I thought it was an exciting announcement as I have written a lot about how to make social networking profitable by turning communities into economies.

Julie describes how Ning’s 1.6 million social networks can now start making money by selling virtual gifts. The net revenue(after Paypal fees) from the gifts is split between Ning and the social network.

Ning’s virtual currency called credits, converts into US funds at a rate of approximately 1 credit to $.02. To help get users started with virtual gifting, Ning will give 100 complimentary credits to all users. All Ning virtual gifts will be priced at 75 credits each, so Ning hopes that each user will get to send one virtual gift as a way to try out the feature.

I hope Ning finds more ways to extend how social networks can use the currency to pay users to take surveys or other actions that will help the networks make some real money.

Here’s the interview with Julie:

Brent Mitchell, MediaFly’s Chief Technology Officer, explains how the system works in this video interview from BlogWorld Expo.

So how is the US Army dealing with the messy, distributed, un-controllable social web? It’s doing what it does best. It’s developing processes, tools, roadmaps and training to deal with ambiguity. I don’t think there’s any one better at taking potentially complicated, almost always ambiguous, and frequently dangerous situations and preparing its people to perform at consistently high levels.

In another social track, Social Web Analyst Jeremiah Owyang answered my question about who is putting processes around social web and he points quickly to the military. In his case, he pointed to the US Air Force’s response roadmap. (BTW, The US Army has one too.)

The star of the Army’s social media efforts on display at BlogWorld was ArmyStrongStories.com, a blogging system that lets anyone in the Army post to the blog. It can be used to help recruits see what it’s like from first hand accounts by people like themselves and to bring the soldiers’ voice to life for all of us.

Major Mary Constantino was kind enough to share a few minutes explaining ArmyStrongStories.com.

Here’s the video:

Go Army! Follow the US Army.
Blog: http://ArmyStrongStories.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/goarmy.com
Myspace: http://myspace.com/usarmy
Twitter: http://twitter.com/armystories
YouTube: http://youtube.com/armystrongstories
Press: http://armyaccessionsnewsroom.com

At the BlogWorld Expo,

Here’s the quick video version of how he did it. The longer post summarizes the rest of his presentation about how to grow your audience on the web. He has some excellent advice, which may be one of the reasons he has been able to realize such a return on his efforts.

Jason is an expert in new media and internet marketing. He is also the author of Promoting Your Podcast.

Jason starts out by discussing goals. The end goal is an action, something we want the audience to do because of our efforts. But we have some work to do to earn the action.

We need influence to make the action happen, and we don’t get influence instantly. We have to bank influence overtime and then we can make the withdrawel.

Before influence, comes engagement. We need an audience that this active and engaged with the content and the subject.

Before engagement, comes permission. We need the audience to opt-in in some way, to sign up for our email list, subscribe to our podcast or blog, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. We need them to take a step to give us permission to send them stuff.

Finally, before permission, comes attention. We need to get their attention to get the process started.

Jason describes these steps as the New Media Money Map:

1. Attention
2. Permission
3. Engagement
4. Influence
5. Action

Jason then dove into the subject of attention in more detail.

He pointed out that we live in an attention economy and that competing for attention is the focus on new media marketers.

Jason went on to describe the components of new media magnetism that can help you gain more attention.

He described the components as relevance, reciprocity, authority, trust, convenience and desire (either urgent pain or rational passion). Building these components into your content and behavior will help you gain more attention.

He went on to describe what he called the preeminence principle. This is all about making sure you are the expert everywhere your users go. This ubiquitous expertise helps reinforce your position in the users mind.

Jason provided some great tips on how to be ubiquitous. He described how high rankings in search engines is essential and how it’s not just Google, but also iTunes and Youtube. He described how all search engines use relevance and authority to drive their rankings. In iTunes, he has found that keywords are what drives relevance and subscriptions, ratings and reviews help to drive authority.

Some other tools to use include Feedburner and Tubemogul to help with distribution. He also suggested Webcam Max and Camtasia as software tools to help generate content.

Moving on to permission, he described how your email list is still your most important list, but now you have Twitter followers, RSS followers, Facebook fans etc. Don’t overlook building those lists as well. He pointed out that you should make your opt-in one of the most prominent parts of your web page and make sure it’s above the fold. Aweber and iContact were his two suggestions for mailing list management.

He suggested GotoWebinar as one of his key tools to convert people on Twitter and Facebook into email lists and conversion opportunities. Don’t sell on Twitter, use it for sending invitations.

Jason then described his thoughts on engagement. The drivers of engagement are knowing you, liking you and trusting you.

You want your audience to resonate with you. He also said that telling stories is a method that works exceptionally well.

He suggested The Story Factor by Annette Simmons as a great resource for improving your story telling.

At this point, we started running out to time, but you can get more information from Jason at his blog.

Susan has launched Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques as a training system for anyone who hosts a podcast, vidcast, radio or talk show or for experts who create information products that include interviews as material.

In her new system, Talk Show Tips, she focuses on training you on everything you need to know to empower your audience (fans) to promote your show for you. She shows you how to consistently develop well-produced interviews so that your audience keeps on growing and increasing your chances for attracting excellent sponsors (if that is you want).

Even without focusing on getting sponsors, growing an engaged audience is the reward for the effort you put into producing your content. Susan’s Talk Show Tips provides a roadmap to make that happen quickly.

