On Scoble, podcasting and videocasting

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Now that the news is out that Robert Scoble, the champion of social media and poster boy for us with clients, is leaving Microsoft for a podcasting startup, several thoughts occur to me.

Firstly, it is sad that we evangelists to businesses are losing a credible representative who worked for a company that everyone had heard of. No one has heard of PodTech (well, yet anyway).

But I remember a post by the sublime Kathy Sierra who was commenting on Robert’s decision to move away from snarky, ill-mannered people. Robert himself comments that his new boss, John Furrier, was “the nicest guy I ever met.” Clearly, being around and interacting with nice, well-mannered human beings matters to Robert, and it does to me too. Thanks to Robert, Microsoft has repositioned itself from ‘the evil Empire’ to a friendly company. It is now Apple, with its draconian public relations policies, as described by Heidi Miller, that attracts the ‘evil’ tag.

But as a parting gift, Robert and a commenter on his blog outline why companies NEED to pay attention to all this new media stuff.

• A geekgirl and her equally-geek husband have, for the last six months, put together a videoblog (now over on ‘The PodFather’ Adam Curry’s Podshow Network). So successful are they that after just six months they have both quit their jobs to do it full-time.
• After one year Amanda Congdon and the RocketBoom videoblog are now so successful they earn $85,000 a week in advertising revenue. That’s $113,000 Australian dollars a week, or $16,000 a day, or $672 per hour for a 24-hour working day. Which is slightly above my own hourly charge.
• Microsoft’s own videoblog, Channel9, attracts 3.5 million unique visitors a month. That is a videoblog of geeks interviewing other geeks about geekstuff.
• And let us not forget that one of our own kind, Ron Shewchuk, attracted sponsorship after only four episodes of his barbeque podcast!

Now, you may be thinking that this is the ‘net bubble’ of 2001 all over again. That advertisers are paying stupid money to young people who are smart enough to be able to pull the wool over their eyes and fleece them.

But that is to miss the point. Just because such online behaviour doesn’t figure or make sense in your world (and, indeed, in my day-to-day world, too), that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense in someone else’s world. And that someone else may well exist as part of a more interesting demographic to advertisers.

For example, you may not realise the importance of the fact that BMW is now including a socket in all their latest models so that you can plug in your iPod and play it through the car stereo, or that they are allegedly building in control features so that you can control not only your car stereo from the steering wheel, but your iPod too. But as Scoble quite rightly points out, what the rich do today the poor do in a decade’s time. Or five. Or two.

So just because for you and I the newspaper and magazine are the traditional ways of advertising, and theirs is a business model that has remained unchanged for over a hundred years, don’t expect the new distribution channel of the internet (of which the world wide web of websites is only a tiny part) is going to be as equally staid. The new media channel with its outlets like podcasts, vidcasts, YouTube and such, is alive and kicking and behaving like a toddler should behave — upsetting the apple cart and forcing us older, wiser heads to rethink our world views and let go of outmoded ideas.

Podcasting and videocasting may not figure greatly in your world, Horatio, but don’t be foolish enough to dismiss them because of it. As one of the commentors on Robert Scoble’s post says:

I know this podcasting thing might feel like a bubble to some people but the trend I see at the freshman year of college is the arrival of as many MP3 players as mobile phones. Some of my data are skewed because I teach a multimedia degree program. Those incoming students already know how to subscribe to podcasts and they rip their own takeaway media on laptops in the cafeteria before they get their network log-in details.

This podcasting bubble concerns personal control of personal media. It might be small and nerdish but it’s in the personal entertainment space and that’s the place where people hang out without knowing they’re surrounded by technology.

I think Scoble’s feet-first landing in that space will only boost its profile. That makes my lecturing job easier because wobbly-cam podcasts and personal podcasts will continue growing. While there’s no denying the small sector that personal entertainment represents, it’s a big chunk of change when you look at the money needed to ramp up into it and to sustain the habit. Advertisers sense that’s a sector with discretionary income to burn and they’re booking media campaigns into it. Those paid placements, sponsorship packages and personal subscriptions sound more like the development of a new media industry instead of the yammering of thousands who drank the Kool-Aid.

And I think that he’s right. Which is why I am setting up interviews with various communicators for podcasting and eventual videocasting over at Ross Monaghan’s Deakin University site. It is why Allan Jenkins and I believe that podcasting is so important to us as business communicators that we are prepared to meet up over Skype at all hours of the day and night to have a chat, and Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson do likewise. It is why Donna PepsiCola, Bryan Person and Heidi Miller go to such lengths to interview, record and publish their own podcasts.

Now, we work in an industry where it is highly unlikely we will garner sponsorship or advertising at the rate of $85,000 a week (more’s the pity), but who knows where the new media landscape will take those brave souls who are willing to embrace the uncertainty and ‘rapid change’ nature of the media?

After all, if GPs have for many years paid for their own broadcast material that is recorded after midnight and watched the next day, why wouldn’t they also pay for a similar service that is downloaded onto their video iPod but is of a level of quality that also allows for happy viewing on a tv? Why wouldn’t dentists, vets, or orthopaedic specialists pay for the same? It is the content that is important, after all. A smart, fast-moving entrepreneur who can attract enough capital to set up an interviewing, recording and publishing process for one of these niche industries could clean up very quickly. After all, pharmaceutical companies are not shy of spending millions to reach their market.

You never know, it may well transpire that Jenkins and I webcam our chats and release it as a videocast — I wonder who our audience would be then?

If you want to privately talk over any of the business and branding ideas in this post, just . Got a view that you don’t mind sharing publicly, then just leave a comment.

Technorati : Allan Jenkins, Bryan Person, Donna Papacosta, GeekBrief, Heidi Miller, Kathy Sierra, Rocketboom, Ron Shewchuk, Scoble

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