MTV Movie Awards. His newest single, "We Made You," which can be seen here, shares similarities in style to Without Me from 2002's The Eminem Show. In true Eminem style, he makes fun of a whole lot of people in the video, including Sarah Palin, Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, Tony Romo, Bret Michaels, and the list goes on. All of it makes for a good laugh, and of course, a cameo by Dr. Dre is only natural.

What's Hot on the Billboard Top 100

1. Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas
2. Poker Face by Lady GaGa
3. Right Round by Flo Rida
4. Kiss Me Thru The Phone by Soulja Boy Tell 'em feat. Sammie
5. Blame It by Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain
6. Dead and Gone by T.I. feat Justin Timberlake
7. Day n' Nite by Kid Cudi
8. Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
9. You Found Me by The Fray
10. The Climb by Miley Cyrus

Pearl Jam Back in the Mix

It has been reported that the legends of the grunge scene are set to release a new album, film, and launch a U.S. tour, according to Billboard.com. The album is rumored to contain 14 songs, the tour they'll be playing will supposedly include the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where Dave Matthews, Beastie Boys, and Kings of Leon are supposedly also headlining, and the video is said to be a collection of film compiled to honor the bands 20th Anniversary.

T.I. Riding Paper Trail all the way to Jail

Rapper T.I.'s 4th studio album, entitled "King," served in many as foreshadowing the future for the golden boy of Southern Hip-Hop, whose popularity has gone through the roof ever since King's release in March of 2006. He's the proud owner of nine Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 singles, 3 of which reached #1. Despite his global success, and contrary to the "change" he wants all of us to see in him, T.I. was arrested in October 2007 after purchasing 3 unregistered machine guns just four hours before the BET Hip-Hop Awards. In March of 2009, he was sentenced to 1-year and 1-day in prison for the offense. Of course, this did nothing but fuel the fire of his latest album, Paper Trail, which dominates the charts and airwaves. In a vague interview with MTV's Sway Calloway, T.I. talked about re-releasing Paper Trail with 5 additional tracks, which Sway cleverly pointed out was a way for T.I. to keep himself in the mainstream while behind bars. The rapper also spoke of releasing a new album once he is released from prison that will be a "Celebration" of putting troubled times behind him. Check out MTV.com for more on this, and the interview with Sway.

Green Day is Bringin' the Heat!

It's been five long years since Green Day's latest album, American Idiot took the world by storm, and for those of us who consider ourselves fans, that's just way too long! Fortunately for us, Green Day will be releasing another album in May called 21st Century Breakdown, which MTV seems quite impressed with. The album is set to release mid-May, but Green Day will be premiering the video, which is reportedly going to be heavy on the pyrotechnics, for it's "Enemy" track, on April 24th on more than 250 MTV on-air and online outlets worldwide. A snippet of that is available on MTV.com.

Here at LivingSocial, we are all about creating lists and categorizing stuff. With 9 subject areas already in place (from books to slopes) and more coming soon, our aim is to help you manage the things you like easily and socially.

It was with those goals in mind that we introduced a new LivingSocial experience on Facebook called Pick Your Five. Pick Your 5 is a simple application that allows you to quickly generate lists of five things, with a title you create, and share those lists with your friends. Every subject area on LivingSocial.com (video games, beer, books, etc.) is available to be picked from in Pick Your 5 along with new categories we’ve added especially for the Pick Your 5 app, like celebrities, hot sauces, countries, pro sports teams, and others.

Above is an image of the creation screen in Pick Your 5. Once you click “Finish,” your pick five list is complete, and it appears on your Facebook stream, so your friends can comment on your choices or pick their own.

Let us know if you have any feedback about Pick Your 5 by emailing us at feedback@livingsocial.com or tweet us @LivingSocial. Also, please, let us know which new categories you want in Pick Your 5 and which of those you most want to see expanded into new subject areas on LivingSocial.com.

First off, let me apologize for the long radio silence over the past few weeks. We haven't been taking an extended holiday, but rather working on a bunch of behind-the-scenes improvements and bug fixes. In other words, we haven't had any cool, new features to talk about, unless of course, you consider search engine optimization or database restructuring sexy.

Not to worry, we're bringing sexy back. In October, we hired a kick-ass designer, Keith, who has been trucking on a more cohesive LivingSocial. The team has been pouring through user-feedback from the last year and contemplating what ways we can provide a better experience.