Susan has put together her best advice for establishing a show format and managing the flow of your show. Even expert radio show hosts and podcasters have complimented her on this thorough approach to shoring up their productions and making them more professional.
Talk Show Tips as a learning system, is chock-full of techniques that make perfect sense, the minute you hear them. Susan has a way of explaining things simply but with a lot of insight and detail. With her system, you can immediately integrate powerful new strategies into your show that include:

• Solidifying Your Show Format, Personas, Intros/Outros/Breaks
• Booking the Big Name Guest and Prepping Them for a Stellar Show
• Developing Great Questions No One Else Asks
• How To Do In-Show Bridges, Segues, Reframes, Power Pauses, Opens, Affirmations and Graceful Interruptions
• Managing Show Notes, Transcriptions, Editing, Contests, Google Mojo, Cross Promos, RSS and Free Widgets
• Using Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TweetLater Pro and Trackur to Promote Your Show
  Getting Featured in iTunes, SEO and Five-Star Reviews

Susan is even making ten of her best tricks and techniques available to everyone for free. Just go and sign up at TalkShowTips.com and she will send you the ten free tips.

As a bonus, Susan has written to posts for me sharing some of her expertise with show format and show flow. I hope you enjoy them.

And as a special bonus from me, Susan and I have created a special bonus audio download for you where she’s interviewing me about how to set a strategy and get started in commercial podcasting and new media publishing.

Check out the interview and go sign up for Talk Show Tips.

The problem is declining advertising revenue. The auto industry, one of the biggest buyers of newspaper ads, is in the tank. Craigslist et al have devastated the classified monopolies that provided huge profit margins for newspapers in days gone by.

This trend is not restricted to newspapers. TV is seeing the problem as well. According to Jack Myers, an industry consultant:

“2010 advertising spending is heading toward record-setting declines of 13% to 15% in 2009, according to the new Jack Myers Media Business Report forecast due to be released to subscribers September 14.”

And the trend is not just an offline phenomenon, online the price advertisers are willing to pay for impressions is dropping as well. Consider the following from the media focused MultiTasker

Cost-per-thousand ad impressions for online publishers are generally off about 20%, according to several people on both the buying and selling side, and sell-through rates are dropping. And where publishers used to unload 60% of their inventory, some are now able to sell only 30%.

What we are seeing is the law of supply and demand at work. The amount of available advertising space is growing fast and much faster than the demand. When supply goes up faster than demand that means prices will drop. And prices for impressions are dropping fast.

That means that anyone who tries to make a living by selling advertising impressions is going to feel the hurt. Offline, online – it doesn’t matter. Impression based advertising prices will continue to drop fast for just about everyone.

There will be exceptions. Big events will command good prices for impressions and may even do better. There is only one Super Bowl, one Academy Awards, etc. These will be situations where what is being bought is actually getting scarcer. Huge audiences all gather in one place at one time. This is what big TV shows used to be able to do. Now, that is the exception, and therefore will will likely see impression pricing rise for this shrinking segment.

Some will also point to Google as an exception. But in fact Google doesn’t make its money by selling advertising impressions, they make their money from people who pay them for potential leads (people who click on the ads). For the most part, you don’t pay for impressions on Google, you pay for clicks. In fact, Google won’t even let you get huge amounts of impressions without your ad being highly relevant to topic. Just do a search on any celebrity and for the most part you won’t see any ads, with the exception of Bing ads (Microsoft must has given Google a lot of money to promote Bing.) No, Google’s revenues are not driven by the economics of impressions, their revenues are driven by the economics of lead generation.

It is time for every media company to figure out life beyond impression based advertising. If you think you are going to make your living by selling advertising impressions, stop and think of something else.

I believe we are seeing the collapse of an media era driven by the economics of impressions and the emergence of an era that will be based on the economics of community.

Media is a beautiful social object. We love to watch, listen, talk about it, play with it. Media has the power to draw us together, and that can be used to create community.

We can and should recast the discussion from economics of impressions to the economics of communities. And what are the economics of communities? They are micro-economies where trade, commerce and personal interaction are all intermingled with each other.

I’m not talking about clicking on someone’s purse in a web show so you can buy it (although that might work), I’m talking about create real economies where consumers can trade with other consumers and trade with the media creators. Who knows what the audience will buy or sell. We won’t know until we see it. Our job is to find ways to enable it.

Here are 7 steps I think every publisher should be taking.

1. Cherish your audience – Your audience is your most precious asset. It should be cherished as such. Without your audience you are just a tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear it. Your audience is what makes what you do possible.
2. Engage your audience with you and each other – Don’t just talk to your audience, listen, listen and listen some more. Find out what they enjoy. Find out what their problems are. Make it easy for them to talk to each other and listen in on what they have to say. A good engaged audience will give you enormous number of clues as to how you can serve them better.
3. Serve your audience – It is through the gift of service that we show each other how much we care. If you serve effectively, the audience will respond. Some will seek more and more from you which will provide the opportunity to provide them with premium services and products.
4. Think like a marketer – It’s time to realize that marketing and publishing are merging. Brands now publish, publishers now market. Marketing may be new skill for publishers, but it will a major element in there survival. There are lots of ways to make money from publishing that have nothing to do with selling impression based ads. I mapped out ten ideas here that any publisher can pursue. Fundamentally, it’s about taking charge of your own destiny.
5. De-average your pricing – It’s time to stop selling every album at $13.99. Some will pay nothing, some will pay vastly more. Segment your offerings into free samples, low cost bite size morsels and really premium products (eg, personalized, autographed posters included, limited editions etc). Check out what Nine Inch Nails have done to see the power of de-averaging.
6. Give them games – Great games are addictive and bring your audience back even when you have nothing new in the way of content. It also gives you the opportunity to introduce virtual currencies and sell virtual goods, a massive untapped revenue opportunity.
7. Invest in a trading platform – There is a great deal of money to be made enabling trade amongst your audience. Just look at eBay – it’s a huge community that is monetized through a trading platform. I’m sure some members of your audience have things to trade and if you can take a small commission on the trade, or use your virtual currency the cash can add up.

