podcasting - ReadWriteWeb

What SoundCloud's Massive New Funding Means

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:24:42 -0800

What becomes possible when technology cuts out the middlemen in music publishing and distribution? A lot of very strange and sometimes wonderful things.

Berlin based music and audio sharing network SoundCloud has raised a reported $50m more venture capital from the super prestigious Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mike Butcher at TechCrunch Europe reported today. The company had raised about $16m in two previous rounds. If you're not familiar with SoundCloud, now is a good time to learn about the site. It's a vibrant and innovative community, about to either blow up huge or go down in flames with the change that comes from a large and high-priced investment like this.

]]> With the funding, the esteemed analyst Mary Meeker (right), who is famous for making data-packed presentations each year about the state of the web, joins the company's Board of Directors. Meeker left Morgan Stanley to join Kleiner-Perkins in November, 2010. She also sits on the Board of Directors at payments fireball Square.

Meeker's 2011 presentation on the state of the internet addressed a trend of companies growing strong in one small market and then exploding out onto the global stage; she provided 4 examples of that trend and SoundCloud was the only one of the four not yet a Kleiner portfolio company. (Waze, Shazam and Spotify were the others.) Meeker also mentioned SoundCloud in discussing her belief that sound is going to be a next major area of innovation, eg. Siri, Spotify and SoundCloud.

Meeker loves mobile and while SoundCloud's mobile apps are already good, it will be interesting to see whether and how her leadership inspires further development in global mobile applications.

What SoundCloud Means

SoundCloud is an inspiring community of audio producers and fans, leveraging new technology like widespread smart phones, cheap data storage and transfer, within a great user experience. It's reminiscent of the best things about YouTube in its early days, but it's different.

One good way to get started finding good things on SoundCloud is via the official staff collection of highlights from the site. That's where I found the WildEarthVoices account, whose recordings and favorites from other accounts are all about ambient sound recordings from nature. SoundCloud has all kinds of sounds on it though; from podcasts to thunderstorms to electronic music, music made electronically and music you might call electronica. (There's a lot of electronic music on SoundCloud.)

SoundCloud feels like the kind of creative place that the Internet was meant to be.

Like YouTube, SoundCloud hasn't been without controversy either. Last February the company began sending take-down notices to remix artists who its algorithm alleged were using copyrighted materials and presumably without permission. Critics said it was a stab in the back to the remix artists that had helped SoundCloud grow so much in its early days. The site is definitely heavily used by electronic musicians.

Not all of SoundCloud's experiments work out either, SoundCloudLabs was an effort to highlight cutting edge apps that seems to have lost steam over the past Summer.

None the less, the SoundCloud community appears to be small but growing fast. Traffic analyst firm Compete reports 2.3 million unique visitors per month, up nearly 2X year over year. SoundCloud self-reported 5 million registered users in June. It grew to 9 million as 2011 drew to a close. Pandora, for context, has 80 million registered users.

The company only added web and iOS one-click recording at the end of 2010. The acclaimed iPad app came out in October. The website still doesn't offer RSS feeds of published files.

There's something really exciting about checking the Activity stream on the SoundCloud iOS app and finding something new, then clicking through to listen with other people to music that was just posted.

SoundCloud was founded five years ago this month by CTO Eric Wahlforss, who has degrees in Philosophy, Industrial Economics, Computer Science and Business Administration and CEO Alexander Ljung, who studied marketing and Human Computer Interaction. Both are Swedish. ReadWriteWeb founder Richard MacManus did an in-depth interview with Ljung about the company's prospects this October.

From inline commenting to smooth integration with 3rd party social networks, the user experience at SoundCloud is fun. Discovery can be a little challenging but exploration is easy. It would be nice if SoundCloud would sync with my Scrobbled musical history at Last.fm and offer me immediate personal recommendations.

AnnoySPASMcrack by ellefläädt

The service hosts up to 120 minutes of audio for free, then offers annual subscriptions for more storage, advanced analytics and promotional materials priced at between €29 ($37) per year through €59 ($76) per month for the unlimited pro plus package.

The site offers a huge quantity of Creative Commons licensed audio and loves to interview the users of that and other content.

The SoundCloud API supports an app gallery with more than 250 apps listed and probably an even larger array of independent projects, from things like urban music catalogue CitySounds.fm to the collaborative mashup art project Instagrambient.

SoundCloud feels like the kind of creative place that the Internet was meant to be. For that to gain a big infusion of cash and the support of some of the world's leading tech investors will hopefully mean more of the same and even better for the SoundCloud community.

