Category: Podcasting

CollegeRecruiter.com is Podcasting

Over the weekend we set up and launched the CollegeRecruiter.com podcast using BetDirCaster.

Integration into their existing site went quickly. More quickly than I anticipated. I’m excited about podcasts like this; timeless information to a niche audience in 10 minutes or less.

    This also gave me an opportunity to tweak BetDirCaster. It now;

  • formats the duration correctly for itunes:duration (HH:MM:SS).
  • displays the tracks’ artist in the itunes:author tag, before it grabbed the podcast Admin’s name.

If you’re using BetDirCaster and having problems with the track description displaying correctly, download the latest BetDirCaster. Progress has been made on that bug, and I could use some feedback on how far along we are.

Business Podcast Sighting: Cisco

Had another conversation yesterday about how podcasting can help business communicate and connect both internally and externally. One thing coming out of these conversations – there’s probably audio or video somewhere in your organization that is collecting dust and could be more used and more useful in an RSS feed. Aside from the convenience, there’s an accessibility aspect to podcasting.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion pointed to News@Cisco Podcast the podcast from Cisco’s PR team.

The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

Doug Kaye states Mark Ramsey doesn’t get podcasting.

Mark Ramsey replies that Doug doesn’t get broadcasting.

Yes, podcasting is a great opportunity for broadcasters to experiment and create a farm team. Yes, podcasting is a no-brainer for a broadcasters to connect with their audience on their audience’s terms. Finally, Yes, podcasting is the easiest way to share audio on a very specific, niche topic with self-selected people.

Mark is right, podcasting and videoblogging can’t be shoehorned into traditional distribution channels:

“But ask your local movie theater how much they care to show a movie only a few people see, ask the local bookseller how much they want to stock a book only a few folks buy.”

No, it doesn’t make sense for a movie theater to show an extremely niche production. Though perhaps if they did, it would help solve their current attendance problems. Mark Cuban suggests focusing on the customer also. Though, perhaps even movie theaters are already catering to niche audience; those that don’t find DVDs from Netflix good enough.

On the Silicon Valley Gillmor Gang, Robert Scoble complains that while Adam Curry’s early Daily Source Codes were addictive (that’s why I started podcasting), Curry’s PodShow on Sirius Satellite Radio isn’t interesting in the least. Proving that podcasting is unique from radio, just as blogs are unique from newspapers, and videoblogs are unique from television.

Nothing in podcasting requires it to be a stepping stone to mass appeal. It could be, and this is a benefit – especially to broadcasters. But podcasting can in-fact be the end game. Independent and ignorant of broadcasting’s constraints a podcaster could build a small (less than 10,000), loyal, and passionate listener base by fulfilling an extremely specific niche. A successful podcast – though a failure by broadcast measures.

iTunes Top 100 Podcast list (counting the number of times in 24 hrs the ‘subscribe’ link was clicked), the Feedster Top 500 list, and every other Top X listing is an attempt at shoehorning. As Dave Slusher eludes, these rankings assume all blogs and podcasts are competing for the exact same audience. If you’re looking for a blog or podcast on gardening in the Upper Midwest or learning Japanese, these lists don’t help. More on the “Evils of Head-ism” at the Long Tail including the fantastic, “Nobody cares if bananas outsell soft drinks.”

Ultimately, I’m talking about 2 very different mentalities:

  1. The market is a mass of nameless, faceless consumers with the same basic needs and the goal is to make advertisers happy.
  2. The market is made of individual customers, each with very specific needs and the goal is to build a deep, unique relationship with them directly.

Considering customers now regularly blog about their market experiences, I recommend option number 2. As does Seth Godin in his recent ‘Clueless’ post

NPR off Audible Was Easy, NPR Off NPR Is the Hard Part

As broken by Tristan Louisthe Mac Observer (corrected by Doc), NPR is not renewing their contract with Audible.

This is a good thing. Podcasting and public radio are peas and carrots. They belong together. By not renewing the Audible contract, NPR removed the easiest obstacle preventing them from offering more podcasts.

After some conversations with a handful of people in public radio, the biggest challenge is their underlying organization and business structure. As Doc Searls states:

“NPR essentially wholesales programming to local stations, which retail them to listeners.”

Prior to the ease of podcasting, I listened to WNYC‘s On the Media, via KNOW. Today, I receive each week’s program automatically every Friday night – direct from WNYC.

As I mentioned in ‘Podcasting Rewards Good Conversation‘, the biggest win for public radio stations could be in the smaller markets – Wisconsin Public Radio for example. They’d no longer have to purchase programming at prices they’d rather not pay and can reach past their broadcast antenna for members passionate about their homegrown programs.

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Categorized as Podcasting

The Second Difference Between Consumers and Customers

“There’s no time of day that would be good for me. I don’t plan my days around a radio or TV schedule because, quite frankly, I don’t need to. I have an iPod and I can listen to what I want, where I want and when I want. And given that there’s already more good programming than I have time for, anyone who doesn’t make it easy for me by providing an RSS feed with enclosures simply won’t make the cut. Even in my car, unless it’s just a trip to the grocery store, I no longer tune in a broadcast station.” – Doug Kaye

Software Distribution History: Shrinkwrap to Download to Appcasting

NetNewsWire, my preferred RSS reader, isn’t particular about the file type within a given podcast. Audio (podcasting), video (videoblogging), images, pdfs (like 101sheets), torrents, or even applications (appcasting?).