These are my thoughts, what about yours? Is the future hopeless for media? Do you think media companies can make money in the future? What other steps should publishers be taking.

1. The strong financial performance of the game industry continues despite the bad economy
2. The rise of free to play – see FreeRealms.com as an example
3. The power of virtual currency, goods, commerce to monetize play and turn communities into economies (Got to wonder when will Facebook and Myspace figure this out?)
4. Apple doubled the mobile games market almost overnight
5. Phones will become one of the interfaces for games
6. Mobile applications are emerging as a new ad unit
7. The mobile game/iPhone application market is creating a huge merchandising problem
8. Integration of games/real world – See Nolan Bushnell
9. Rise of electronic Distribution – Steam
10. Emergence of cloud based distribution – Onlive

While the review follows the best practice framework framework, it is heavily weighted to the observable factors relating to the overall user experience.  I think that how well a company executes on these components of downloadable media is an important indication of how seriously they are approaching the business.

Overall Impression
USA Today is not yet treating downloadable media as a business opportunity.  Downloadable content is not presented well and seems to be left to some enterprising reporters who are experimenting with using downloadable media.  The individual efforts seem to range from quite enterprising to poor quality efforts.  The podcasts were so variable that I had to review them individually.  I produced individual reviews for Celeb Watch, Talking Tech and PopCandy.

USA Today has a wealth of content and sub-brands that would make excellent platforms for building downloadable media brands.

I see lots of upside for USA Today if they make the investments required, but right now USA Today’s downloadable media offering is mess that probably doing more damage than good.

If USA Today wants to compete on the new web, they will need to develop a more effective strategy for producing web shows from their content and substantially improve their operating practices.

Presentation of the Downloadable Media Category
At first glance, the site looks good and presents me with an option for videos.  Clicking through to the video page takes the user away from the usatoday.com URL to a usatoday.feedroom.com URL.  This new page has a different layout and presentation from the homepage.  Once there, you find a wealth of video content from Associated Press.

This wasn’t what I wanted to review so I went back a page and searched for podcasts.

I found three results that looked like they might be podcasts.  Upon review, two out the three are indeed links to podcasts.  The first is to a blog called PopCandy that focuses on popular culture and the second to a video show called Talking Tech.

After poking around the site some more, I stumbled upon one more downloadable media show called Celeb Watch.

The only place I can find a complete list of these three together is a page listing all the RSS feeds on the site.  The three podcasts are listed in their own category with links to subscribe in iTunes and links to the RSS pages for the podcasts.  There are no links there that point to the podcast home pages or to any podcast archives.

Each of the three shows has a very different look, feel and quality.

Content available
USA Today is currently offering a very narrow range of downloadable media content with only three podcasts available.  USA Today is not leveraging its wealth of content and sub-brands that would make excellent platforms for building downloadable media brands.

Use of Micro-sites
Each of the podcast shows had micro-sites that were very different and had significant variations in the quality of presentation.   One of the micro-sites was effective at presenting a video podcast. These micro-sites could be improved significantly.

Use of RSS and Metadata
USA Today is not deploying best practices when in comes to RSS and media meta-data.  There are duplicate feed links and feeds that don’t validate properly.

Distribution
USA Today is too reliant upon iTunes as its distribution channel.  Potential listeners who do not have iTunes or prefer alternatives such as Zunes, mp3 players, cell phones, etc are not able to easily download and subscribe to content.

Content and feeds for devices other than the iPod/iPhone are not available.

Monetization
USA Today’s downloadable media is substantially under monetized and relies too much upon pre-roll advertising.  Investments in more advanced flash players that support overlays will be required to monetize the downloadable media collection.

Production Quality
Video production quality is good.  The single audio podcast has improved a lot after 100 episodes.

USA Today Downloadable Media – Top Recommendations

1. Develop a downloadable media strategy to focus investment on building successful shows
2. Develop downloadable media/podcast directory to show case available content
3. Create compelling destination micro sites for each podcast and work to improve audience interaction.
4. Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
5. Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
6. Clearly label subscribe links as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo,  Zune and provide link to RSS.
7. Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay  advertising
8. Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
9. Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
10. Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
11. Change Album Art to 600×600
12. Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Links Individual Podcast Reviews

• Celeb Watch
• Talking Tech
• PopCandy

Podcast Homepage
Upon visiting Celeb Watch’s page you are presented with a clean looking video player in the center of the page with an attractive photo of the celebrity being interviewed.

The page has links to download the media, download a widget and sharing via email.  The download link is actually a link to iTunes, not the video file.  I’m not sure what would happen if you tried the link without iTunes installed.

The page also has a nice short brief on what the next show will be about and links to the show’s archive.

The video is complemented by a good article providing background on the celebrity and a summary of the interview.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the feed for the Celeb Watch.  You have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com.  There are no RSS feeds for alternative file types for devices other than iPod/IPhone.

Audience Interaction
The page has lots of links to social media sites for sharing.  Comments have been enable on the page, but seem to lack participation.

Publishing Schedule
Celeb Watch is billed as being a weekly show, but the schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The online flash player started immediately.  The iTunes version of the show also played well in iTunes.  The file was formatted using H.264 with dimensions of 640×480 which works well with iPods.  Unfortunately, the video will not play on most cell phones which need dimensions of 320×240.

