For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report - A bi-weekly podcast for professional communicators from Neville Hobson, ABC, and Shel Holtz, ABC.
Subscribe to podcast RSS feed
Subscribe via iTunes
Subscribe via Yahoo! Podcasts
Enter your email address* and click "Vote" to cast your vote for FIR at Podcast Alley:
Hugh Hewitt: Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
Roger D'Aprix: Communicating for Change: Connecting the Workplace with the Marketplace
Regis McKenna: Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers
Robert Slater: Microsoft Rebooted: How Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Reinvented Their Company
If you've been a follower of Marc Orchant's insightful commentaries over at The Office Weblog about all things to do with office productivity, cool tools, gadgets and Microsoft Office, note that he's moved house.
From the beginning of February, Marc's now blogging at ZDNet with the new Office Evolution blog. Sign up for the RSS feed here.
(I had an email from Marc ahead of his move and I meant to post about this last week. Better late than never...)
BBC journalist Paul Reynolds regards the blogosphere as a source of criticism that must be listened to and as a source of information that can be used.
In a lengthy article on the BBC News website, Reynolds presents a number of examples to back up his conclusions that mainstream media has to sit up, take notice and develop some policies to meet the challenges presented by an alternate news and information channel - an "army of irregulars," as he puts it.
It's a two-way street, in my view - bloggers need to reach out and build connections with the mainstream media, too. With this in mind, Reynolds' concluding commentary is especially worth paying attention to:
[...] Richard Sambrook, head of the BBC World Service and Global News Division (who runs a blog himself) accepts that the BBC needs to do more.
"The BBC should proactively engage with bloggers. This is a new issue for us. Some departments look at blogs, though haphazardly. But it pays dividends. The BBC is a huge impersonal organisation. It needs to come out from under its rock," he says.
As for using blogs as a source he says: "The key is careful attribution. It would be a big mistake for the MSM to try to match the blogs, but they can teach us lessons about openness and honesty. The MSM should concentrate on what it can do - explain, analyse and verify."
Related Nevon posts:
Powered by Qumana
Still thinking that the Google Grid and the Evolving Personalized Information Construct are pure fantasy, just a history lesson from 2015? From The Times yesterday:
Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.
[...] A leading content provider, who did not wish to be named, told Times Online: "We are in discussions with Google to provide content for their alternative internet service, to be distributed through their Google Cube product. As far as I'm aware they have been conducting negotiations with a number of other players in our marketplace to provide quality content to their users."
[...] Contacted by Times Online today, a spokesperson for Google denied that it had any such plans, before adding its customary rider: "It's Google's policy not to comment on speculation concerning products before they are launched."
[Technorati: Google Grid, EPIC]
In show #103 of our podcast last month, Shel and I talked about ID3 Podcast Magazine, a new print publication about podcasting launching in May.
Well, you don't have to wait until May if you want to get your hands on a brand new magazine about podcasting as the first edition of such a new magazine was launched online today.
Published as a PDF, Podcast User magazine was conceived and produced in less than a month, according to Paul Nicholls, the magazine's editor. It's the brainchild of a group of a dozen mostly British podcasters - in addition to Paul, Mark Hunter, Adrian Pegg, Linda Mills, Paul Pinfield, Chris Skinner, Paul Parkinson, Phil Coyne, Jim Hastell, Colin Meeks, Grant Mason, and Simon Toon. (Related: Paul and Adrian Pegg are two of the driving forces who were behind PodcastCon UK last September.)
The inaugural edition of Podcast User includes news, features, opinion columns, podcast reviews, and a review of recording equipment. If you sign up to the RSS feed, you'll ensure you get every edition.
Congratulations to the team behind this first publication dedicated to podcasting and podcasters.
BBC News: Almost two million BBC radio podcasts were downloaded during December, with the corporation's breakfast programmes the most popular with listeners. [...] Simon Nelson, Controller of BBC Radio & Music Interactive, said: "It's fantastic to see how the demand for radio downloads has grown since we first offered them in 2004. These figures underline the enduring relevance of radio in the digital world."
I think he's right about relevance.
The BBC is a great example of a traditional mainstream medium which sees a new medium - podcasting - as an opportunity not a threat. The broadcaster has grasped it as part of the way in which it is evolving to remain relevant in a world where how people create, consume and share news and information, and get their entertainment, is rapidly changing.
A separate BBC story also published today reveals more indicators that podcasting clearly is now into the mainstream:
Suddenly, it seems, podcasting has broken through to a new level.
The BBC's first published podcast chart reveals that the Radio Four Today programme's main interview was downloaded more than 400,000 times last month, second only, among BBC programmes, to Radio One's Chris Moyles Show.
But the real change is in the way other media groups are now using podcasts to challenge broadcasters such as the BBC.
Last week, The Guardian newspaper announced that the Ricky Gervais Show had been downloaded over two million times, having already topped the Apple iTunes download charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Now other media owners are racing to get into the audio business.
After the Gervais podcast on Guardian Unlimited, the Conservative leader David Cameron popped up in the new Daily Telegraph podcast. Two days later, it was Tony Blair, podcast by The Sun, which said it was as significant a breakthrough as the first radio broadcast by a prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald in 1924.
Then last Friday, Jon Snow appeared in Channel 4's first podcast, a documentary about cannabis and the young.