As you can tell from the appcasting link, Fraser Speirs was the first I knew of using an RSS feed to distribute his excellent iPhoto Flickr plugin. More recently, the new version of Coding Monkeys’ SubEthaEdit came through their News feed.

Brilliant, this makes RSS 2.0 is the universal format for distributing updates of anything. Ultimately, I’d like to see the SubEthaEdit feed integrated into SubEthaEdit, same for all my other apps. Then we can get rid of those ever awkwardly implemented ‘Check for New Version’ menu items.

Bonus link, WP-GotLucky, another WordPress plugin I spun together, turns Google referral queries into an RSS feed. Making search engine performance more real-time and more visible than my server log analysis program supports.

Podcasting Rewards Good Conversation, Not Celebrity

Greg Lindsay over at Business 2.0 linked to the Working Pathways’ economics of podcasting post in his Podcasting’s Nonstar System article.


“An unknown number of those Apple-made microstars will convince themselves that they hold a first-mover advantage in an untapped medium…Eventually they’ll fail, and they’ll fail faster than ever before…For the first time in the history of the Net, big media showed up early to play.”

The big media podcasts on iTunes main page are in direct competition with your best friend’s podcast, the podcast on your favorite avocation, and your own. In that list, who’s the star?

This weekend, I discussed podcasting with someone in the public radio business. As much of a win podcasting is for public radio to maintain the relationship with members (it’s the only way I can listen to On the Media) it very directly pits WNYC against KCRW against WBEZ against KNOW against the local NPR affiliate in your neighborhood. Now when I’m driving through Wisconsin, I can get my public radio fix without listening to Calling All Pets.

I’m excited for public radio to podcast more, their experience in donation collection could be extremely helpful to podcasters interested in covering their costs. I also think it’ll be a great way for some of the smaller affiliates, like Wisconsin Public Radio to attract members outside the reach of their broadcast antenna.

There’s very little preventing listeners rewarding all the public radio stations I listed above with membership. Though, the rewarding will be in response to a specific program that resonates with a specific listener, not just because the station exists.

The playing field is level, so this is true for all podcasts – big media, public radio, and 8,000+ others.

How Wikis Work Best

Hugh Macleod released the HughPage, a wiki for bloggers, yesterday. As always he concisely captures the power of a wiki.


“The Hughpage wiki is up and at your disposal….Just blogged about something that doesn’t have a section? Then create a new section by yourself. No need to ask first. Exactly.”

Like describing the idea of wikis in general, he concludes:

“This is either a totally great idea or a totally insane idea. Maybe a bit of both…”

(Yes, Working Pathways is listed in the Blog and Podcast Consultant sections.)

I’ve worked with wikis for project documentation and team communication. Their power is in their organic growth and how they put the responsibility of accuracy on the reader. When I talk with others about wikis, one question always arises:

What if somebody writes something that’s not good?

At the heart of a wiki lies 2 equal responsibilities;

  1. The Author is responsible for writing accurate, useful, and interesting things.
  2. The Reader is responsible for changing things to make them better.

For the most part, these 2 responsiblities quickly make a very comprehensive knowledge base. If for whatever reason they fail, there’s always rolling back to a previous version of the page.

On a related note, over at MNteractive.com we’ve been playing with a wiki to create a Minnesota internet talent directory.

Notes from Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, RSS, and More Talk

Great turnout at my MN-ASIS Brain Food Sampler talk earlier this week. We covered quite a bit of ground in 30 minutes, thanks to everyone attending for the great questions. Here are Ann Treacy‘s notes, published as her latest Byte of the Week email newsletter (Thanks again Ann):

“Last night I went to a great presentation by Garrick Van Buren to the Minnesota chapter of the American Society of Information Science and Technology. He was terrific! I am killing two birds today by writing up my notes and sharing them with you and ASIST. So today’s Byte is an annotated bibliography of many of the resources Garrick mentioned on wikis, blogs, RSS, and podcasts.”

  • Garrick’s web site – includes links to various blogs, wikis, and podcasts, including Garrick’s podcast, First Crack.
  • WordPress – software to help you create/maintain a blog. As their site says, they’re “free, yet priceless.”
  • Audacity – open source audio recording for creating a podcast.
  • Audio Hijack Pro – upgraded software for creating a podcast.
  • Audioblogger – easy tool for creating podcasts, much like blogger.com for blogs.
  • WikkaWiki – software to create a wiki (a wiki is akin to a shared blog).
  • NetNewsWire – an RSS reader – for info consumers.
  • Feedburner – Helps you generate and track an RSS feed that you have created – for info creators
  • MNspeak part blog, part wiki, part old fashioned web conference.
  • Trackback – this is the Wikipedia definition of Trackback, a concept that allows and tracks posts among blogs with a reduced chance for spam.
  • Technorati – a search engines for blogs (aka the blogosphere).
  • Google Patent – we mentioned this last night, this is my [Ann’s] favorite article on the topic.