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used.  However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org.  The feed was missing a channel description tag.  The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags.  The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-cw-celebrity-name.m4v.  Replacing cw with celeb_watch would improve search engines ability to index the file.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Celeb Watch lists show in first result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Celeb Watch lists show in second result.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
I checked five leading podcast directories and could not find the show listed.

Monetization
The show I saw had a 4 second pre-roll commercial for TV Guide Broadband.  The web page has inline ads and some popup advertising.

Media Player
Plain video player – not use of borders for advertising or advertising bugs on the video.

Sharable Player
The show offers a player that can be embedded in blogs or social networking sites.  No advertising on the player itself.

Production Quality
Celeb Watch’s video was good quality video.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show.  The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple.  Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

Celeb Watch – Top Recommendations

1. Open up the micro-site to viewer comments and improve audience interaction
2. Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
3. Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
4. Clearly label subscribe link as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo,  Zune and provide link to RSS.
5. Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay  advertising
6. Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
7. Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
8. Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
9. Change Album Art to 600×600
10. Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Podcast Homepage
The presentation of Talking Tech is disappointing when compared to Celeb Watch. The page has a picture of the show’s hosts, a short blurb about the show and short bios for the hosts.

There is a picture of two laptops and a play button.  The description of the episode is in a faint font and easy to overlook.  Lower in the page are links to the last ten episodes presented in streaming video.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the feed for the Talking Tech.  You have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com.  There are no RSS feeds for alternative file types for devices other than iPod/IPhone.

Audience Interaction
The page has lots of links to social media sites for sharing.  Comments are enabled for the show, but seem to lack participation.

Publishing Schedule
The Talking Tech podcast schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The iTunes version of the show also played well in iTunes.  The file was formatted using H.264 with dimensions of 640×480 which works well with iPods.  Unfortunately, the video will not play on most cell phones, first generation Zunes.  PSP players and Tivo?

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used.  However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org.  The feed was missing a channel description tag.  The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags.  The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-tt.m4v.  Replacing tt with talking_tech would improve search engines ability to index the file.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Talking Tech lists show in second result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Talking Tech lists show in first result.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
We checked five leading podcast directories and could not find the show listed in four of the directories.  Podcast.com had the show in its directory.

Monetization
The show I saw had a 15 second pre-roll commercial for Microsoft.  The web page has inline ads.

Media Player
The online flash player took 5-10 seconds to start playing.  In Firefox browser, the player then got stuck downloading from something called metrics.feedroom.com.   The video player was plain, with no use of borders for advertising or advertising bugs on the video.

Sharable Player
There were a number of links for sharing in sites like Digg or Mixx.  There was also a link for sharing in Facebook.  No links to a sharable widget for blogs.

Production Quality
Talking Tech’s video was good quality video.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show.  The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple.  Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

Talking Tech – Top Recommendations

1. Create destination micro site for the podcast and improve audience interaction
2. Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
3. Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
4. Clearly label subscribe link as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo,  Zune and provide link to RSS.
5. Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay  advertising
6. Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
7. Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
8. Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
9. Change Album Art to 600×600
10. Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Podcast Homepage
Each episode is presented as a blog post describing the contents of the episode and links to “Download the free podcast via iTunes” and “Stream the podcast as a .wma file”.

There is no inline audio player for the wma file.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the same RSS feed that’s listed under the RSS directory.  The RSS on the blog home page validates, but does not contain any iTunes tags.

To find the podcast RSS, you have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com.

Audience Interaction
The permalink page has links to Yahoo Buzz for sharing.  Comments are enabled for the show.

Publishing Schedule
The Pop Candy podcast schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The file is in an mp3 format and should be playable on all mp3 enabled devices including iPods, Zunes, Mobile phones, and PSPs.

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used.  However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed from the blog page validates at Feedvalidator.org, but does not include iTunes tags.  The podcast feed from the RSS directory page would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org.  The feed was missing a channel description tag.  The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags.  The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-popcandy.mp3.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Pop Candy lists show in first result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Pop Candy lists show in first result when the podcast filter is used on the search.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
I checked five leading podcast directories.  Pop Candy was not listed in any of them.

Monetization
The show I heard did not have embedded ads.  The web page has inline ads.

Media Player
No online media player.  The podcast is available for streaming via Windows Media player using a wma file.

Sharable Player
There is an embeddable widget available that lists blog posts and has a podcast player built into it.  I could not get the player to play any podcasts.  The player also has a link to the show on iTunes.  No evidence that the player is being used to carry advertisements.

Production Quality
Pop Candy’s audio quality could be improved significantly.  The podcast needs to be normalized and leveled.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show.  The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple.  Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

PopCandy – Top  Recommendations

1. Add a flash based player to the blog page
2. Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
3. Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
4. Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
5. Change Album Art to 600×600
6. Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Imagine if you and your friends could star in a music video, famous movie clip, or commercial as realistically as if you were around for the shoot. Jonathan describes the company and the potential that its technology has to transform advertising and the audience relationship with movies, television and videogames.

In the interview, Jonathan describes his early start as a wunderkind discovered by SoCal VCs (0:00), his insight into the coming importance of personalization as he discovered the technology behind Big Stage (2:45), and how he helped move the technology to become consumer internet capable and fundable (7:05).

He talks about the current business, his monetization model through brands and content partners based on the technology’s dramatic impact on advertising effectiveness (11:35), and what the big media networks are seeing in terms of monetization and CPM rates (16:12). He also describes privacy considerations (17:40) and the other cool non-advertising stuff, like videogaming and short internet adventures, that Big Stage will be making possible (19:05).