So mainstream print media and other broadcasters see the opportunity equally as well as the BBC does.
The BBC's Nelson again:
"I think we see our role as trying to stimulate that, trying to help people find the ways to do it simply," he said.
"We have a role in helping our audience find the best of what's out there and we also have an opportunity to identify the rising talent emerging through podcasts."
That last view reflects much of what I heard from James Cridland, head of strategic development at Virgin Radio, when he spoke at PodcastCon UK in London last September - talk about identifying emerging talent amongst podcasters.
Different broadcasters but a parallel message.
Related NevOn posts:
A thoughtful article on Friday by Richard Sambrook, director of global news at the BBC, on how the internet is disintermediating news:
[...] News organisations do not own the news any more. They can validate information, analyse it, explain it, and they can help the public find what they need to know. But they no longer control or decide what the public know. It is a major restructuring of the relationship between public and media. But it will affect politics and policy as well.
People can now address politicians directly, and politicians can reach the public without going through the media any more. Public discourse is becoming unmediated.
[...] The availability of information and the pressure for transparency is raising new political issues which we have not had to confront before.
[...] The information revolution is in its earliest stages. But it has the potential to alter the dynamics of public debate, and the interaction between politics, media and the public, beyond recognition.
Interesting aside - Sambrook wrote a blog with his thoughts and opinions about the News Xchange conference for broadcasters last November in Amsterdam, focusing on citizen journalism.
BBC News | How the net is transforming news
Related Nevon posts:
BBC News: 2005 was arguably the year citizens really started to do it for themselves. Raising mobiles aloft, they did not just talk and text, they snapped, shared and reported the world around them.
Commentary by Jo Twist of the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank illustrates the far-reaching effects and changes in the reporting of events during the past year as a direct result of the power of new media communication channels like blogs and podcasting as well as tools like camera-equipped mobile phones that facilitate almost-instant publishing.
Examples:
It's about societal and attitude change and how we all can create news and information and share it as well as consume it.
But it's mostly about individual empowerment (a very big thing in the US especially) with blogs being proclaimed as the biggest thing since Gutenberg and the printing press. Now, everyone has a voice and anyone can be a communicator. Indeed, anyone can now be published in the mainstream media.
The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, started a blog last week, called Nick Robinson's Newslog.
His first post includes this text:
[...] The BBC is about to start a trial series of blogs, each of which will be built using the kind of software employed by millions of weblogs around the world. This is the first of that trial.
The 'kind of software' Robinson refers to presumably means TypePad as his blog is a TypePad blog (so a very nice coup for Six Apart Europe in getting this deal with the BBC).
I find it interesting that the BBC has chosen to go with an outside commercial service provider rather than developing a blog structure within the organization using their own IT infrastructure. Perhaps part of their experimentation where using an outside provider in this stage of development is simply easier to execute. Robinson's blog isn't the first one the BBC has done - earlier this year, there was Newsnig8t by BBC journalist Paul Mason. That, too, was (and still is) hosted on TypePad.
One major difference between the two blogs - Mason's was very much a personal blog with a look-and-feel that was far from a BBC standard. Unlike Robinson's, which has the complete BBC branding in its presentation and clearly is a formal part of the overall BBC web presence. Indeed, its root URL (blogs.bbc.co.uk) indicates that.
First podcasting, and now blogging. It looks like the BBC is beginning to embrace new media in a big way as a means of engaging with its viewers/listeners/readers in a variety of different ways, traditional and non-traditional.
Will we see a blog portal, an offering to those viewers/listeners/readers to create their own blogs as part of the BBC blog domain? I think it would make total sense in the engagement process.
Now that would be a very inetersting move indeed and, apart from anything else, could be the tipping point for broadening out the world of blogging in the UK. Tie it in with the calls for people to send in their photos and you have the makings of a great connection between the broadcaster and a ready source of information.
Further blurring of that gap between traditional news creators and citizen journalism.
(Hat tip: DrewB)
I am delighted to report that NevOn - this blog - is a participant in the Corante Marketing Hub, part of the new Corante Network that launched today:
With the launch and development of the Corante Network, Corante has partnered with scores of the blogosphere's most respected thinkers and writers in specific categories to bring you cutting edge coverage and commentary that will help you stay ahead of the curve, gain valuable insights, and save time. In addition, you'll find various tools and features on the Hub designed to help you find related and relevant editorial.
At launch, the Corante Marketing Hub comprises 20 business bloggers who contribute to a rich offering:
[...] you'll find a mixture of human and machine-driven editorial offerings that aggregate, distill, synthesize, and remix the best writing and thinking from across the Corante Network and beyond. The goal of the hubs: to marry human intelligence and editorial voice with useful technologies to become a trusted and useful tool - one that helps you find and sift through what's worth reading, one that provides valuable context and perspective on the critical issues impacting your industry and interests, and one that engages in and extends the conversations that make social media such a rich and enlightening experience.
I'm very proud and honoured to be part of this group.
Founded in 2000, Corante is the world’s first blog media company, a leader in the emerging social media market, and is helping to pioneer the emergence of blogging as an important and influential form of reportage, analysis and commentary.
Corante’s contributors include many of the most respected and closely-read experts and thought leaders, and Corante's readers, who number more than 300,000, aren’t just casual observers - they're the entrepreneurs, executives, financiers, influencers and other individuals on the cutting edge.