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Is SoundCloud The Next YouTube? [Interview]

Richard MacManus — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:27:29 -0800

One of the talking points of Mary Meeker's presentation at Web 2.0 Summit yesterday was the future of sound. Meeker claimed that sound would soon be bigger than video on the Web. Specifically, she name-checked Spotify, Siri and SoundCloud. Siri is already a part of Apple, but the other two startups are independent. One of them could well be the next YouTube, if sound ends up having as big an impact on the Web as video. But that's a very big if...

Immediately after Meeker's presentation, I sat down with SoundCloud's young co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung. I wanted to find out just how Ljung and the SoundCloud team plan to take their service to the mainstream.

]]> Why did Mary Meeker say that sound would be bigger than video on the Web? Alex Ljung told me there are two reasons: the increasing penetration of smartphones that have microphones; and audio being something that can be consumed "in parallel" with other activities (unlike video) - for example, listening to SoundCloud in your car.

SoundCloud's Exponential Growth

Ljung described SoundCloud as "a platform to enable anybody to create and share sounds." The service was built in Ljung's native Germany and launched at the end of 2008.

SoundCloud had "steady exponential growth from the start," Ljung said, citing about 7.5 million users now. About 5 million of those signed up in the past 12 months.

At last month's Facebook F8 event, SoundCloud launched its latest big feature: deep integration into Facebook's new design. It has also been busy partnering with other services, such as integration into a music-making desktop app called Cakewalk.

But How Will SoundCloud Go Really Big?

Despite SoundCloud's impressive growth, it will need to find a way to bring in many more millions of users in order to go mainstream.

SoundCloud's vision is certainly big. "Sound is more than just music," said Ljung. Although, music was where the initial traction came from on SoundCloud - musicians uploading demos, mashups and even entire albums.

I pointed out that the biggest audio publishing trend so far on the Web - podcasting - hasn't gone mainstream. At least not at the scale of online video. So, I asked Ljung how SoundCloud plans to get more people to upload and consume audio on the Web.

He replied that podcasting is a specific delivery format and it "somehow set the rules" that podcasts should be relatively long and professionally created. Which created "too high of a barrier" for many people.

However, the proliferation of smartphones, with their high quality microphones and recording apps (like SoundCloud), has led to an increase of short-form audio. It's opened up online audio to more casual users.

Consumption & Sharing of Audio

SoundCloud never wanted to be just another podcasting platform, but (in Ljung's words) to be "sound sharing the way it should've been." SoundCloud users can - and do - upload any form of audio to the Web, from music demos to 1-2 minute soliloques and even snippets of phone conversations.

To get to the level of YouTube, though, there will need to be a huge increase in consumption of SoundCloud content. The Facebook partnership, along with integration into other discovery platforms, is going to be crucial. But Ljung stressed that the SoundCloud platform itself already encourages its users to interact with content.

Each sound recording has a visual timeline bar and people can leave comments anywhere on the timeline. For example, at the 1:05 mark of a five minute recording, there may be a particularly striking piece of audio which attracted a lot of comments. So you might want to only listen to that specific part of the recording.

Only time will tell whether SoundCloud can really make it big, but its exponential growth so far has been impressive. And it's a great product. I use it regularly to listen to music, although I haven't yet fully explored its other use cases. Have you used SoundCloud? Let us know in our comments whether you think it will go to the next level.

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Music Pioneer Launches Partnership for Digital Radio on Demand

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:22:53 -0800

The manufacturers of the Grace Digital Radio have teamed with audio industry disruptor Michael Robertson and his newest startup, DAR.FM (Digital Audio Recorder). The integration of the two technologies means that owners of the Grace hardware can now use the DAR website to queue up talk radio shows from all over the country, the dial and the 24-hour broadcast schedule to be played on-demand, including with fast-forward and rewind functionality.

"Radios have historically been speakers where broadcasters control what blares out," Robertson writes on his blog today about his first partnership with a digital radio manufacturer. "A new day is upon us where listeners are wrestling control away from broadcasters and can now control what comes out of their radios. "

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Robertson, whose controversial career is best known for music locker and lawsuit magnet MP3.com, launched DAR.FM in February. He contends that this new service is wholly in the clear legally, but it's already come under some criticism for free-loading on the streaming costs faced by the radio stations he enables consumers to record.

Once again, however, Robertson has created a service that's sure to please consumers. Making talk radio a media more under control of listeners sounds cool and may work better at popularizing digital audio content than podcasting has, with its user experience challenges. ITunes, the dominant podcast subscription technology available, does not make the whole experience much fun.