Jonathan Strietzel is co-founder and chief creative officer of Big Stage. He brings 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the entertainment and technology industries, including founding Stritz Studios, a boutique special effects studio. He has also invented multiple systems for delivering digital advertising and currently holds a U.S. patent for his work in particle-based advertising. In addition, Jonathan has worked with numerous TV studios and Fortune 500 companies, including developing the highly publicized online clue delivery system for NBC’s “Treasure Hunters.” Jonathan graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelor of Science degree.

[tags]Digital Hollywood, Big Stage, Jonathan Strietzel, Virtual Reality, Avatar, 3D[/tags]

Imagine if anyone could have a personal conversation with Iron Man, the Michelin Man, or their great-great-great-great grandfather. Peter describes his new company and technology that is about to make these ‘holodeck’ scenarios a reality – at least the conversation part.

In the interview, Peter shares how he founded Virsona after being inspired by his desire to continue conversing with a recently deceased friend (1:21), and why the internet will accelerate the development of artificial intelligence based on his meeting with David Levy, a foremost AI expert (4:10).

He describes how we’ll be able to interact with Virsona’s technology shortly (6:00), including re-creating our own personalities (11:05). Here are some screen shots of the site:

Perhaps most importantly, Peter describes how Virsona’s platform can be leveraged by Hollywood, brands, and others to deepen relationships with consumers and audience (11:55). He even gets into some of the complexity and norms that may evolve with virtual personalities, especially the need to keep some information and aspects of our personalities more private, as well as the future capabilities we might see from virsonas (19:05).

Peter Hodge is CEO of Virsona Inc. Peter has worked with and for some of the biggest names in the Technology, Telecoms and Media industries over the last 20 years both in the US as well as globally. He brings significant experience to Virsona with over 20 years in technology including development, sales and management experience. Peter holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Greenwich, London and lives in Boca Raton, FL.

[tags]Digital Hollywood, Peter Hodge, Virsona, Interactive Media, Artificial Intelligence[/tags]

Revision3 states that their “expects professionally produced programming but wants it to be unexpected, edgy, smart and real.” They also understand the importance of a multi-device content strategy, stating that their audience “wants to watch shows whenever they want, wherever they are, and on whatever device they choose, including everything from a 70″ HDTV to an iPod or Cell phone.”

We used our best practice framework to evaluate Revision3’s user experience, content production, marketing distribution and monetization efforts. Our evaluation was limited to what we could evaluate from their website, their downloadable content and their RSS feeds.

Our overall impression is that Revision3 demonstrates many of the best practices Digital Podcast has identified and sets a standard of performance that other publishers should use as they benchmark their own practices.

Here’s the video podcast with our best practice review of Revision3

User Experience
Presentation of the Downloadable Media Category
Revision 3 does an excellent job of presenting its content portfolio. The home page is a rich directory view of the content and provides multiple ways for people to find the content they want. Show lists are provided as part of the navigation bar and as a directory panel on the top right of the home page.

Highlighted shows and recent episodes are well marketed on the page.

Show Homepage
Every show uses a standard format for presenting the show. The page is colorfully branded for the show, presents the most recent episode on the left panel and provides a show description panel on the right. Below the most recent episode are a listing of previous episodes with pictures and descriptions. The previous episodes are presented as one of three panels available to the user. The other two panels available through some nice use of ajax are subscription options and community.

Episode Detail Page
Every episode has a detail page that presents an attractive player that supports advertising overlays, show notes, subscription options, download options, embeddable code for sharing, links to other content you might like and links to the discussion about the episode.

RSS Links
Revision 3 presents a good range of subscription options. There are clear links for subscribing in iTunes, Zune and Miro (a free, open source internet video player). There are also feeds available for flash, Quicktime, mp3, WMV and Xvid. For most of these formats a variety of sizes are available. There is no 3gp format available for supporting cell phone video player standards.

Audience Interaction
There is strong support for audience interaction with the show via the community panel on each show page and the recent forum posts on the episode detail pages. This integration could be made tighter allowing interaction/commenting to happen right on the episode page. The page currently sends the user to the forums to add comments.

The site presents a good range of options for users to share the show with others including email and embeddable code so the player can be added to blogs or other social pages. There are also links directly to a number of social sites to help with sharing.

Media Player
The flash player offers options of low and high quality, volume controls and play controls for starting, pausing and moving within the video. The player also supports video overlays.

Playability
The online flash player started immediately. The site makes the content available in wide range of formats thereby supporting a wide range of devices. Downloads are available for Quicktime, mp3, WMV and Xvid. For most of these formats a variety of sizes are available. There is no 3gp format available for supporting cell phone video player standards, although the small m4v feed should play in most cell phone video players.

Creative/Production
Range of Content
Revision 3 offers a good range of content. It provides 16 different shows with a heavy emphasis on the technology and popular culture. Each show is presented in a uniform manner using Revision 3’s platform for presenting the shows.

Publishing Schedule
Shows are produced on a regular schedule with a standard release day for weekly shows. Revision 3 also publishes a release schedule showing releases by day of week and time. This helps the audience know when to check in for new content.

Production Quality
Video was good quality video.

Marketing
ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used. However, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags. There is room for improvement in utilizing the full capabilities of the ID3 tags.

Feed quality
Feeds for the show validate at Feedvalidator.org. RSS tags are used as designed and iTunes tags are well used. The item tags included image links and media RSS tags.

File Naming
File names are well used with a format of showname-episode number-date-size.format. For example, diggnation–0149–2008-05-08sigh–small.m4v

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Diggnation lists show in first result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Dignation lists show in first result.

Syndication
We checked five leading podcast directories and the show was listed in all directories.

