SplashCast
Blog buddy Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast emailed me last night that SplashCast is going live today. Marshall has a player on his site and of course there are lots of details at the SplashCast launch site. It is a major innovation in that you will be able to create your own channels of streaming video, audio, music, and narration and make it available for anyone toﾃつ play on their web page or blog.
What is unique about SplashCast is it is not an online video sharing site, it is a service that lets you play dynamically updated channels of content on your web page, blog or social network page. Second of all, it is a mix media service where you can combine video, audio, music and text and narrate your own story. And lastly, it is a syndication service so that when you create a channel and add new content, all those "tuned"ﾃつ to your channel get the updated content.
Check it out…Marshall has as an intro to Spashcast and the signup is here. They are unveiling it at DEMO, today. And of course, the SplashCast Blog has the latest. And leave it to Jeneane to add the splish to the party.
Other places to read about it: MacWorld, Somewhat Frank, Designed to Inspire, Technically Speaking, Allied
Tags: Marshall Kirkpatrick, SplashCast,ﾃつ MacWorld, Somewhat Frank, Designed to Inspire, Technically Speaking, Media 2.0, Tags: Jeneane Sessum
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Time Magazine Person of the Year: You (Pass the Kool Aid) but Where Do You End and Mainstream Media Begin?
The annual Time Magazine person of the year is slightly different this year….in their own words….
"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
Oh, but do they really like us or are they just sucking up?ﾃつ
CK,ﾃつ who I had the opportunity to meet at Toby’s Bipartisan Blogger’s Wonk, says, "It’s a pivotal moment to see a magazine that has boasted many presidents, philanthropists and visionaries in this annual top spot recognize the impact of a lot of "little guys" and, in so doing, relay that control is no longer in the hands of the few."
Yes, the winner is you…the content creators of the web. And I am flattered, really,ﾃつ to be a winning "you." I just wish they didn’t sound so….so much like us? So, Web 2.OMG! Group hug, pass the Kool-Aid.
But read on, "for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game". If you are working for nothing, how are you beating the pros at their own game. Professional=pay; amateur= no pay. Right?
Well, Steve Rubel says that he and Robert Scoble and John Furrier have started an "important discussion" about where does citizen’s media end and mainstream media begin. Their answer is, Steve says: getting paid, in real time cash money. The mainstream media is using our stuff…blogs, wikis, podcasts and so on; they even try to write in a more casual style. On the other side, there are lots of bloggers whose blogs and podcasts and videos provide them with their primary source of income; income from advertising. So, this means just one thing: they are media. If you are passing the Kool Aid and supporting yourself from your Kool Aid stand….by Steve’s definition as well as Time’s, you are not a person of the year.
Well, I hate to have to note that there does not seem to be any diversity in this important discussion among Steve, Robert and John…we askﾃつ not "Where are the Women Bloggers?" but where is their voice in the important discussion?
Tags: Time Magazine, Person of the Year, KoolAid, Marianne Richmond, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, John Furrier, Toby Bloomberg, CK’s Blog,ﾃつ MySpace, Wikipedia, ,YouTube, Women Bloggers, Blogs, MSM, Main Stream Media,ﾃつ WIMN’s Voices
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MyGrace: The Other Blog Evangelists
Inspired by a member of his congregation that used MySpace to attract listeners for his rock band, Rev. Patrick Gray, am Episcopal priest from Boston set up a MySpace profile, the Advent, to attract listeners to his sermons. His site includes reminders about service times as well as audio files of the choir. The graphics are very cool and the Advent has 671 friends. The WSJ reports that churches across the US are using social media such as blogs and podcasts and on line social networking to connect with members and potential members.
Church Unplugged, according to the WSJ, attributes its growth to its MySpace profiles, saying that the church profile can be found while searching for music, television, or local MySpace users. Unplugged has about 100 church attendees and over 2000 MySpace friends.
The evangelicals are leading the way with blogs such as Outside the Box Ministry and Church Marketing Sucks that provide "how to’s" for churches to improve their marketing and their messages.Church Marketing Sucks has a Squido lens and posts with titles such as, "What Web 2.0 can mean for your church." Outside the Box Ministry is a little less "in your face" than Church Marketing Sucks but the message is similar. Their language is about engagement, connection and recognition that if people are on MySpace or Facebook that’s where they need to be.