DAR works on a variety of other devices including this one. Competitors include RadioShift from Rogue Amoeba, StreamRipperX and Radioshift.

Could technology like DAR, in a variety of consumer technologies like the Grace Digital Radio, lead to a convergence of traditional radio and podcasting in a more compelling offering? I think it might.

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Google Beat is the "Best Week Ever" for Web Search Trends

Chris Cameron — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:20:00 -0800

If you haven't discovered Google Trends yet, you're missing out on some of the Web's most interesting data and information. At any point you can see what searches are trending on Google and can use this data to compare the popularity of trends over time with nifty graphs. It's fun to play around with - but wouldn't it be nice if someone spoon-fed you the popular trends, explaining them each week in a short-form video podcast format? Luckily this is precisely what Google will now be doing with a new weekly video series called Google Beat.

]]> Each week, using Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, Google Beat will briefly discuss the week's hot web search trends. In the inaugural episode, Google's Anne Espiritu explains how "salmonela" and "eggs recall" were among the top searches this week. Also among the top searches this week was "jimena navarette," who won the Miss Universe pageant.

"Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week," the company says on its official blog. "Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what's popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October's "balloon boy" or Steven Slater). We're looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal."

It's interesting to see Google get into the podcast world. Weekly tech wrap-up shows seem to be all the rage lately, with Leo Laporte's "This Week in Tech" podcast being one of the longest-running. Unfortunately for Google, Leo already has a very popular "This Week in Google" podcast which is hosted by What Would Google Do? author Jeff Jarvis and Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani.

Investor and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis took the "This Week in" brand of podcast to the next level with his podcast network of the same name (which he uses with Leo's permission, of course). Google's new show brings some very high production quality to the genre, and hopefully it's just the first of many more shows to come from Google.

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From Your Mouth to a Thousand Ears, New Apps Make Mobile Podcasting Easy

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:37:23 -0800

Imagine if Tom Paine, or Benjamin Franklin, or Emma Goldman had the power to cast their passing thoughts, while walking down the street, to thousands or millions of people all around the world, with ease, in minutes. They would expel the building material of a mason, wouldn't they?

That power is now in all of our hands, thanks to a new class of mobile applications that's maturing very quickly. Mobile podcasting apps are now powerful, easy to use, free and tied to big social networks for distribution. The latest to hit the scene is Cinch, from BlogTalk Radio, which landed in the Android marketplace this morning after several months on the iPhone.

]]> Cinch is a relatively simple app, and it has its technical issues on occasion, but it's absolutely revolutionary and so far could be the best in its class. Users launch the app, hit record, speak into their phone, press stop, give their recording a title, aim it at their Twitter or Facebook friends, and then hit publish. Within minutes the recording is uploaded to the Cinch servers and a link to listen is pushed out to the designated social networks.

I've been using Cinch on the iPhone for months now, to record my thoughts about art and the internet, about writing, or the soundscape from the train station in my home town. I marvel, every time, at the fact that I can publish my thoughts so effortlessly in audio out to the world now, from wherever I am. Just like blogging made text publishing and distribution more accessible and democratic than it had ever been before in human history, mobile audio publishing apps like this are truly world changing. The availability of Cinch on Android is an important event.

Cinch isn't the only mobile podcasting app available for today's smartphones. AudioBoo is another one that you might enjoy on the iPhone. It's far more attractive visually, has more features, more users and appears to have fewer bugs. It has a 5 minute time limit on audio recording, though. That's very inconvenient, as the timer is usually out of sight up against my ear. I also regularly have 6 or 7 minute long thoughts. I haven't hit the time limit on Cinch yet.

Social media apps come and social media apps go, more launch every day than anyone can keep track of, but some of them are worth taking pause and considering the implications of. The power of instant, mobile, global audio publishing in your pocket, for free? That really means something.

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Company Receives Patent for Podcasting

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:34 -0800

VoloMedia, a podcast analytics, advertising, and distribution company, just received a patent for "providing episodic media," including podcasts. According to the company, which filed for the patent in November 2003, U.S. Patent 7,568,213 covers all episodic media downloads, not just the RSS-dependent downloads that power today's podcasts. VoloMedia CEO Murgesh Navar says that the company doesn't plan to go after individual podcasters, but that the company plans to "work collaboratively with key participants in the industry." We do wonder, however, if VoloMedia can really claim to have invented podcasting in 2003, given that the concept was already under development by Dave Winer and others in late 2000 and early 2001.