A new mainstream media entrant into podcasting - The Daily Telegraph today launched the first of its new daily podcasts.
The UK daily says that its podcast is a single audio download available each day, consisting of three key articles from the day's paper selected by the editor.
I listened to the first one, a 16-minute narration of three stories. Nicely done and I can see the potential appeal of a podcast of this type - on your morning commute, for instance.
This could be a good way in which a newspaper can develop a new channel to its readership, offering readers news and information in a new, different and convenient form. I think it would likely work well if the paper differentiated itself (ie, made its offering appealing) by getting across a flavour of its personality.
In other words, not someone just reading out the day's news - anyone can do that - but giving the listener some insight into the style and focus of the paper and of the journalist/presenter him or herself. If today's first podcast is any indicator, it looks like the Telegraph will be doing that.
It actually seems to me to be such a logical thing to do, I wonder why no other UK mainstream medium has yet done this.
If the Telegraph developed a blog as well, then that could get very interesting - blog/podcast combo to stimulate some kind of direct and interactive engagement with the readership. Given the paper's demographics, I'd be surprised if that wasn't in their thinking.
I did like the answer to one of the questions in the podcast FAQ:
Q: How much does it cost?
A: Unlike with other newspapers, Telegraph podcasts are completely free.
Apart from the Wall Street Journal, is any newspaper charging for its podcasts? I haven't seen any.
(Hat tip: Antony Mayfield)
Oh dear. The Financial Times nearly "did a Forbes" with a feature story on Friday about blogs and business.
Using the headline Who's afraid of the big, bad blog?, writer Kevin Allison starts out saying:
[...] Weblogs, or blogs, are the periodic rants and raves of millions of hobbyists and armchair pundits, who take advantage of easy-to-use publishing platforms to opine on everything from politics, to pornography, to the latest computer gadgets, and everything in between.
Not an auspicious beginning in an otherwise reasonable story that includes an assessment of the positive impact Robert Scoble has had on public perceptions of Microsoft, the firing of Google employee Mark Jen and commentary on IBM's blogging guidelines for employees.
There are some good and balanced elements in this feature - for instance, these comments from Mark Jen:
[...] Mr Jen argues that, used properly, blogging can help a company reach out to its customers in powerful ways. "When you go to an individual's blog and read the content . . . people will actually take the perception they get from an individual and project it on to the company they work for," he says. "That perception is often stronger than the message that the company is trying to [get across]."
Such an approach requires that companies place an immense amount of trust in employees to act as capable ambassadors. Mr Jen says that companies may have little choice. "You could say, 'I'm not going to allow my employees to blog,' but any one of your employees can still go out and start a blog anonymously," Mr Jen says.
The article concludes with some powerful advice from IBM:
[...] "Businesses and organisations of all sorts are going to need to begin rethinking what official channels of communication are," says IBM. "They are going to have to rethink what the official release of information means. There will probably be missteps along the way, but we see the risks and the learning curve as being worth it."
IBM likens its experiment in blogging to its efforts in the mid-1990s to encourage employees to surf the internet. At the time, many of the benefits were unclear, but eventually, as the internet changed, IBM says that having employees with their ears close to the ground allowed the company to change along with it.
Yet, on balance, I was left with an unsettling feeling after reading this story. If I were a company exec reading this, I'd likely conclude that blogs are something to generally regard as threatening with perceived risks far outweighing potential benefits, notwithstanding the positive views of companies like IBM.
Perhaps we are entering a time of 'blog backlash' by some in the mainstream media, as Shel and I discussed in show #82 of FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast last week, where we're now in the Stage 2 'attack' phase. That must indicate we've passed from Stage 1, the 'ignore/denial' phase, and on the way to Stage 3, the 'acceptance' phase.
This will repeat the cycle we saw ten years ago when everyone discovered the web and the FUD began.
Financial Times | Who's afraid of the big, bad blog? (paid sub)
Some lively conversations going on in the BBC News website's Have Your Say section, a forum where anyone can contribute comment and opinion on topics presented for discussion.
One of the interesting things about this forum is the comment recommendation system where readers can recommend a comment to tell the BBC and other readers which comments they think are best and worth reading. Comments are then ranked on the popularity of recommendations.
How do you use the web to create and share?" is one of the topics which so far has attracted over 280 contributions from around the world. The topic was prompted by the recent Pew Internet research on how American teenagers use the internet to create, repurpose (or remix) and share content. A glance through a random selection of recommended comments shows there's no prominent common theme in how people say they use the web, other than uses you'd expect (online gaming, research, self-expression, etc).
A highly topical issue that's attracted over 680 comments since it was posted last Wednesday is "Paris riots: Your reaction," with some passionate opinions over the dreadful social unrest in France during the past ten days. A sampling of the recommended comments indicates a clear divide in opinion between those who say the rioters are justified and those who say torching cars and buildings is the work of thugs and criminals.
Have Your Say is a good experiment, a clever way for a mainstream broadcaster to directly and interactively engage with listeners/viewers/users (how do you best describe people who use the BBC website? Just 'visitors'?). A sign of the times, too - the site actively solicits people to send in photos:
News can happen anywhere at any time. We want you to be our eyes. We have already received thousands of images from around the world and we'd like you to send us yours. If an event is unfolding before your eyes and you capture it on a camera or mobile phone, either as a photograph or video, then please send it to BBC News.