Sharable Player
The show offers a player that can be embedded in blogs or social networking sites. No advertising on the player itself.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show. The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple. Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

Monetization
Advertising
The shows use a combination of pre-roll sponsor splash pages and video overlays for advertising. The web page has inline display ads.

Premium Content
No visible use of premium content monetization.

Sponsorship
Shows have sponsors. Splash pages are used at the beginning of the show to highlight the sponsor. The sponsors are also listed in the show notes with a paragraph of text about the sponsor.

Commerce/Merchandise
Revision3 does have a clothing store. DVD and ecommerce integration are opportunities for expanding monetization options.

Paid Syndication
No visible use of paid syndication.

Distribution

Revision3 appears to be using BitGravityas a content delivery network and to provide the onsite media player. Video started playing very quickly and smoothly even at high quality levels. Download speeds from Revision3’s site seem to be quite good and ran between 150 and 200 KB/second for me.

Revision 3 – Top Recommendations

1. Improve ID3 tags to add show descriptions, notes and album art
2. Increase the level of integration between comments and content so that people can comment on the show or episode pages without having to go to the forum section on the website.

[tags]podcasting, best practices, Revision3[/tags]

Our interest in the story was triggered by the announcement of the Origin Digital acquisition. We interviewed Origin Digital’s CEO Darcy Lorincz last year at Digital Hollywood and learned a bit about their efforts to automate the value chain.

Richard describes the new offering in Digital Podcast 49.

This is a new line of business for Accenture that complements their professional services business. With Digital Media Services, Accenture is working to provide an end to end solution for the value chain. The services cover five key areas. Asset management, transcoding to new formats, distribution of the content, commercial intelligence and digital rights management are all parts of the value chain. Accenture’s current offering covers the first three areas.

They see the market as being a potentially $1 billion addressable market and the current providers are highly fragmented. Richard says that the major media companies are looking for people who can bring both market expertise, global reach and secure financial backing.

Richard describes the benefits of the service being reduced investment costs, reduced complexity, reduced operating expenses and faster time to market.

The entrance of major players like Accenture into the automation of the digital supply chain is indicative of the increasing maturity of the digital media business and the exciting opportunities to bring supply chain thinking and technology to maximize the opportunity of digital media.

If you are interested in the real operations behind the digital media business this is a podcast worth listening to. In two to three years, these types of services have the ability to become the backbone of digital media as it grows into a significant business.

[tags]digital supply chain, Accenture[/tags]

I briefly caught up with Charlene Li after hearing her speak at Forrester Research’s Marketing Forum 2008 in Los Angeles.

In this podcast, Charlene talks about getting the book written, and her and Josh’s goals of helping marketers understand the wild world of social media and engage with consumers in the groundswell.

Charlene also describes how marketing is evolving from highly controlled one-way messaging to a much less controlled process of creating relationships with consumers. In particular, she outlines how one of the best-known and most successful consumer tech brands, Apple, breaks the rules for engaging the groundswell, and the risks that other brands face if they follow Apple’s lead.

[tags]Forrester 2008 Marketing Forum, Forrester Research, Charlene Li, Groundswell, Apple[/tags]

At the spring Digital Hollywood, I interviewed Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, to discuss the social news site.

Chris describes how Topix takes news feeds from a vast array of news sites and uses sophisticated algorithms to process the news into locations and categories. The result is the Topix news feed. Want to find local news just put in your zip code and you get a filter which presents news relating to your area.

The really interesting part about Topix is the conversation about the news. The site only provides the title and an abstract of the article along with a link to the original story. The title and abstract kick off the conversation. The more provocative the topic, the more conversations buzzes.

This use of news topics as social objects allows you to find other people who are interested in the things that you’re interested in and other local people who are really into talking about the news.

For those of us working in the social media business, Topix also provides some interesting lessons how generate a conversation. The key is to lower the cost of participation as much as possible. Topix starts with a very simple subject and abstract. They then make is super simple to start talking. Right below the topic is a comment box. No registration required, just put in a name, your comment, and a 4 character code and then you can leave your comment.

The result is a powerful social object that makes the conversation the focus of attention.

[tags]Topix, Chris Tolles, Social News, Digital Hollywood[/tags]

The book is about why brands need to have a personality, how to avoid being faceless and finding a way to add more authenticity into marketing.

Rohit describes to us how he came to write the book and what he wanted to accomplish. He describes what he means by personality and provides some concrete, actionable suggestions for how to use his ideas in your marketing work.

He argues that personality must be unique, authentic and talkable. We explore what he means by talkable and in the process he reveals a secret about the book that readers will want to know. To hear the secret you will have to listen to the podcast. Pay attention around the half-way point to hear the details.

Rohit also goes into detail about how he is using the ideas in his book to market the book. The ideas he shares are valuable for everyone with something to market. If you’re a CEO who wants to make your marketing more effective, a marketing manager who wants to make a difference, a blogger/podcaster who wants to grow your audience then the ideas and suggestions Rohit makes are worth paying attention too.

Remember be unique, be authentic, be talkable.

You can find out more about Rohit at Influential Marketing Blog and at the book’s web site at PersonalityNotIncluded.com.

You can buy the book at Amazon (affiliate link).

[tags]Rohit Bhargava, Personality Not Included[/tags]

In this podcast, we interview Murtaza Hussain, CEO of Peanut Labs. Our focus is on making money in social networks by understanding the opportunity to turn a community into an economy.

Before we dive into the interview, it’s worth explaining why this is an issue.

Facebook and MySpace have grown very large as social networking sites and white label services like Ning have also grown very popular. These sites have lots of users and lots of page views, but how to make social networking sites profitable is still an open question.