]]> The only company mentioned specifically in the announcement is Hulu (as an example for a content platform that might one day offer episodic, downloadable content), but in an interview with NewTeeVee's Chris Albrecht, Navar also revealed that the company is already in talks with Apple and a number of TV networks.

Prior Art?

While the patent was filed in November 2003, it is not clear when exactly VoloMedia argues to have invented podcasts. In his blog post, however, Navar argues that this was "almost a year before the start of podcasting." We have wondered about this timeline, however. Using enclosures in RSS feeds was first publicly written about by Dave Winer in January 2001. Indeed, the system for downloading and distributing podcasts in Winer's "Payloads for RSS" from 2001 looks quite similar to VoloMedia's patent. When we spoke to Winer earlier today, he also pointed us to an early podcast by Chris Lydon from July 2003.

The podcasting movement only really picked up steam in 2004, when moving downloaded files to iPods (which were also just coming of age) and other MP3 players became a lot easier thanks to numerous developers who wrote the first podcast clients.

Looking at the patent, it quickly becomes clear that VoloMedia laid out the fundamentals of podcasting in great detail, including how to synchronize content between mobile devices and PCs. Navar argues that in November 2003, it wasn't obvious that users would start to download episodic content. Given that Dave Winer first met with Adam Curry to discuss the concept in December 2000, however, we really have to wonder if this claim would hold up under greater scrutiny. We asked VoloMedia for a statement and will update this post once we hear back from them.

More to Come

For VoloMedia, which just switched gears towards a stronger focus on serving ads after it fired its sales team, this patent obviously comes at a good time. With some luck, the company will either be bought by another podcasting company interested in the company's intellectual property (and Navar says that more patents are in the pipeline), or it will receive a nice influx of cash based on licensing deals with other companies in the podcasting business. That is, of course, if the patent really holds up...

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Favorite Podcasts of the ReadWriteWeb Community

Richard MacManus — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:25:05 -0800

Podcasting has had its challenges over the past couple of years and we even once questioned whether it would survive! But at heart we at ReadWriteWeb love listening to podcasts, nearly as much as we love reading blogs. So we decided to find out the favorite podcasts of our readers and writers. We put the call out on Twitter and got a great response. The results are below, together with the favorites of the ReadWriteWeb authors.

We'd like to continue the discussion in the comments - and also tell us how you listen to podcasts these days. I usually listen to them while walking the dog. But everyone is different, so tell us your preferred podcast listening method.

]]> Also @drnormal from Strange Love Live wanted to know: which do you prefer, audio or video podcasts? Let us know in the comments.

Richard MacManus

NPR: All Songs Considered, plays all the latest music; check out their review of the top music of '08, it's must-listen for music geeks
Live in Concert from All Songs Considered
ReadWriteTalk (iTunes link), our own podcast channel, hosted by the awesome Sean Ammirati
RWW Live, ReadWriteWeb's bi-weekly podcast show hosted by Sean, featuring a few of the RWW authors and special guests
The Semantic Web Gang, Paul Miller and his Semantic Web crew

Marshall Kirkpatrick (walking the dog while listening to podcasts is a common theme here at RWW)

StackOverflow (and many other things on ITConversations)
TWiT: This Week in Tech
Gilmor Gang
NY Times Backstory
RedMonk Podcasts

Sarah Perez

CNET's Buzz Out Loud ("my hands down favorite")
Diggnation
CNET's Loaded
TWiT: This Week in Tech
The Social Geeks (featuring Sarah)

Frederic Lardinois

Slate Gabfest with @jdickerson
NPR On the Media
Nature Podcast
FLOSS Weekly (Free Libre Open Source Software)
New Yorker Out Loud

Lidija Davis doesn't listen to podcasts, but she participates in one - The Drilldown.

10 Favorite Podcasts From the RWW Community

We got a great response from our friends on Twitter (follow @rww on Twitter if you want to participate in future polls). A number of podcasts were mentioned multiple times. Here are 10 of those that randomly caught our eye:

This American Life, presented by Chicago Public Radio
For Immediate Release, a show about PR and tech
TED Talks, brain food
You Look Nice Today, "an audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene"
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR quiz show
KEXP song of the day, Seattle radio station which has a selection of great podcasts
Six Pixels of Separation, podcast of Twist Image, a Digital Marketing agency
MacCast, Mac fans computer show
BBC Friday night Comedy, "a satirical take on the week's news with the cream of UK comedy talent."
Strange Love Live, which @dieselboi described as "a fun, insightful and sexy podcast"; our own Marshall Kirkpatrick was on it recently.