How will this further evolve, I wonder? It's labelled as a beta.
An interesting follow-up to the Forbes shallow journalism story (my unrepentant description) yesterday which described how the magazine portrayed blogs and bloggers as the source of all evil.
In a comment yesterday to Steve Rubel's critical post, podcaster John Furrier says he's interviewing Forbes' proprietor Steve Forbes about the benefits of social media:
On Monday I will be posting a podcast on PodTech.net with Forbes president Steve Forbes where Steve talks about the benefits of social media (blogging and podcasting). It will be interesting to see how the writer response when his boss basically says the opposite of his story. Look for the podcast on Monday morning.
Interesting indeed. I'm sure this story will continue to build.
[Update 31-Oct] John's 25-minute podcast interview is up. You'll be disappointed, though, if you expect to hear any specific commentary or discussion about the Forbes article for there is none. The interview is primarily related to topics in Steve Forbes' book "The Flat Tax Revolution." You can also read a complete transcript of the interview.
In taking up his new role next month as editor of The Guardian Technology supplement, freelance journalist Charles Arthur is doing something quite smart - asking readers for their opinions on how he should shape the newspaper under his editorship.
Terrific use of a blog by a journalist as an 'engagement engine' with a newspaper's readership.
(Via DrewB.)
The Guardian is still the only national UK newspaper that has really embraced the blogosphere and the way in which a mainstream medium can connect its online newspapers to its readers with complementary blogs.
When you see a business magazine story about blogs with the title "Attack of The Blogs!," you should know what to expect. A cover story in the latest edition of Forbes magazine doesn't disappoint as this paragraph indicates:
[...] Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory.
What does disappoint, though, is that this amazing example of shallow journalism was published by the supposedly thoughtful and intelligent Forbes magazine. It illustrates either that the journalist concerned (and his editor) is wholly clueless on the topic about which he writes, or was aiming for the sensationalist tabloid approach to his topic - much as Advertising Age did earlier this week with equally shoddy journalistic practice dressed up as research - or both.
What's equally amazing are quotes in the Forbes piece from Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, one of the primary blogosphere research and marketing intelligence companies for business, and Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's main PR firm, reinforcing Forbes' negative and alarmist view on blogs. I can only assume that those quotes are taken wholly out of context.
Indeed, I'd be surprised if Pete Blackshaw's comments are as stand-alone as they appear to be, as what Forbes quotes him as saying is definitely not in line with my impression of his more inclusive views about blogs from the FIR podcast interview that Shel Holtz and I had with him in August.
But there is a bright side to this sorry little tale.
My advice to any business person is to go ahead and read the Forbes article. Then, go to Business Week's website and read the cover feature "Blogs will Change Your Business" published in early May.
Now here you have a good example of intelligent journalism in how it treats its subject matter and takes a far more realistic and practical view on how you should regard blogs:
[...] Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite.
Unlike the Forbes approach, Business Week's feature is a balanced story and does address the negative aspects of what blogs can become alongside the positive, thus making a credible case for why you should be examining these new communication channels.
It's a no-brainer to easily see who is making the better case.
Some months ago, I let my annual subscription to the Wall Street Journal Online lapse. I've been a subscriber for some years, but decided not to renew the subscription.
Cost was part of the reason. The WSJ Online is just less than $100 for a year. Not a great amount really. But I also subscribe to the Financial Times online which costs £100 (about $176) for a year's sub. So $276 a year is just a bit too much.
One had to go. I decided to continue with the FT. The two media have some similarities in news coverage (no surprise there) but more differences - style, columnists, etc. As I'm in Europe, I figured the FT would serve my information needs best in the context of why I was making a choice between the two.
Today, though, I re-subscribed to the WSJ Online.
What prompted my decision to do that was an email I received from Todd Larsen, President of the WSJ Online, inviting me to take another look at it. He did offer a reduced rate to renew plus a $20 Amazon voucher as an extra incentive. The reduced rate was appealing so I renewed.
But it was not just about the cost. Increasingly in recent weeks, I've read something in an RSS feed from someone's blog that interested me and clicked a link in the post to get something more relating to what the post was about, which typically has been to a story in the Journal online. I've then hit the 'you must be a subscriber...' barrier.
Many people argue that newspapers shouldn't charge for content online; that charging just isn't what the market wants these days when you can get hold of just about anything online for free. This also coincides with a "why should I pay for it?" mindset that's prevalent today (see this wry commentary by David Carr in today's New York Times for his take on why you should pay for some content).
I think it comes down to perceived value - if you want access to something that costs money, and is something you believe is valuable and/or you can't get anywhere else, then you'll pay for it. At least, that's my feeling about why I've re-subscribed to the WSJ Online.
Luckily, my subscriptions to the WSJ and FT aren't at the same time - they're six months apart. So I've got until about next April before I need to go through the should-I-or-shouldn't-I? exercise again...
In its 24 October edition, Business Week has an analysis of the recent sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL from the point of view of the potential for advertising in blogs.
Written by Stephen Baker, one of the bloggers on BW's Blogspotting, the article focuses on what it calls the "promising new micromedia model" where "blogs are cheap, easily updated, and can focus on a niche market with passionate followers - an advertiser's dream."
