I am doing some research on where people go to find information. Please take one minute to participate in an anonymous, multiple choice, five-question survey.
It will help make your day complete.
2008.01.29
Prepare for the end of the original Podshow contracts
The original Podshow contracts will be coming up for renewal in the coming months. If the rumour mill is accurate, we should expect a mass exodus of podcasters from the network. This will light up the ‘glass is half-empty’ folks, giving them something else to point to as being a sign of the end of podcasting.
The rumoured exodus of podcasters from Podshow speaks to the management style of the network and not the state of the medium. Many of the originals are still podcasting and, if the rumour mill is to be believed, those who aren’t have stopped because of their experiences. I’d guess that those who have put their podcasts on hold have done so to ride out restrictive and unrewarding contracts.
Podshow had great ideas and a lot of money to spend on them. There’s been a lot of opportunity for the company to innovate not only for itself, but for the podcast community at large. They used some of that money to develop the podshow site (which looks eerily like the manic sites of the mainstream media networks that Podshow was trying to distinguish itself from). There are many ways the money could have been spent (hindsight is 20-20 and it’s easy to be a critic, right?). From where I sit, Podshow’s single greatest asset is the Podsafe Music Network; a good resource that stemmed from a great idea. A little more thought, energy and money could have made it amazing.
Don’t be alarmed as news of an exodus from Podshow unfolds. Many companies make mistakes (think Apple before the second coming of Steve Jobs); many industries take their lumps (think the bursting of the dot com bubble in the late 90′s). That doesn’t mean the companies and the industries won’t thrive in the end.
2008.01.28
Challenge number 3: Take advantage of the silence
Though I don’t have the facts and figures in front of me, I’ve been told and have experienced for many years that the winter months are mentally and emotionally hard on a lot of people; the reduced hours of daylight, the long stretches between holiday weekends, the increased workload and the absence of neighbours (people you see regularly during the summer months).
Similarly, in social media, there’s frequently long periods of silence on blogs, podcast and social networking sites that can wear us down. Sometimes those silences can be understood. In most cases they happen for no apparent reason.
Your challenge for this week is to accept these periods of quiet as opportunities to take pressure off of yourself instead of stepping it up. And, knowing that those silences can be deafening, take a few minutes to comment on one blog you follow closely and another that you’ve just discovered. Make the comment strong and on topic to make the site’s creator feel that their content means something to you.
If you have any questions feel free to email me, markblevis@gmail.com. Your next challenge will be available next week at markblevis.com.
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