Below is the full unstructured list from friends of RWW! Sorry there are no links, but generally you can copy and paste an item into Google to find out more...

Kate LaFrance: Stephen Pierce's blog dtalpha.com.

Roger Harris: Nature magazine, Scientific American, NPR

Terri Ellman: This American Life and Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.

Kenny Hyder: the maccast & atomfilms

Mike Billeter: Marvel's own Mighty Marvel Podcast and The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons (ESPN).

Rob Inskeep: Killer Innovations - http://bit.ly/killer and, on a lighter note The Instance - http://bit.ly/Instance

Mike Keliher: You Look Nice Today, On the Media, Shill, Inside PR, For Immediate Release

eco2oh: Cool Hunting Video (brilliant art/culture/design snack) Tiki Bar TV, Eban's Lounge Podcast Selection, Dishy Mix

Joseph Miller: This American Life, TWiT, Stanford Entrepreneurship.

Simon Young: http://forimmediaterelease.biz, http://jaffejuice.com/, http://twistimage.com/blog, and of course http://ijump.tv :)

ipevo: Inside Mac Radio

itamarw: The Bugle (Times Online), BOL

Mike Robinson: BBC Friday night comedy http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/... TED Talks, always interesting... http://www.ted.com/index.ph...

kitalooclef: More Hip than Hippie, You Look Nice Today, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Real Time with Bill Mahr, The World's Tech podcast

Paul Laroquod: ill doctrine; Cult of UHF; Quirks & Quarks; Art & Story; Sessler's Soapbox.

Andrew Korf: Ian Masters on KPFK.org: http://www.ianmasters.org/

Rob Cottingham: For Immediate Release, Lullabot, Six Pixels of Separation, CBCRadio Comedy Factory, Manager Tools

Kevin Marks: RadioLab; In Our Time; This American Life; BBC Friday night Comedy; On The Media more at my last.fm account kevinmarks

Daniel Howe: The Father Bob Show - He's a disgruntled elderly priest from Melbourne who likes to speak his mind http://is.gd/bQ92

Iben Rodriguez: WNYC-RadioLab, VODcars, PBCC-Sunday-Sermons, ScienceFriday, and Berkeley-Groks.

chase squires: Marketplace ( http://marketplace.publicra... ) and the Stuck in the 80s podcast ( http://blogs.tampabay.com/80s/ )

Adam Ritchie: sound opinions from american public media, nyt popcast, npr all songs considered, boston globe page one, rocketboom

Erin | Books in 140: This American Life, CBC's Writers & Company, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker podcasts

Steve O'Hear: TWiT, phonesshow (prev smartphoneshow), mobile with the guru

Charles: "The Lew Rockwell Show" http://lewrockwell.com/podc...

Kim Gaskins: Savage Love http://is.gd/2rG0

Ethan Watrall: iFanboy, Quirks & Quarks, Wormwood, Leviathan Chronicles, OnBoardGames

Kevin Pedraja: This American Life, Fresh Air, NPR Morning News Summary, KEXP Song of the Day, Beautiful Places in HD

Kiran Max Weber: Future Tense, Core Intuition, gdgt, StackOverflow and TWiT. Gillmor Gang would have made it but think it died.

Andrew Korf: http://ecorner.stanford.edu...

Mike Maney: "Open Sources" podcast from @mjasay and @daveofdoom at http://www.opensources.com/

mike dunn: http://www.podiobooks.com, http://www.somethingtobedes, http://www.thebitterestpill, http://www.evilgeniuschronicles, http://www.deltaparkproject.

Hanna Wiszniewska: Changesurfer Radio http://bit.ly/OF7d, Pop!Casts http://bit.ly/liEk, TEDtalks http://bit.ly/vUTq

Tony Bain: venture-voice

alexislyon: Coffee Break Spanish!