The interesting bit - how Weblogs can expand to meet advertiser demand:
[...] So [Jason Calacanis, Weblogs CEO] is counting on AOL to give him the resources and freedom to run a blog empire from his base in Santa Monica, Calif. The former publisher of the Silicon Alley Reporter has proven adept at quickly zeroing in on target audiences and hiring part-time bloggers from all over. Jim Bankoff, the AOL exec who negotiated the deal with Calacanis, wants Weblogs to develop loads of new blogs, including sites with audio and video channels. "Micropublishing is the next wave," he says.
Indeed. The article also mentions the deal announced last month between Gawker Media and Dutch publisher VNU to launch European versions of Gawker's Gizmodo gadget blog (if you visit Gizmodo, note the little flags at top-right of the screen - links to the localized versions).
Some good comments to the article, especially this contra one:
The "blogosphere" will disappear much like the "webosphere" did in the mid-'90s. Once the e-commerce benefits were noted and capitalized upon, the geeks were out, the F500 in. No reason to think blogs will be that much different. Web 2.0 may remain the domain of the true believers - wikis and whatever comes next - but consider blogging to have already jumped the shark. Few consumers will really know or care about the difference between a corporate Web site and a corporate blog. The core of transparency will likely go by the wayside on many of these blogs once "big media" has taken control. Discerning consumers may be able to note the product placements and other BS in posts, but non-discerning ones won't - and that's the marketing payoff. I say this as someone with one company that has a blog as its only Web site and another company that consults on blogs. Hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
That's not a bad argument, although not one I agree with - I don't believe for one second that the blogosphere will disappear as the commenter envisions it might - and neither does Jason Calacanis. Take a listen to a 20-minute podcast where Stephen Baker interviewed him last week following the announcement of AOL's acquisition.
BBC News: Unions representing Hollywood actors, writers and directors have called for talks over the use of TV shows on Apple's new video iPod. The unions want to ensure their members get a cut of the revenue generated by the sale of TV shows on Apple software.
A new (and clearly disruptive) technological advance enables anyone to watch video on the move, just as you can listen to music and podcasts on the move. While this concept of portable viewing isn't new by any means - portable TVs have been around for at least 30 years - the convergence of the right technology, consumer desire and available content at low cost makes it extremely likely that a major revenue stream for content producers is on the horizon.
And it's perfectly reasonable for anyone involved in producing that content to want to ensure that they receive their fair share of that revenue stream. In the words of Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America (West), quoted in the BBC report:
I'm thrilled by the notion I can watch my shows in the palm of my hand, but I also want to make sure we are paid appropriately.
Let's hope everyone can work out a deal that everyone's happy with, including consumers.
Finally, in case you're wondering what a TV show originally created for viewing on TV would look like in terms of video quality on the small iPod screen, read what CK Sample has to say in his review on The Unofficial Apple Weblog of watching an episode of Lost on his new video iPod. (Summary: not bad at all for $1.99, he says.)
And as you ponder iPod TV and podcasting (as I am, and I don't own a video iPod... yet), think about this from CK:
[...] As a side note, if you are a Lost fan, make sure you check out this week's podcast commentary on the show. Think; you can download the new episode later today in the iTMS. Open the file in Quicktime. Start playing the video and mute it, while listening to Ryan's commentary on the episode. That's nice podcasting sweetness.
For the past few weeks, I've been reading tech news from a new (to me) website - Memeorandum.
I'm not wholly sure what it is about Memeorandum - whether it's the content or the buzz, or both - but I find it a totally compelling resource. It's the place (RSS feed) I now check first for tech news, before any mainstream tech medium. But it's also one of the very few websites that I visit frequently as well as read the RSS feed.
Robert Scoble has been raving about Memeorandum for some time and says it's changed his life.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says it's changing the web:
[...] Memeorandum finds blog posts, newspaper articles and press releases that are being heavily linked to in near real time and puts them up on the site. The position and size of the headline is indicative of its importance (determined by number of links and other factors, such as how much people are writing about the linked content). The higher up and bigger the headline, the more important it is. And linking sites, the conversation, are clustered underneath the headline.
This means you can find out in near real time what is important in technology (or politics), how important it is, and who’s talking about it. If you then post on the subject, you will be linked into the discussion as well.
They both could be right.
Another mainstream medium starts podcasting - eWeek:
eWEEK, the Enterprise Newsweekly, brings you a weekly roundup of the top stories from its latest issue. Hosted by Executive Editor Stan Gibson, the eWEEK Podcast also includes reports from eWEEK editors, a product review from eWEEK Labs, commentary from columnists including Technology Editor Peter Coffee, and the latest musings from our own Spencer F. Katt.
At just over 11 minutes, the first podcast was published on 14 October, complete with advertising ("This podcast is brought to you by..."), a feature I am sure we will increasingly see (hear) in podcasts especially those from mainstream media.
I like the style of this one - nicely conversational, well produced and good content. While I don't mind the advertising spots when they're short, three spots in an 11-minute podcast might be stretching it a bit. Nevertheless, subscribed.
Hot on the heels of PR Week's making available RSS feeds of much of the content of their US and UK editions, the publisher of the weekly PR industry journal is now offering free access to the complete content of PR Week US and PR Week UK online editions until the end of October.
