PopCandy is a blog about popular culture that also publishes an audio podcast.  The podcast focuses on music and interviews and the podcasts are intermingled with blog posts.  I liked the content that was produced as a supplement to the blog.  However, there is lots of room for improvement in many aspects of the overall user experience and presentation of the PopCandy podcast.

 

 Pop Candy Podcast Review [6:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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

In Digital Podcast 52, Andrew interviews Jonathan Strietzel, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Stage, whose breakthrough technology allows users to create and integrate life-like 3-D avatars of themselves into movies, videogames, commercials and other digital video content using just three digital face photos.

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]

In Digital Podcast 51, Andrew interviews Peter Hodge, CEO of Virsona, about Virsona’s new artificial intelligence technology that can bring any personality to life.

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 is a new media company that describes itself as a “TV network for the web”. They publish technology related video shows such as Diggnation, TekZilla, popSiren and about a dozen other shows.

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]

In Digital Podcast 49, we interview Richard Cottrell, Chief Executive Officer of Accenture’s newly formed Digital Media Services business about automating the digital supply chain. Richard describes Accenture’s planned offerings and how acquisitions like Digiplug and Origin Digital play a role in building out the services.

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]

Charlene Li is an Analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the new book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, which she wrote with Josh Bernoff. Charlene is one of the leading voices in the area of Social Computing and Web 2.0.

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]

Do you like to talk about the news? Want to find other people in your neck of the woods that also like to talk about the news? If so, you should check out Topix.

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]

In Digital Podcast 46, we interview Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Marketing for Oglivy’s 360 Digital Influence group, about his new book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back.

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]

I received an inquiry from a PhD candidate at International University of Catalonia, in Barcelona. The questions focused on the history of podcasting, what’s special about podcasting and what’s next for podcasting. He had 17 questions which I have listed below. I put together this podcast to share my take on the brief history of podcasting and rest of his questions.

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]