McMatt: Sci. Am's "60 Second..." series. Informative, leads to other info and very chipper. http://tinyurl.com/5vgr79

Shaun Trennery: Twit, No Agenda, ZA Tech Show, Tech 5

Sarah Wood: Diggnation, Totally Rad Show, The Stealth Mac, We Need Girlfriends, KEXP song of the day

aussiesasha: social blend @ mixxingbowl.com :)

Sea-Fever Consulting: For Immediate Release, Six Pixels of Separation, No Agenda, You Look Nice Today, Just One More Book

Will King: TEDTalks, FastCompany.TV, MacCast, NPR Planet Money, KRCW LeShow

Sherif Mansour: 1) The Scoop (Aussie) http://tinyurl.com/594dwx 2) Instantiate Podcast (Aussie) http://instantiate.platform... , 3)TWiT (US)

arikhanson: For Immediate Release; Marketing Over Coffee

Chris from Germany: http://www.podcast.de/podcast/8995/Sci_xpert_-_Leschs_Universum
it's in German, a Munich university professor, over 30 parts, 15mins each

Steve Spalding: You Look Nice Today - Merlin Mann's podcast, Buzz Outloud, TWiT

Aaron Hockley: TWIP, TackSharp, Hanselminutes, .NET Rocks

Bram Pitoyo: strangelovelive

Chris O'Rourke: StrangeloveLive, Webb Alert, The Microsoft IT Manager Podcast

Chris Judson: FOSS Weekly, Reduced Shakespeare Co, YouLookNiceToday, Speaking of Faith, Wait, wait...don't tell me (last two are NPR types)

Michele: The Moth, Splendid Table, This American Life

dieselboi: Strangelovelive is a fun, insightful and sexy podcast

Brett Roberts: TED, Ask a Ninja

dekkerd: GDGT weekly, TwiT, loaded, Buzz out loud, geekbrief.tv

Shelley O'Connor: www.polyweekly.com

Jon Burg: FIR, Six Pixels of Separation, Cranky Geeks, NBC News, Naaleh

Finally, if you're wondering who is the guy who got a podcasting RSS tattoo, it is Drew Olanoff!

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Study: Fastest Growing US Companies Rapidly Adopting Social Media

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:15:23 -0800

A one year follow up on a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US has found that familiarity with and use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking has skyrocketed in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007. 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research performed the study for Inc. Magazine and their findings confirm what previous studies have argued as well: social media use is now a major, mainstream activity.

]]> The Findings

The study was written up on Robin Good's excellent blog Master New Media.

According to the study's authors, "26% of respondents in 2007 felt that social media is "very important" to their business and marketing strategy. That figure rose to 44% in approximately one year. It is clear that this group of fast-growing companies considers the use of social media as a central part of its strategic plan."

Social networking is the most familiar of the technologies. In 2007, wikis were the least familiar but they have since leapfrogged over podcasting.

It's notable that the study's authors found much more extensive use and growth in use in the fastest growing 500 US companies than they found in the Fortune 500, the largest companies. It would be a logical fallacy to argue that the fastest growing companies are growing fastest because of their use of social media, but it could be a factor. It could also be the case that insurgent companies have a greater incentive and proclivity to experiment than incumbent industry leaders.

Three interesting charts from the study can be found below, followed by links to related studies and a few thoughts.

Related recent studies include Universal McCann's findings that half of adults in the US now use some form of social media online and the April prediction from Forrester Research that "Enterprise 2.0" will become a $4.6 billion industry over the next 5 years.

What does this mean? It means that when you tell people you write, read or listen to blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks and online video - if they give you a funny look, it is now officially them that's a freak, not you. Are these tools really as useful as so many people appear to believe they are? That's another question, but at least we're getting a healthy number of people and businesses trying them out.

Another relevant data point to keep in mind might be analyst firm Gartner's "Hype Cycle," though. If this graph accurately expresses business sentiment then adoption doesn't equal satisfaction. Qualitative analyst studies like this are always very controversial, though.

See Master New Media for the full write up on the Inc. 500 report.

Top image from Robert Sanzalone.

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Comment of the Day: Oprah, Jericho, & The Mainstreaming of Online Media

Richard MacManus — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:50:16 -0800

We have another 2 Comment of the Day prizes to give away and both of them relate to the mainstreaming of online media (specifically video and audio). The first is from our post Is Oprah Going to Save the Internet?, in which Marshall Kirkpatrick noted that Oprah Winfrey's use of podcasting, Silverlight and Skype could be "a turning point for the [Web] platforms of the future." Via trackback, Jason Kaneshiro from Webomatica suggested that the 'Oprah Effect' is so important that Steve Jobs should consider partnering with Oprah in order to sell more iPods and AppleTVs.

]]> Our second winning comment comes from our post Internet Fandom: Still Not Ready for Primetime, where Josh Catone reported that online TV show Jericho has been cancelled. Josh wondered: "why doesn't a large online following mean success offline?"

David Dworsky responded: "When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different?" His full comment is below.

Congratulations Jason and David, you've each won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

"When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different? People like to watch quality video - it doesn't matter if they use a Mac Book Pro or a Sony Bravia screen. The distribution channel is one thing and the content is another.