A notice on the US site yesterday said:
Coinciding with PRWeek.com's relaunch, everyone will be able to access this site without needing a user name or password until October 31, 2005. On November 1, 2005, subscribers will be asked to create a password in order to gain access to articles or features on the site.
Previously, to access online content, you had to be a paid subscriber of the print edition, or register to receive free limited access. It looks like it will revert to that from November if you don't sign up and become a paid subscriber.
An interesting move and, as the magazine says, clearly linked to the relaunch of the title. While PR Week doesn't have serious competition from other publishers as the journal of record for the PR industry, owner Haymarket must be feeling a circulation and advertising pinch as are many other print publications, possibly more so with a title like PR Week where the vast majority of its copies are free distribution, ie, not paid for.
So perhaps this is a move to bolster paid subscriptions to the print editions by letting potential subscribers 'taste the content' online for free for a while. Or, set the scene for a big move in further developing the online editions.
Either way, it might work as long as the content is worth tasting.
The Frankfurt Motor Show takes place this week, and a group of bloggers is there courtesy of German car maker BMW.
PR blogger Björn Ognibeni writes:
I am traveling to Frankfurt [on 16 September] visiting the 61st International Motor Show (IAA). BMW was so kind to invite a bunch of bloggers, including me, to the show. We will probably see their products and talk about blogs as a communications channel for companies. Nice move !
A few days ago, a special blog covering the event - the IAA-Blog - was launched. The whole project was "enabled" by BMW. But the car maker is only mentioned briefly somewhere in the imprint. No "powered by" or "we are proud to be sponsored by". Interesting approach. But why is BMW doing it this way ? One of the questions I am looking forward to get answered today...
So far, the IAA Blog doesn't have an answer to Björn's question as far as I can tell (it's all in German). But what a great initiative by both the show organizers and BMW to facilitate a forum for discussion with show and car enthusiasts about what's going on at the show. Lots of photos of the new cars on display as well.
Even though my German language skills are a bit rusty, I can see a marked difference with the informality and concise conversational style of the blog compared to the ad-supported slickness of traditional online reporting from mainstream media sites such as Auto Bild and portals such as Yahoo! Deutschland Autos.
Not to criticize at all, just to note that difference and this one - the blog is a two-way medium as you can directly comment so giving the show organizers and BMW a useful channel for gathering informal feedback and an opportunity to engage with those people who comment. Not so with the online magazine.
That's what blogs can do!
First it was RSS feeds, now it's podcasting - Reuters joins the mainstream media podcasting fray:
Get the latest on world news, politics, business, entertainment and more. Click Listen to hear the stories now or select Podcast to transfer them to your MP3 player. Each podcast contains the ten most recent news stories in that news channel. Podcasts are updated every hour.
Some interesting technology at play here. The news items are spoken in a computerized female voice which is actually quite good. The only niggle I have with the site is that, if you click on the 'listen' link, the audio starts streaming - but I couldn't find a way to turn it off if you want to stop!
It's also not clear how to get the podcasts if you want them on your PC (and, thus, your iPod). The 'podcast' links are to each individual news channel's RSS feed not, as I thought, to an individual MP3 file.
Minor points, though, and I'm sure Reuters will improve the user experience as they get feedback. One suggestion - add a link to subscribe to all the news channels at once rather than having to do each one individually.
A great initiative, one that follows what CNET News is doing with their CNET News Report, a 10-minute daily tech news podcast. One difference - CNET's are with real people and really are a pleasure to listen to, which I do every day.
Ilse Media, a Dutch publisher and blog portal, has taken a 25 percent stake in Marketingfacts.nl, one of the most influential marketing and business blogs in The Netherlands.
Ilse Media's strong interest is in "the knowledge power of a community of interactive marketeers," Marketingfacts pioneer Marco Derksen told me (I've known Marco for much of the time I've been seriously blogging since July last year).
Says Marco:
Together with Ilse Media, I will try to professionalise Marketingfacts with the blog as a starting point. Think about courses, conferences, seminars, and I'm working on a Marketingfacts yearbook (with facts & figures on interactive marketing). To do that I needed a partner and I think Ilse Media is the best partner I could wish because it's one of the few Dutch publishers who understands what's going on with blogs, feeds and other social software.
Marketingfacts' latest statistics show that the site had over 150,000 page views last month from nearly 80,000 visitors, an average of over 2,600 visits per day. The blog has over 30 contributors, representing the cream of the Dutch business blogosphere.
Congratulations, Marco!
More information (in Dutch):
The IBC 2005 conference and exhibition opens in Amsterdam today and runs until Tuesday 13 September.
This annual event, organized by the International Broadcasting Convention, takes place at the RAI conference center.
The conference is divided into theme days covering Delivery to the Consumer, High Definition Television, Mobile Applications, Content Production and Protection and D-Cinema. I'll be attending some of the Mobile Applications sessions on Saturday, in particular the session on Content on The Move.
The exhibition features over 1,000 companies showcasing the latest technology and foremost business ideas in broadcasting and media, covering content creation, management and delivery. Big names there include Apple, Motorola, Microsoft, BBC R&D, Sony, DTS, Adobe, Dolby Labs.
I went to the exhibition last year and took quite a few photos. I plan to do the same this year as well as seek some podcasting opportunities.
If any business/tech blogger who plans on being there would like to meet up, let me know.