The Vatican is podcasting and has a web site and according to Businessweek is hard at work on a faith based social networking site which is referred to as MySpace for Catholics. Sister Judith, the nun who is responsible for the web site and the upcoming social networking site, says that "the Net is the ultimate way to reach millions of people and to connect… it’s about something much bigger than myself…you can touch it, you can change it, and you can touch people with it." Spoken like some other evangelists at a different church.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2004) 64% of online Americans use the Internet for faith based acclivities. The study said, "Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life. The survey found that two-thirds of those who attend religious services weekly use the Internet for personal religious or spiritual purposes." Sounds like online out reach is reaching the target.
But what about the MySpace environment for delivering the MyGrace message? Businessweek recently reported of the growing campaign to protect children from online predators that may close space on MySpace. One church education group mentioned in the WSJ article that the challenge was to reach teens without exposing them to inappropriate content. I think he may have the equation backwards, teens and actually most people, are probably not on MySpace to find a church but rather may find a church while they are MySpace.
As Ross Dawson writes about the MySpace generation, on Trends in the Living Networks, " The way I see relational technologies such as mobiles, chat forums, multiplayer roleplaying games, video sharing and so on, is that they extend our capacity as humans to relate. People have a built-in drive to connect with others, and now that has a far wider canvas across which to express itself. We can now discover many of the latent propensities and characteristics of humans, because we have been given new tools to explore our human identity." Or our spiritual side.
Outside of the Box Ministry has a post titled Blogging is Similar to Spiritual Multiplication which is a pretty good explanation of word of mouth marketing with blogs. If you want your message to be heard, as Businessweek notes, OClick All Ye Faithful.
Tags: MySpace, WOMMA, word of mouth, Church of the Consumer, Evangelism, marketing, church marketing, blogs, social media, media, podcasting, social networks
Join Us For The Debut of Media Slaves Podcast…Life in Permanent Beta
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ 
We are very excited to announce that the Media Slaves Podcast series is up and running! What is the topic for the first podcast?
Glad you asked! User Generated Content is a label that has been the subject of many blog posts…some of them even our own.
What’s in a name? Or label? How do the labels that we use or that are used by others impact mainstreaming of new media and perceptions of what blogs, podcasts, and video blogs/podcasts and other new media are about?
Speaking of names and not that they need an introduction, the other producers of Mediaﾃつ Slaves are Zadi Diaz, the documentary filmaker, video blogger and editor who vlogs at Karmagirrrl; Debi Jones, mobile expert, blogosphere trend spotter, and designer of our wow, now, and its happening, baby! Media Slaves Blog who blogs at Mobile Jones;ﾃつ and Nicole Simon, European podcast expert who blogs and podcasts at Cruel to be Kind and Bloxpert. We are also the Blogging and Social Media Editors at Blogher.
So…join us at Media-Slaves at http://media-slaves@blogspot.com. We are there 24/7….
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ 
Tags: podcasts, blogs, social media, media, Zadi Diaz, Mobile Jones, Marianne Richmond, Nicole Simon, blogher
Trust in User Generated Content: Youth Say Yes, Adults Say No
Forrester has released a new study that says that although three fourths of on line adults access user generated content their confidence in the content is declining; conversely, the over 90% of on line youth that access user generated content indicate that their trust in the content is increasing.
Forrester’s report on Social Computing concluded that technology had made the top down model obsolete, that value was in experience not ownership, and that power was shifting from institutions to communities. This report spoke of connected buyers with less brand loyalty, less trust in institutions and more reliance on peer-to-peer networks and user generated content.
User generated content is proliferating. Trust is important. Brad Feld in a post called, Its The Trust Stupid says there are three principles for user generated content, trust, attention and relevance.
So if trust in user generated content among adults is declining but increasing among the young what does this mixed message mean?
Here is some of the available data on user generated content among the young and among adults:
Teens Create Content: An earlier study by Intelliseek indicated that Teens lead all segments in the creation of CGM; almost 30% of teens send photos via mobile devices, 45% have created a blog, and almost 10% subside to RSS feeds.