There has been a lot of activity trying to make advertising work on these sites, but despite the ability to segment and target effectively, CPM (the price paid per 1,000 impressions) and click through rates remain low. My experience has been that Google Adwords have been 100 times more effective in terms of click through rate as compared to the same ads on Facebook. (Note: I would be interested to hear other people’s experience on this issue. If you’ve tried both leave a comment.)

So how can social networking sites make money? I posted a theory a little while ago that argued that organizations need to get beyond impression based economics and move to community based economics. And what are the economics of communities? They are micro-economies where trade, commerce and personal interaction are all intermingled with each other. I pointed to an example of Second Life where this is really happening.

While I was at the Graphing Social conference a few weeks ago, I hear Murtaza speak on a panel about monetizing applications. He mentioned that he thought virtual currencies were an effective way to monetize social networks.

I wanted to know more. Andrew and I caught up with Murtaza late last week and interviewed him for Digital Podcast 45.

Murtaza has a background in social networking. He co-founded XuQa.com, a leading online casual gaming community, which was built to 2M+ users and profitability. His experience with making money on XuQa led him to co-found Peanut Labs.

The core insight he got from XuQa was that they could turn the community into an economy by introducing a virtual currency into the community. In XuQa’s case, the currency is virtual Peanuts. The more Peanuts you have the more stature you have in the community. Peanuts can also be used to play games and buy virtual gifts. To monetize the currency, Murtaza turned to online survey’s. If users take a survey, they get paid in Peanuts. XuQa in turn gets paid in real money. The net result is an exchange rate that puts real value on XuQa’s Peanut currency.

Murtaza has taken the idea and founded Peanut Labs to act as market maker for matching market research needs with with Facebook applications and others who have created virtual currency that can be used to compensate users for taking surveys.

Here’s an example taken from a Peanut Labs PDF of how it works:

1. A Gen Y Facebook user visits a favorite application, (fluff) Friends, which allows users to add, “care for” and “feed” a virtual pet as part of their Facebook profile. Facebook users trade “Munny” – Facebook’s virtual currency – for gifts and “pet food.”
2. (fluff)Friends promotes Peanut Labs’ surveys as a fun network activity. Promotion respondents complete a pre-survey profile questionnaire as a prerequisite to taking surveys.
3. (fluff)Friends survey participants who meet qualification criteria received highly targeted survey invitations, which additionally include qualifying questions that further enhance targeting. Upon completing the survey, they are paid with Facebook “Munny,” which can be “spent” on (fluff)Friends or other Facebook applications, for more social network fun.
4. The research firm receives real-time respondent data, often within hours of survey launch.

This is how to turn a community into a virtual economy that can make real money. I wonder when Facebook and MySpace will figure it out.

If you have questions or thoughts about how you can turn your online presence into a virtual economy leave a comment.

Click here follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/alexnesbitt

[tags]Peanut Labs, Murtaza Hussain, social networking, community based economics, virtual currency, virtual economy[/tags]

If anyone has a different take on this leave us some comments or make your own podcast answering the 17 questions.

1. How did podcasting come about?
2. Why do you think podcasting came to be in such a way and at such a time?
3. What were the pioneers motives behind the birth of podcasting?
4. What vacuum do you think podcasting covers on the web and in “traditional” media?
5. What makes podcasting so unique?
6. What does it contribute to the contemporary media landscape?
7. In comparison to other 2.0 instruments, what are its strong points?
8. Podcasting is radio or video also. Should we talk of vodcast or videopodcast?
9. Why does a podcaster make podcasts?
10. Is the voice itself important?
11. And the form itself, for example sound production?
12. What should a quality podcast be like?
13. Podcasting in other media. In relation to radio, what can it contribute?
14. What do you think about podcasts in the press?
15. Do you think podcasting has fulfilled the expectations it generated?
16. What fields take greater advantage of podcasting?
17. Have other fields been sufficiently explored?

[tags]podcast, podcasting, history of podcasting[/tags]

Fundamentally, we are entering a new era of media economics where supply is outstripping demand. We are on the verge of seeing what I believe will be hyper-deflation in impression based economics. There is simply too much supply and not enough demand. Consumers are increasingly unwilling to spend time watching ads to consume media. The alternatives for consumers are expanding every day and the media companies are struggling to keep up.

Media companies need to rethink their business models. They need to get beyond impression based business models and figure out community based business models that use media content as the centerpiece of social conversation. When the industry figures out the potential for communities to make make good money, I believe we will see the industry revive and go on to some remarkable things. Until then, look out. The hyper-deflation we are seeing in music will spread to video and if the industry does not adjust, it is in for a bad time.

Please let us know what you think.

[tags]media economics, podcast[/tags]

After a bit of reflection, these are my top 10 takeaways from the event.