Speaking of bloggers, a week-long conference about the future of video on the web takes place in Amsterdam next week.
Vlog Europe is a get-together of video bloggers for a week of learning and networking about content, technology and business. Details on the Vlog Europe blog.
Big news in Canada during the past few weeks has been a major labour dispute at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) which has seen programming disrupted as CBC has locked out many of the journalists and presenters from the workplace.
So what's this about? Not much on the CBC website to clearly explain it. As good a description as any I've found with a simple Google News search is the "No winners in the CBC lockout" article on the andPop website.
What's very interesting is how both sides have embraced online communication to pitch their different points of view in a dispute where the positions of both sides currently look to be entrenched and inflexible. The CBC has a website called CBC Negotiations in which the broadcaster's management set out in considerable detail their points of view, such as this:
[...] In the flood of communication from both union and management over the last weeks, you will have gathered that there seem to be two central issues at the core of the dispute: contract employment status, and the concept of demonstrated occupational qualifications as the criterion for redeployment during workforce adjustment.
While I'm not making any opinion about the dispute itself, that last bit is fuzzy corporate-speak if ever I read it!
And what about the locked-out employees? Blogs and websites galore as grassroots efforts to communicate about and comment on the dispute from the employee viewpoint.
It gets even more interesting - many of the radio programme producers have started podcasting versions of their shows. CBC Unplugged has an RSS feed for all podcasts (plus iTunes subscription link) as well as a growing blogroll of CBC employee blogs, and says this about what's happening:
Missing your favourite CBC Radio show? Now, re-connect with their favourite personalities and shows. Some producers are making unofficial replacement shows and you can listen to them here. This site is neither affiliated nor endorsed by either the CBC or the CMG. Look, we all love our jobs and want to be back at our jobs soon and put the programming you love back on the radio. In the meantime, I hope this helps.
Some of the podcasts aren't just programming but comment and opinion about the dispute from the presenters' viewpoints.
The future of labour relations? If you're in the broadcasting business at least, this is not the future at all.
[UPDATE] In today's edition of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, we include an interview with a CBC reporter on the 'picket line' in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The interview was conducted this morning Halifax time by FIR listener Howard Harawitz. Shel blogged it.
If you read US journalist Bob Cauthorn's lengthy post on Corante's Rebuilding Media, you might get a strong impression that blogs and mainstream media are a mixture that should never, ever, come together.
Ne'er the twain shall meet, in fact:
[...] Memo to mainstream media: You don't get to blog.
You have a publishing apparatus. So you don't get to blog. You have a broadcasting apparatus. So you don't get to blog. In case you missed the point while you were reading up on youth slang, I'll repeat it for emphasis. You. Do. Not. Get. To. Blog.
Not that you won't try. Currently, there's a rush among traditional media outlets to get into that wicked bitchin', snaps inducing “blogging thing.” Almost all of these efforts are agonizingly misguided.
I had to read the story more than once to try and get the point of Cauthorn's argument. I could boil it down to this: if mainstream media approaches blogging on the basis of 'getting on the bandwagon' to grab the youth market, they will fail.
Well, it doesn't take a Ph.D in anything to figure that one out. Cauthorn gives an example or two of mainstream media who really don't get it to support his argument. That argument is not only applicable to mainstream media, by the way - apply it to any individual or organization who's thinking about 'getting into this blogging thing' (think of the Ketchum PR agency, for instance).
I believe more mainstream media 'get it' about blogging than you might think, even if what you tend to notice are the rather lame efforts some are engaging in, especially in the US.
But don't knock it - everyone is experimenting and some will screw up, no question. That, though, is one of the great things about such an open and transparent environment in which to experiment where failure means learning not necessarily extinction. It's not (wholly) Darwinian in its brutal reality.
I'll mention at this point my favourite business quote, from Esther Dyson - keep making new mistakes.
So, Cauthorn's is not an especially remarkable blog post so far. But if I ended my post here, that would miss the extremely interesting and real point that he makes - what he says in the first part of his post is really a little smokescreen - as you get into his lengthy story:
A story from the Associated Press has some great sound bites from mainstream media and others about RSS. All the quotes are from US media but the points they're making would be valid anywhere today:
Jim Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post's website: "When we all started this 10 years ago, we wanted to be the one and only place people come to. These days, the Post is happy simply to be one of many sources checked daily." He sees his home page as a starting point, and during the July 7 bombings in London, the Post even linked to the BBC, something unfathomable a few years ago.
Neil Budde, general manager for Yahoo News: "In this world where people are looking for multiple points of view, if all you're giving them is your view, ... they are going to leave anyway and maybe be less likely to come back."
Ross Settles, vice president of strategy, Knight Ridder: Knight Ridder considers tools like Google News and Topix as "nothing but incremental traffic from people who might not have otherwise seen the site."
'Blogging pioneer' Dave Winer: To stay relevant, online news sites must ultimately overcome their reluctance to point elsewhere: "The reader wants lots of sources and doesn't particularly care whether you point offsite or onsite. They just want the story."
Trend:
[...] According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Yahoo News had 24.9 million visitors in June, more than any single news outlet on the Internet, and only MSNBC and CNN had more visitors than AOL News. Google News ranked 13th among news sites.
At The New York Times' Web site, referrals from RSS feeds account for only 2 percent of traffic but represent the fastest growth - 8.5 million page views in June compared with about a half million in late 2003.