Young consumers rely on friends and families for purchase recommendations:
According to an earlier Forrester study, 50% of youth rely on advice from those they know and 65% report giving recommendations or information regarding products to others.
Social Networking sites are user generated content. YouTube users add 35,000 videos each day and viewers view 30 million videos each day according to Newsweek.
My Space is the 7th most popular English language website. If you need more data, see If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard at Mashable! or The Site That Ate the Blogosphere at Mobile Jones and Blogher.
MMOG (Massive Multi-Player Online Games) are user generated content. Participation is growing dramatically. There are 10 million people playing. They defy any preconceived demos one might have about gamers being young and male. Games such as Second Life The Sims, or The Movies are driven by the creation of user generated content. Included in the content development tools of MMOG is advertising. Players have the ability to put up their own advertising in the games such as promotions of in-game events or businesses.
Forbes reports that Mind Ark, creator of Project Entropia, and the first advertising tool built into a game has announced a collaboration with the distributors of ads from Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers that will appear in over 100 games. Clickable Culture reports that the Coca-Cola "will make its first official appearance at a live music event as part of the corporations sponsorship of the event’s real-world counterpart." OK, I admit…I am a little confused here between the real world and the counterpart; nonetheless, user generated advertising content is part of the real world and part of this virtual world. Something like life imitating art, imitating life imitating art….Coke’s tagline becomes the virtual thing?
Politicians bypass the mainstream media and turn to blogs: According to the Salt Lake Tribune and increasing number of politicians are using blogs to provide information directly with their constituents. However, a trust warning is included, "Of course as blogs spread, readers need to understand what they are seeing and what is behind it…when searching for information on a candidate or a lawmaker, readers should be wary of what site they peruse because some information may be missing our skewed….some of these blogs are controlled by parties or by parties or by political candidates." Yep, just like that other media source that we don’t trust.
User generated advertising seems to be everywhere. It is used by Jet Blue, Sony, MasterCard, Converse, and Tahoe. Results and opinions are mixed.
Consumer generated health and medical content have and important influence on decisions:A study by Cybercitizen Health (r) v5.0 indicates that consumers are increasing
relying on the Internet for health care decisions. They report a market of 99 million US adults. The Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that direction but indicates that 52 million Americans or 55% of adults with Internet access use the Internet to get health or medical information. Regardless, the numbers are huge.
Importantly, Cybercitizen Health reports that there are a "small group of health
consumers (20 million)" that have tremendous influence on those using the Internet for health information. They speak of a "zone of influence, ranging from spouses, children and elderly parents to extended family and friends. In fact, other health consumers are very
likely to seek out advice from this group of highly influential health consumers, who are more likely than the average consumer to be using interactive media such as the Internet."
An aside, GE Healthcare joins and sponsors the delivery of consumer generated health care content. See also GE Imagination at Work.
So…there are many more data points indicating an increasing reliance on consumer generated content which doesn’t track with the reported decrease in trust among adults…at least as yet. In fact, a increase in reliance on user generated medical advice would indicate that adults are trusting the advice of their peers with something quite valuable….although a decline in trust measurement might precede an actual change in behavior.
The marketers who get the importance that consumers place upon the recommendations and opinions of their peers combined with the extent of the connections are already building new relationships with consumers and revising their marketing to foster collaboration and participation.
Clarence Fischer of Remote Access while drawing some comparisons between MMOG and classroom learning makes an interesting point about what makes these games
successful, "For a game to be successful, the secret is often not to make the game better, but to make the community which surrounds the game better. Empower them. Give them responsiblities and the power to personalize their experience." This might also be applied to marketing within the context of social computing.
Cory Treffiletti says that user generated content is a viable ad medium and makes the point that once a brand is in the public domain it belongs to the consumer, is controled by the consumer, and if they are provided with a sense of ownership for the brand and the ability to provide input that is responded to, will be a successful brand; if not the brand will suffer the consequences. He refers to this as brand democratization and says it is the wave of the future.
Technorati Tags: consumer generated content, consumer generated media, marketing, advertising, media, social computing, trust, MMOG, MySpace, blogs, advertising,
Wombat Podcast #10: Sean Glass and Chris LaConte
Sean Glass and Chris LaConte of Higher One talk about how they have used Word-of-Mouth to build their on campus financial services business on a podcast at the Wombat Blog .It is fascinating!