In doing so, we realized that we have an idea of who we are but aside from a few praise e-mails a week, we really don't know who you think we are. Our solution: we ask you.

Here's the challenge: Describe LivingSocial.

In one word, eight words, or one thousand fifty-two. Draw us a picture. Send us a video. Rap it. Write a poem (which surprisingly, our CEO can do well.) Be creative. Unfiltered is fine - we don't bruise too easily.

In exchange for your creative juices, we'll send you some LivingSocial schwag.

Tweet us @LivingSocial or drop us a line at feedback@livingsocial.com. And don't forget to send us your mailing address for the schwag. ;)

• Ten hours.
  
• 100% Processing Capacity.
  
• Five Developers with no sleep.
  
• 24 Krispy Kreme Donuts.
  
• Unknown Amounts of Coffee.
  
• 100 Million+ reconfigurations of our data.
  
  

The team at LivingSocial has been a little busy since midnight last night, working to complete our largest maintenance and system upgrade we’ve ever undertaken. Our development team has been working overtime to ensure that our activities today went as smooth as possible. While we hate being down for any significant period of time, we think you’ll be ok with our extended absence in the near future.

Our team is still verifying the success of everything we did, so please excuse any unexpected interactions for the next couple hours. We should have everything back to normal soon.

As we come back online, we know that you’re thinking “Why were they down for 10 hours and yet there are no noticeable changes?” We promise the downtime was not in vain; today we’ve migrated our entire database, improving our performance, efficiency, and ability to provide you with useful data. This was the first step of many to delivering a completely revamped experience on LivingSocial. Stay tuned over the next several months as well roll out new features and improvements that were made possible by our maintenance work today.

Today we have two small (but hopefully significant!) changes to announce that impact users’ collections. First off, the “Manage” page is no more. We renamed the page’s title in the header “My Collection,” which is a bit more accurate and easier to understand. In terms of functionality, the page is still the same, so you can still search your collection, give ratings, change statuses, delete, create lists, etc. all from that one place.

Along with the name change, we’ve added the ability for you to show the images of the things in your collection on your “My Collection” page. Click the “show images” link above your collection to display a small thumbnail image for each item. You can prevent the images from displaying by clicking “hide images” at any time. Hopefully, this tweak makes it easier for you to find the things you’re trying to find!

As always, please, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at feedback@livingsocial.com or swing by http://getsatisfaction.com/livingsocial.

After launching Slopes last week, we’re excited to announce our next new subject area: iPhone Apps. If you are like the LivingSocial team, we don’t have a ton of time to download every new app that comes out. Instead, we use the recommendations of our friends to figure out what iPhone apps are essential accessories.

A few weeks back, we decided to create LivingSocial: iPhone apps to solve this problem. Now, you can get recommendations, ratings, and reviews from your friends and figure out what apps are worth your time and money. Plus, we offer direct downloads to the iTunes store, so you don’t even have to go back and forth between your browser and iTunes.

From what we can tell, we’re the first site out there that integrates your friends into the iPhone app experience.

Get started cataloging your favorite iPhone Apps today. If you notice any inaccurate information or have any problems with iPhone apps, drop us a line at feedback@livingsocial.com or swing by GetStatisfaction.

With winter in full effect, the LivingSocial team is pleased to announce our newest subject area: Slopes. Slopes allows you and your friends to catalog your favorite ski and snowboarding destinations, while getting recommendations from LivingSocial on where to go for your next winter vacation. In addition, we've integrated with SnoCountry, providing you with up-to-date information on the current conditions at each slope.

Slopes is the first subject to include detailed information, a trend you will see in all of our future subject areas. If you notice any inaccurate information or have problems with Slopes, drop us a line at feedback@livingsocial.com.

Last week we rolled out some major changes to our recommendations page. Based on huge amounts of user feedback, we've rolled out an updated version of our recommendation page. The major change on this page is the addition of a "Skip, Don't show this again" button. This button works very similar to the "Not Interested" status that used to exist on all of our recommendations.

By clicking this button, we will never show you that thing again in your recommendations, and we'll automatically generate a new recommendation for you.

Thanks for the continued feedback. Don't hesitate to drop us a line at feedback@livingsocial.com.