Georgia Podcast Network

I remember a few months ago Griftdrift and I were discussing what makes a blog (or a podcast or a news outlet or whatever) popular. My theory was simply that the best content went a long way toward distinguishing an outlet. Alan Cooper called this Best of Market Trumps First to Market.

This article from Podcasting News makes me wonder if that theory is malarkey, and if there are other factors which are more important:

Internet research firm HitWise reports that, while Hulu is getting big shows, it’s not getting big audiences.

Hulu.com., the joint venture between Fox and NBC that provides streaming video content online, came out of beta on March 15 and has seen a steady share of US Internet traffic since:

The site ranked 33 among Multimedia websites last week and 84 among television websites.

While it is often compared with YouTube, YouTube is attracting nearly 300 times more traffic than Hulu.com.

I say this because Hulu has some really excellent content. You can watch entire episodes of professionally-produced television shows from the major networks, including The Daily Show, Family Guy, The Office and The Simpsons. All legal and free and with high quality encoding, unlike on YouTube.

And yet, 1/300 of YouTube's traffic.

Podcasting News posits that the lack of alternative interfaces (podcasts, Apple TV, etc.) is holding Hulu back. I don't think that's true though. YouTube got huge without offering downloadable content or podcasts or access on Apple TV/Tivo/whatever, though some of that stuff has since been implemented.

Maybe you'll say Hulu isn't the best case study because of their early (and arguably ongoing) marketing problems. Fair enough. But that doesn't explain why YouTube is so big and everyone else is so small, despite YouTube's obvious shortcomings (crappy video quality, dependence on illegal content, etc.).

So, if best of market doesn't trump first to market, is it the other way around? Is being first the most important thing? I think one word is enough to discredit that idea: Friendster.

So what is it then? Is it just that YouTube has built a more active community than the other sites? If so, why did it succeed where others have failed?

The redesign of the Georgia Podcast Network is live!

The short version of what's new is:

• Create podcasts, add episodes to them, or add your affiliate podcast to the directory without having to go through an administrator. Podcasts now work sort of like diaries on Tondee's Tavern and other group blogs. Everybody can have one, but not everything makes the front page.
• Let other members post episodes to your podcast. You can name co-hosts individually, or set the "group podcast" option to let any registered member post an episode. For examples of group podcasts, see (un)ConCast and Politics is Vocal.
• Album art, channel, and other meta information can be attached to podcasts
• Post M4V video in addition to MP3 audio
• Nifty Flash uploader
• Embeddable players and widgets
• iTunes meta information in podcast RSS feeds
• Can redirect podcast RSS feeds to Feedburner
• Webplay and download statistics
• Rebuilt podcast directory
• Pretty new theme
• Better performance. Up to 8 times faster under normal server load

That's not everything, but that's the important stuff. There are still some minor CSS issues to work out in Internet Explorer 6, but it should be relatively bug-free other than that. Have a look and let us know what you think!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Atlanta, GA, June 11, 2007

A handful of bloggers were able to broadcast live, via broadband, the N. Georgia Democrats "For the People" political rally yesterday. The archives are here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/xSsuYBY2Yhva5fswXUn2OA

This was Georgia political broadcasting history in the making, using available online technology and applications. Who needs satellite and microwave to go live anymore? Heck, who needs TV stations now?! (If only we could figure out how to get rid of that nasty little audio hum. Next time, we'll have that figured out.)

Production participants included: Grayson Daughters with WaySouth Media, Jon Flack of Tondee's Tavern, Bernita Smith of Blog for Democracy, and Martin Matheny, Communications Director for the Georgia Democratic Party. Much needed assistance was provided off site by Jim Long of Verge New Media (via Yahoo! Instant Messaging from DC); Brad, the creator of uStream.tv, and that really patient audio dude in the broadcast booth at the Georgia Mountains Center in Gainesville, GA. (Thank you all.)

Once up live on uStream.tv, the producers publicized the event to various social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.

For more info contact:

Grayson Daughters
WaySouth Media, Inc.
www.waysouthmedia.com (under construction)
gdaughters@waysouthmedia.com
404-216-0387
BLOG: The Spacey Gracey Review

A few months ago, I had the idea (that I thought was original at the time) to create a product where users could add audio comments to posts, then listen to the audio sequentially — sort of a podcast created in bits and pieces at varying times and locations.

Then Skype added a feature to its software that let up to 100 users speak on a conference call at once (which in turn isn't hard to record and post somewhere). That happened before I even had time to look up a venture capitalist's phone number.

Well, now it appears video sharing site Grouper has upped the ante, adding a feature to its site where users can add video comments through a web cam. The videos and video commenting software all work through Flash, and can be embedded on a web site the same way YouTube videos are.

All I can say is... wow! View an example of the technology in action here. It's similar to what I wanted to make, except mine was going to be audio-only.

If this catches on, it could dethrone YouTube. What I know for certain is this is the first application I've ever seen that actually made me want to buy a web cam.

h/t Techcrunch

The list of things you can do with your cell phone just keeps getting longer. Time to add one more: "shoot video and send it directly to YouTube." People already blog from their phones, upload photos to Flickr, and waste time on MySpace; really this is just the next logical step. Imagine the possibilities for instantly sharing homemade pr0n!