JD Lasica succinctly sums it all up at the beginning of the AP article:
The old idea of surfers coming to your Web site and coming to your front door, that's going away. People are going to come in through the side window, through the basement, through the attic, anyway they want to.
Associated Press | Online News Consumers Become Own Editors
I received the AP's story in my RSS reader. That's another significant change in the news distribution landscape. Until not that long ago, the only people who could get the news directly from news distribution organizations like AP, Reuters and others would be other organizations like the mainstream media, major corporations and government. Now, anyone anywhere with an RSS aggregator can simply subscribe.
Financial Times: Versatel, the Dutch telecoms company, on Thursday denied it was the source of an e-mail announcing that it may be bought by Deutsche Telekom, triggering legal and regulatory probes into the document's origin. Dutch media received the e-mail, purportedly from Versatel and Talpa, an investment company that is its biggest shareholder [and the investment vehicle of Dutch billionaire entrepreneur John de Mol], shortly after midnight on Thursday and broke the news shortly after 7am.
With so much focus on blogs and the potential risks of inadvertent (or deliberate) disclosure of sensitive information, this is a timely reminder that other long-established communication channels can also be easily (mis)used to do exactly the same thing.
And this from the FT's report:
[...] Betten Beurs Media, a financial website, and ANP, the national press association, later accepted they had acted without checking the document's authenticity. Both agencies apologised and withdrew their stories.
So it's not only bloggers who sometimes shoot from the hip ;)
PR Week UK published a feature on blogs in this week's edition of the PR industry's magazine, out today. It's the first real focus on the medium in the UK from a PR perspective.
Entitled Blogs cast a shadow, the feature should be a big help in raising awareness of blogs as a business communication channel among the UK PR community - a community that's sorely in need of some awareness-raising.
Snippets:
23,000 new blog sites are created every day. Today, if people are unhappy about you or a client's product, they will not just tell their friends, they will tell the world.
Market Sentinel CEO Mark Rogers: "PROs must realise more consumers find a company through Google than going straight to its homepage, and that's where they will see blogs mentioning that company first."
There are pitfalls to corporate blogging. Mazda [USA] might have done better sticking to traditional comms channels after it was derided in the blogosphere for using a blog in a viral campaign. The viral spot itself was the main content of the blog and it was thus dismissed as a hollow marketing exercise.
Fredrik Wacka: "Forget control. It's gone. It's not about controlling, it's about participating. If people are talking about your products or services, join the conversation. That's the only long-term option."
And from the magazine's leader page (not online):
[...] The wider lesson for all guardians of company reputation is to join the conversation rather than bury their heads in the sand. Bloggers are not journalists. They do not check facts. And yet some have widespread influence and are read by journalists. Openness and engagement will gain the respect of the blogging community. Silence will only alienate it and threaten to turn a non-story into a crisis.
(Related: Shel and I discussed the PR Week feature yesterday in show #46 of The Hobson & Holtz Report. Discussion starts at 33:28.)
Blogs present many business benefits to accountants, according to The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
In the June issue of the Journal of Accountancy Online, AICPA's journal, a feature entitled Would You, Could you, Should You Blog? gives a good overview of blogs and their business potential.
Most of the reasoning in the feature would apply to any business, large or small. But author Eva M. Lang has done a pretty good job in focusing the story precisely to this publication's target audience - accountants.
For instance:
How Can Blogs Benefit CPAs?
Lawyers have quickly adopted blogs, but what does this tool offer accountants, relative novices to the medium? Blogs can help CPAs enhance the marketing and knowledge management functions of their firms.
The feature includes concise reviews of the major blogging tools and services, case studies of successful accountant-bloggers plus lists and links of quite a few others with blogs.
If you're an accountant and are thinking about blogs, this well-written article is a good place to start for relevant information.
(Hat tip: Ken Leebow)
Newsnight, the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme in the UK, will be blogging the G8 summit in Scotland on 6-8 July.
Actually, that's not strictly true. Although Newsnig8t (that word really needs to be in colour so you can better spot the "g8" in there) clearly is a BBC-approved blog, it's run by Newsnight's correspondent Paul Mason. On the Newsnight website, it's referred to as "Paul Mason's G8 blog."
You'll probably think I'm just splitting hairs here. Ok, main point - there's no question, it's a great example of the growing willingness by more mainstream media journalists to embrace tools like blogs to complement traditional news and information channels. As has been clear for some time now, the BBC has been grasping new media channels like blogs, RSS and podcasts with a vengeance, and enabling more journalists to use those channels.
What I find quite interesting is that Paul's blog is a hosted TypePad blog, complete with RSS and trackbacks that you find on nearly every TypePad blog (like mine, for instance). The only thing it doesn't have is direct commenting on the blog. Instead, you're directed to a comments page and form on the Newsnight website.
In any event, it's another good move by the BBC to enable this.
(Hat tip: Joel Cere)
A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by BBC News senior reporter Jonty Bloom for The World Tonight, a news and current affairs radio programme broadcast every weekday evening on BBC Radio 4 in the UK. Jonty came over to Amsterdam and we talked about podcasting.
The interview was included in the programme which went out at 10pm last Friday 17 June. In the 4-minute segment, you'll hear me talk about For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report (including our opening signature tune) plus a few snips from recent sh