Sean and Chris talk about how when they started the business their first encounter with the influence of word-of-mouth was through negative word-of-mouth generated through misinformation about their on-line bill pay product. They astutely realized the importance of getting the right message to the right people by joining the conversation.
They began working with students to identify the physical locations, the venues, on campus where the conversations were happening and began providing students with the tools to facilitate the spread of information about their products. They gave students copy and content that they could then personalize and pass along to their friends and classmates. They identified students who believed in their products and were willing to talk about them and made them Agents.
The Agents were required to provide written reports of their activities and to encourage students to submit high quality reports, they were given points based upon the quality of their reports. The reports provided Higher One with immediate feedback, both negative and positive, that was then used to make changes, improvements, or otherwise build their business. The Agents functioned as the marketing department as well as the market research department. Impressive!
Sean and Chris say that word-of -mouth can be an entrepreneurs best friend….it is important to give early adopters the tools to amplify word of mouth…this includes finding the venue, providing information to share, and motivating the evangelists. Advertising they said can build awareness and create demand…word-of-mouth drives the decision to buy.
I mentioned Sean in a post in November about Word-of-Mouth Marketing on college campuses and he emailed to thank me and to tell me that he had started blogging. I am sure he will have a lot to say!
Besides Higher One, which is projecting sales of over $18 million in 2006, the 26 year old has among many other accomplishments, co founded the Yale Entrepreneurial Society a non-profit that promotes entrepreneurship in the greater Yale community and ThreadKill.com which I suggest you read his explanation for, and is an investor in Axon Labs, a sleep research labortory that is developing products to enable peak performance based upon research in neuroscience. The Axon web site links to an American Medical Association study that officially declares waking up the worst part of the day. Just visit our house any school day morning to confirm that.
Technorati Tags: WOMMA, advertising, blogging, WOMBAT Blog. word-of-mouth, buzz marketing, college marketing
Core Assets and Social Capital
In Forrester Research’s weekly update, Charlene Li writes, "Yahoo! bought social bookmarking and tagging leader del.icio.us to add bookmark
tagging to its social computing portfolio. The value of tagging is that when
individuals label something online, they call it out as valuable. If enough people tag Yahoo!-stored assets as, then the collective intelligence of the masses is captured for all to use and Yahoo!’s site becomes richer, cleaner, and more satisfying-all magic words to an ad-supported business model. Other portal, search, media and retail sites should join the ranks of Yahoo! in making tagging a core asset."
Alec Saunders
writes that Yahoo! validated the value of tagging by buying
del.icio.us. He says, "Today tags might be the ultimate sticky asset.
Your tags are a reflection of your values, your thinking, your mindset.
Shared tags reflect the collective interest of a community. Tags and
profile, together could be used as contextual triggers for advertising
driving much more precisely targeted delivery than is possible today.
If, as the Web 2.0 advocates suggest, data is the new platform, then
Yahoo! just brought a core platform asset.
Well, yes, Sugar
Plum….in keeping with the spirit of the season, those visions of
assets do dance in Yahoo!’s head, or is it portfolios of assets that
dance in their visions? Yahoo!’s tags may be "social networks" but the "it" in that beloved expression, "your it" is search….and advertising and m-o-n-e-y. In the words of Thomas Hawk,
"Google and their non human algorithm have significantly trounced
Yahoo!
at the core service that was at one time the central technology of
Yahoo’s business, search. And up for grabs in the search game going
forward are still billions and billions of dollars."
OK..so that’s the business model. Assets, value…sticky assets, core assets, valuable. That seems to upset some bloggers. But let’s not forget that tagging is about users. There is a lot of really great things being written about social networks from the benefit to users
standpoint….David Pollard writes frequently on the topic of blogs, social networks, knowledge management and other inter-related topics.
And I think there is another important element in the asset play: social capital. In the year 2000, Robert Putnam published a book called Bowling Alone with the premise that Americans were suffering from a deficit in social
capital…that we had gone from belonging to bowling leagues to bowling
alone. Social capital is defined as the collective value of all "social
networks" [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these
networks to do things for each other ["norms of reciprocity"]….a wide
variety of quite specific benefits that flow from the trust,
reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with social networks. Social capital creates value for the people who are connected and - at least sometimes - for bystanders as well." It sounds a lot like the hallmarks of blogging and online social networks to me.