1. Hollywood and Video Game Players were MIA. I went through the attendee list and could not find anyone in attendance from traditional media or big gaming companies like Disney/ABC, NBC Universal, CBS, Activision, EA etc. The only person from a traditional media company was a developer from Condenast. Given the amount of time people are spending on these social networks and the growth of social gaming, the social networks are perhaps some of the biggest competitive threats and opportunities for traditional media. I was shocked by the chasm between the techies and the media.
2. The social application space has gotten big fast and will get a lot bigger. Over the past 8 months, the Facebook application space has exploded and real companies have emerged to take advantage of the space. This is only going to get bigger as OpenSocial opens up more networks and data portability finally starts being a reality.
3. Social objects are at the center of healthy micro-communities. I had not thought about this before, but social networks are not just about looking at each other, talking to each other and helping each other. Social objects like books, movies, cars, etc. are powerful mechanisms for building networks that link together people who don’t know each other.
4. OpenSocial apps will grow rapidly in next six months. For the past few months, OpenSocial has been in a development mode. In the coming weeks, it will be released at MySpace an other places opening up huge new markets.
5. MySpace will get Facebook like functionality. I got this from listening to what seemed to be a subtle conversation about the differences in the platforms and concerns by the Facebook app developers that MySpace had been self expression oriented and that Facebook had been communication oriented. Whether true or not, it seems that the effect of the open APIs will be to make all of the social networks more alike through the integration of third party applications that plug functionality gaps. No one talked about this explicitly, but when I brought it up with some of the leading developers I would get knowing smiles, but no comments.
6. There’s money to be made, and advertising is only part of it. Virtual goods and virtual currencies are a very important part of the social business model. Advertising will play a big role, but it’s not the only way to monetize the communities that are being built by these applications.
7. Social shopping is coming soon. Facebook will add credit card functionality and with it will come social shopping. Look for this to emerge later this year.
8. Social networks are a powerful new force for fund raising. Beth Kanter showed that she could use social networking and social media to raise $200,000. The Obama campaign seems to be using it to raise huge amounts of money. Every organization that needs to raise money should be paying attention.
9. We need better data. The data we get now is ok, but we need more if we are going to be able to learn and drive innovation systematically. We need data beyond page views. We need data that reflects on not just users, but also social objects.
10. Social application development is a learnable skill. Stanford is teaching it and I’m sure other schools will too. Stanford was able to teach students to develop 50 applications and learned a lot by sharing experiences. This means that others can do this too. This is good news for traditional media as their content can be at the center of the social object, and a good social object is the basis for the good application. It’s also good news for organizations that need to raise money or that want to use social networking to build their relationships with other stakeholders.

[tags]gspwest08, graphing social, takeaways[/tags]

We cover some of the history of Wizzard and how they have brought together some of the most popular podcast hosting companies such as Libsyn and SwitchPod, and built a podcast advertising network to go with it.

The show focuses on podcast based advertising and in particular we discuss the two advertising campaigns Wizzard is running for the US Navy.

The first of those ran on 20 podcasts with wide distribution and focused on recruitment. The current campaign is much more focused and is running on 7 podcasts. It focuses on recruiting medical personnel.

We get into some good detail about how the process works, what Wizzard does and what podcasters have to do to make it all work. We talk numbers and Chris tells us how different ads support different CPMs, depending upon their placement and whether they are audio or video. Videos commands the highest CPMs running $5-7 to $20-35 depending upon whether it’s a pre-roll or a mid-roll. Audio runs at lower CPMs that range from $3-5 to $15-25 depending upon placement.

Chris explains how the revenue share works. The advertising agencies get their 15% off the top and then Wizzard and the podcasters split the rest 50-50. Wizzard pays the sales force and covers the costs of setting up and running the campaign.

Wizzard published that they supported over one billion downloads last year from the over 8,500 podcasts that use their hosting services. Some have questioned how that could be, so we ask Chris to help us verify those numbers and to understand how 8,500 podcasts produce so many downloads. Chris explains how they count downloads and filter out the spiders and bots. He says that there are some blockbuster podcasts that do really high volumes and just as in other media forms there is a long tail of podcasters, so looking at mean based average per podcast just does not make sense. It’s the old 80-20 rule once again. Chris also clarifies that some recent problems with reporting to podcasters has nothing to do with how the count their download figure.

Chris ends the show by providing some tips for podcasters – The one to remember most is that if you think you want to advertise in your podcast someday, start tagging them now so that ad inserts are easy to do and you don’t have to go back and re-edit your catalog.

It’s good to see organizations like Wizzard taking up the flag and promoting podcasting. Wizzard along with a few others is taking the risk to build the platforms that we need to scale the downloadable media business. We wish them well on their mission to help marketers advertise on an iPod (or a Zune for you Zune fans.)

[tags]Wizzard Media, podcast advertising, podcast hosting, downloadable media[/tags]

Here’s the mp3 it made for me:

And you can see the RSS it created for me here.
http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/5628245193

While I was a little disappointed in the sound quality, I found the experience so simple and easy that even my Mom could do this.

Ease of use breakthroughs like this open up whole new possibilities. Need to record that interview you’re doing, call Cinch. Need to report from the field, call Cinch. The instantaneous nature of it is fantastic.

I’m excited to see this. Kudos to BTR and their new VP of Product Development, Kris Smith of Croncast fame.

Via Twitter and Scripting News

[tags]cinch, cinchcast, Blog Talk Radio, phone call podcast, mobile podcasting[/tags]

The USC Marshall School of Business is an important part of the University with programs that run the gamut from undergraduate to graduate business programs. USC Marshall has over 5,700 students, numerous graduate programs and 70,000 alumni. The University has been very active in using social media to enhance their communication programs and we thought the world ought to know more about how large organizations can use these new tools to engage and activate their respective community’s.

David was kind enough to spend about an hour with us describing how USC Marshall is using social media, how they manage the process and decide what to pursue. USC Marshall is on YouTube with USCMarshall channel, it’s on iTunes with it’s own podcast channel and it’s adding social networking capabilities to it’s website. We discuss some of the ways they are coordinating communications across the channels to maximize the returns from the long tail of PR. We also have a great discussion about objectives and the decision making processes as it relates to social media.

David’s experience with communications for both businesses and universities provides a unique perspective on the opportunities and the challenges of using social media for communicating and building communities. If you are interested in using social media for corporate or not-for-profit communications and PR this is the podcast for you.

[tags]USC, Marshall School of Business, social media, David Bloom[/tags]