To have a rating system that's only based on TV viewers is plain stupid. Some people like to watch on their computer, some like to sit in the TV sofa, some like to use the ipod, some use Youtube - it's the choice of the individual.

To separate the content as TV- versus Internet-video is just an old habit from a business that haven't been fast enough to embrace new technology. It's like saying that the text in a newspaper is more worth than the same text on the newspaper website. Internet fandom is primetime (or at least it should be)."

Oprah image via The Last Podcast

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Is Oprah Going to Save the Internet?

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:58:18 -0800

Don't look now but Oprah is at the top of the iTunes podcasting chart. Her discussion series with writer Eckhart Tolle is bringing not just podcasting to her huge audience, she's doing a ten week "class" by live video with a Silverlight player and Skype discussions. It's events like this that change the technology landscape.

]]> None of the previously planned scenarios in which these technologies could have been popularized have proven so viable. Using Skype to call people selling things on eBay? Not so much. Could live coverage of the Olympics help Microsoft's Silverlight catch up with the huge installed base of Adobe Flash users? No, people in the US at least don't care that much about the Olympics. They care about Oprah.

Before readers let the snark fly, let it be said that Oprah Winfrey is a deeply serious woman. Her brilliance isn't just cynical manipulation of unthinking middle aged women. Her book club, for example, brings truly great literature to millions. Now she's helping solve the problem Microsoft faces with Silverlight in challenging the huge installed base enjoyed by Adobe's Flash.

Making History

The first two weeks have had half a million people watching simultaneously. According to digital media writer Mari Silbey, that broke the previous Live Earth record of roughly 240k simultaneous streams. Those streams were delivered by Limelight Networks and served up through the Move Networks video player. Live interaction with audiences goes on over Skype Video. All the sessions are available afterwords as podcasts on iTunes.

Just like the early adoption of RSS by the New York Times helped legitimize and distribute that technology so essential to the web today, so too will Oprah's use of podcasting, Silverlight and Skype likely be remembered as a turning point for the platforms of the future.

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Podcasting Becoming More Popular, Advertisers Take Notice

Guest Author — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:46:38 -0800

This is a guest post by Aseem Kishore, a technology enthusiast and lead blogger for Online-Tech-Tips.

The US podcasting market has steadily been increasing in size over the last couple of years and is expected to double within the next two years to almost 38 million people, according to eMarketer. With these kinds of numbers, podcasters and advertisers are starting to look into ways to generate more revenue through video ads.

]]> It is estimated that the total US podcast audience for 2007 is 18.5 million with an active podcast audience of 6.5 million. The 18.5 million number refers to individuals who have ever downloaded a podcast from anywhere. The "active" user base refers to individuals who have downloaded an average of one or more podcasts per week.

The active podcast audience is expected to grow to an impressive 25 million listeners by 2012 and advertisers are expected to spend close to $450 million by 2012.

There are many reasons why podcasting is becoming more popular in the US at such a fast rate. Firstly, podcast content is easy to digest. Most podcasts that are downloaded are usually short and focus on specific topics or genres, making it easy for people to listen to exactly what they are interested in and skip the fluff. With professional high-quality content and no commercials, it's easy to see why people may prefer to view a podcast over a TV show.

Also, there is a much greater awareness and much more promotion for podcasting via large online news and media networks such as CNET, New York Times, and well-respected blogs [Ed: see our own ReadWriteTalk for example]. Podcasts have also become part of many people's daily lives thanks to Apple's iPod and iTunes. With iTunes and the vast numbers of iPods, users are able to instantly and easily download podcasts onto their PC's or iPods, making watching a podcast almost as normal as listening to an MP3.

Following the success of Apple's iTunes, other major players have released portable media players that can play podcasts - such as Microsoft's Zune player and the Zune Marketplace - thereby increasing the podcast audience.

On top of that, there has a been a prediction that within four years 40% of all video viewed will be outside of the television set. That's coming from a poll carried out by Jack Meyers and tracked by the firm Teletrax of 300 media executives.

The key questions will be whether the growth of the podcast audience will continue to increase at the current rate and will it be enough to attract large amounts of ad spending. Most podcasters make money through advertising on the pages/feeds that distribute the podcast, as well as embedding ads into the podcast itself. Sponsorships and subscription services are not as popular, but will grow as the podcasting market increases.