I think that rumors of the death of social capital
were greatly exaggerated….I think it is alive and well and has just
re-defined and in fact expanded the meaning of communities. Instead of bowling alone we are tagging together ….and blogging connects us in all kinds of amazing ways from shared knowledge and information to personal and business relationships and colloboration that would be impossible if we had to wear those nasty bowling shoes to experience.
Technorati Tags:
tagging, Yahoo, Del.icio.us, social capital, social networking
Blogging at the Institute with Danny Wedding
A required class on Mental Health Policy , offered in the evening was not high on my list of classes I was anticipating to like at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work in the fall of 2003. But I was not anticipating Professor Danny Wedding….the class was awesome!
Besides being an authority on Mental Health Policy, Danny is Director and Professor of Psychiatry at the Missouri Institute for Mental Health, the Center for Policy, Research and Training for the Department of Mental Health. Danny has written books on psychotherapy, movies and mental illness, memory and numerous others topics. He is the editor of Contemporary Psychology and is a frequent speaker. He has a long list of degrees, and most recently acquired a Master’s degree in English. I admit envy…in my dream life I would be a professional student.
Simply put, Danny is a really interesting guy and a conversation with Danny is always thought provoking and fun. So, several months ago when I was thinking about who in St. Louis should be blogging, Danny Wedding immediately came to mind. And sure enough, he was blogging. He invited me to come down to the MIMH and participate in their Speaker’s Series and that’s where I spent the morning today….talking about blogging. With all the interesting things that are happening there, I hope they will add their voices to the blogosphere.
Danny is requiring students in his Mental Health Policy class to set up a blog for their final grade….he was kind enough to give me credit for what I think was his great idea. When I took his class, he required a power point. He has set up a blog for the class, a kind of interactive syllabus, which is really a great blog application. So, I am going to add Danny’s class blog to my power point presentation on blogging….and I will look forward to learning a little more about Mental Health Policy through the student blogs. I think there is a Venn diagram in there someplace.
Update: Danny, Mary Ann Boyd and Ryan Niemiec have a blog for the 3rd edition of Movies and Mental Illness. Check it out!
Technorati Tags:
blogs, mental health policy, education blogs
Blogging and Baseball
Jim Turner on Blog Business Consulting references a baseball and blogging metaphor from Steve Rubel that a combination of a mention on someone’s blog and a link is like a home run while a link without a mention is like a double; a blog link/mention in a popular feed would be a Grand Slam. Turner says that, "the real pinnacle is reached when someone subscribes to your feed and returns."
Well take tonight in St. Louis for instance… a real pinnacle for the Cardinals would have been a repeat of the 9th inning home run by Albert Pujols that won the game on Monday…unfortunately there was no subscription to the feed and all the attention turned to the Astros.
Except of course, the St. Louis fans lingering at Busch Stadium…that is old Busch Stadium not to be confused with new Busch Stadium going up right next to it….okay I don’t get the whole new stadium thing so I will drop it right here. Actually, I am just kind of hoping that maybe the new Busch will get back the awesome hot dog mustard relish of my childhood that disappeared sometime during my NYC years, replaced by the mustard dispensers that I understand were being yanked out of the walls tonight as souvenirs by those sentimental Cardinal fans….or we will see them on Ebay tomorrow.
Technorati Tags: RSS, Blogs, Cardinals, Astros, baseball, Busch, Stadium, Ebay
Technorati Bookmarklet
Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick whose tagline "Always on the lookout for the best web tools" is so true, I will now be including Technorati tags in my posts. Marshall, who has written an explanation of tagging and podcasted about it in language that is easy to understand even for those of us who do not speak Geek fluently PLUS, has made it easy to do with his Blog Tag Bookmarklet….and there’s more (better than a Ginzu knife!): Beth Kantor has created a screencast which is available on Marshall’s Blog or on her own.
Technorati Tags: tag, bookmarklet, tags, podcasting, screencasting
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