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Wizzard Media: 1 Billion Downloads in 2007, Podcasting Far from Dead

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:23:54 -0800

Wizzard Media, owners of the Libsyn, Switchpod and Blast Podcast networks, will announce tomorrow that it passed the 1 billion download mark in 2007. While online media consumption numbers are notoriously hard to verify, Wizzard's have some serious merit. They are ten times what several competitors claimed earlier this month.

]]> Wizzard raised $7.5 million in funding this summer. With multiple major ad campaigns in the works, including one by a branch of the US Armed Forces (the ultimate brand!) - Wizzard's biggest challenge now may be meaningful monetization of an already growing audience.

The company claimed 85 million downloads for the month of May, which put it on a pace to hit 1 billion in a year. In their year-end calculation they determined that the Wizzard servers were receiving an average of 2.75 million requests for podcast episodes per day in 2007, up 300% from demand in 2006. That number is dwarfed by TV and radio viewing numbers but none the less demonstrated strong growth and contradicts the perception that podcasting has failed to live up to its promise.

Key moves this year

In August the company acquired Libsyn, long the most visible vendor in the podcasting community, and hired Rob Walch of the popular show Podcast411 as its VP of Podcaster Relations.

Alex Williams, founder of the Podcast Hotel conference, told me that while the numbers were large, the news of Libsyn and Wizzard's momentum was not a big surprise. "They were first to the market and they executed," he said. "This demonstrates the value of that. Plus they have strong, stand-up people."

It was also last August that Libsyn announced a partnership with Nielsen Netmetrics to certify downloads. Walch told me today that the Libsyn part of the network's downloads since August were the only part of the 1 billion number that was certifiable by Nielsen. Wizzard announced in September that the entire network of more than 8,000 podcast publishers would use Nielsen/NetRating's SiteCensus product to certify downloads in the future.

Muddy Waters

In addition to the challenge of verifying downloads, it's an entirely different question to ask how many users actually consumed the media they downloaded. Download and view numbers are generally believed to be widely inflated.

None the less, Wizzard's numbers were more than 10 times what competing networks have reported for 2007. Revision3 announced last week that it had played over 100 million "clips" and 25 million "shows" last year (with "an unprecedented 100% unaided sponsor recall" says the sales guy), whatever all that means. Video meta-network NextNewNetworks rode the fast cars and big boobs formula to more than 100 million claimed views in just 10 months of 2007. Podshow hasn't announced any numbers for 2007, which can't be good, but it did manage to spend a lot of money and lose Natali Del Conte to CNet. Perhaps it too topped a billion but was concerned that no one would believe them.

Libsyn love

Libsyn is widely appreciated but has in the past been criticized for some spells of down time. The company's own support blog reports a lot of problems with stats collection, but perhaps those are reports of problems solved and thus good news.

Libsyn charges podcasters a monthly fee for storage and delivery. When I asked people what they thought of Libsyn, almost everyone told me it was good and cheap. Further proof that you can charge people for online services today and they'll thank you for it.

Note: If you like podcasts, check out ours too. It's called ReadWriteTalk and even if you listened to it a billion times you'd still want more.

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New Odeo Coming Next Month - FireAnt With a Coat of Paint

Josh Catone — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:55:01 -0800

In May of last year, Sonic Mountain bought the assets of Evan William's podcast directory Odeo (and then promptly renamed itself Odeo). In September, the new company bought out its chief rival, FireAnt, for about $400,000. The company planned to launch in December a public beta of its new software that merged Odeo's podcasting tools with FireAnt's desktop media player (which aggregated video blog feeds). Odeo obviously missed that date, but company COO Eric Rupert says that he expects the new Odeo "to be released for a more 'open' beta sometime at the beginning of Feb."

]]> Rupert spoke to the Voice Over Times blog and indicated that the new Odeo will also include an embedded browser and will help people find, play, and store media content (audio and video podcasts).

"It’s a client for subscribing to, watching and listening to podcasts which can also transcode the content and sync it with a number of portable devices including smartphones," Rupert told Voice Over Times. The ability to sync with a wide range of portable devices was always one of FireAnt's most attractive features. Judging by the screenshot (above), the new Odeo media browser is based directly on the FireAnt software. While it is hard to tell from just a screenshot, to my eyes it looks nearly identical to the last iteration of FireAnt.

The relaunch positions Odeo to compete with companies like Veoh and their VeohTV service and Mefeedia. FireAnt's player has always been very slick, and Odeo still has name recognition as one of the first podcast authorities, so combining the two in the way Odeo plans makes sense. Can Odeo make a comeback? We'll begin to find out next month.

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