Songwriting fundraiser podcast “Rise and Shine TV” has announced the release of a compilation album, “Breakfast With Inspiration.” Rise and Shine” incorporates audience ideas into the daily writing of a song, and uses the proceeds from selling the songs to support music-related charities.

The brainchild of award-winning podcaster Dean Whitbread, Rise and Shine gathers the talent of musicians, composers, and the input of their audience, to write and perform an original song in three hours’ time.

Participants make use of several different Internet media in order to work together. Viewers watch the songwriters and musicians via live streaming video, and lob ideas back and forth with them in chat. Song topics are typically taken from the morning’s headlines, and almost always take unexpected turns before the piece is finished.

When Rise and Shine is in session the daily project begins at 6h GMT (1am here in the Midwestern US), and the rough draft of the finished song is performed on streaming Internet video around 9h. A more polished version of the song is posted to the website later in the day.

The album features the best of the songs written during the project’s three “seasons,” a week each in February, March, and at Christmastime last year. Explains Whitbread, the extemporaneous songs “were written by our dedicated team of writers in a little over a month, who laid their reputation on the line, exposed their writing processes to intimate scrutiny, turned on the cameras and the microphones, and let the audience into their inspiration and their craft. ”

The “Rise and Shine – Breakfast With Inspiration” CD can be mail-ordered for £15.00, and the studio-quality hi-fi DVD will set you back £18.00 (plus postage). Ordering information is here. All proceeds from album & DVD sales go to BuskAid, which gives music training to South African township children.

The Guardian reports that UK primary schools may soon dump studying things like the Second World War and the Victorians in favor of Twitter, Wikipedia and podcasts:

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

The proposed curriculum requires children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain “fluency” in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.

While having kids study new media in primary schools makes sense, it’s also likely that anything they learn now will be obsolete long before they graduate.

Is it time to dump history for new media? Or do you think that schools should stick to the basics?

Image: jakebouma

The President has introduced a new tool on WhiteHouse.gov, Open for Questions, which lets you submit  questions on the economy and vote on those submitted by others:

“Open for Questions” is a new experiment for WhiteHouse.gov, the President’s latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration.

This first round will deal with a chief concern for all of us: the economy.  We’ve created a few categories to better organize the questions, and encourage you to search for a specific question before you submit your own in case it already exists.

To get started, head over to http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and set up your account.  Then follow the simple instructions to start voting on questions or submit your own (we encourage you to include a link to a published video of the question being asked, although this is not required).

As of this writing, people have submitted over 20,000 questions and cast over half a million votes to help prioritize the questions. The President plans on answering some of these questions during an online town hall on Thursday, March 26, 2009.

It’s not too hard to see where this could lead – an open government site that combines new media and Digg-like voting.

Is Obama is turning WhiteHouse.gov into a social media site?

Media Post’s Search Insider blog had an interesting piece yesterday about “lost buzzwords” of the search marketing industry. Columnist Steve Baldwin, attending the Search Engine Strategies NY conference, was looking back at conference agendas from years past, sifting through the hot topics to see whether any of the issues were of any consequence today.

It’s an interesting list (you should check it out), but on one particular topic (that is close to my heart), Baldwin totally doesn’t get it:

“6. Podcast optimization. Podcasting — what a grand idea! All it takes is a cheap microphone and you’ll be on your way to becoming the next Rush. Only problem is, Rush has millions of listeners, whereas most podcasters have about seven. The sequential nature of podcasting is just about the least efficient way to deliver information online, and maybe that’s why nobody seems to mind that SES no longer pays attention to it.”

“The sequential nature of podcasting is just about the least efficient way to deliver information online” Huh — !? Podcasting can be sequential and episodic, but it doesn’t have to be. Defining podcasts simply in those terms is a narrow description that misses the point, the flexibility, and the beauty of the podcast medium.

Baldwin overlooks the multitude of ways in which (even sequential) podcasts are beneficial, not just to their viewers and listeners, but to the individuals and companies (and search-engine strategists) who create and promote them:

Podcasts can be sequential. For some finite sets of information, like audiobooks, or how-to projects, sequential podcasts are the most effective delivery method. If chapters were out of sequence, they’d make no sense. If a project’s instructions were out of order, they’d be useless. Duh. When the series is done, you have a neat, complete bundle of podcasts for future reference (or entertainment).

Podcasts can be timely. News, stocks, weather, community calendars are all types of information that can change quickly. When a listener/viewer subscribes to the podcast via its RSS feed, the most up to date version is downloaded. The winner of today’s NCAA basketball game, or forecasts of the coming winter storm, can be accessed at the user’s convenience. The sequence of the podcasts doesn’t matter in these instances – only the most recent update does.

Podcasts can be evergreen. The other side of the podcast content coin is for the sort of information that is less ephemeral than news or weather. Many, if not most, podcasts are evergreen content, that is, stuff that would be as useful or entertaining five years from now as it is today. The value of a podcast series increases as time goes on, and the back catalogue of older shows grows.

A podcast doesn’t need millions of listeners to be effective. Yes, of course, Rush has millions of listeners. But they’re a motley bunch of listeners with backgrounds, needs, and interests as diverse as listeners to conservative talk radio can be. Savvy advertisers and marketers see the value of promoting their brand to the smaller, but highly targeted specific podcast audience.

Edison Media Research’s 2008 “The Podcast Consumer, Revealed” study, found that “podcast consumers are more likely to have attained at least a college degree…. and are extremely attractive advertising targets, though difficult to reach via traditional interruption models,” and are also more likely to live in households earning in excess of $75,000 per year.

Wouldn’t you want your company’s search engine strategy to include content that attracts those kinds of consumers?

If you’re looking for a hosted blog platform, you may want to avoid Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces.

According to figures released today by Royal Pingdom, Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces is down more than 12 times as much as WordPress, Blogger and TypePad.

Royal Pingdom checked nine major blogging services over a four month period to see how much downtime they have. The included services were Typepad, Blogger, WordPress.com, Blogster, Blog.com, Vox, Squarespace, Windows Live Spaces and LiveJournal.

They found that TypePad, Blogger and WordPress were significantly more reliable than Windows Live Spaces and other blogging options:

Typepad and WordPress.com are also popular choices with top bloggers:

• Typepad is used by 16 of the top 100 blogs;
• WordPress.com is used by 5 of the top 100; and
• Blogger is used by 3 of the top 100 blogs.

If you’re considering a blogging service, rather than managing your own site, Royal Pingdom’s stats suggest that TypePad, Blogger and WordPress.com are an order of magnitude more reliable than Windows Live Spaces and other blogging platforms.

We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up last week.

Today we share the fourth installment by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

I came away from these interviews with an appreciation for the long list of brands who are “doing it right” in the social space. I asked all 14 of my interview subjects this question:

“When you think of brands/companies who have a well-executed social media strategy, who comes to mind — and why?”

Guy [Kawasaki] liked Tony Hseih’s work on Twitter for Zappos. Angela [Benton] gave kudos to H&R Block on Twitter, to Kodak’s blogger and influencer outreach, and marveled at the high-speed scale IamDiddy (Sean Combs) is seeing on Twitter [over 200,000 followers and counting].

Aaron Strout of Powered has amassed an impressive collection of brands to which he gives high marks, which you may want to check out for yourself:
·         Beinggirl/Procter & Gamble
·         Nike+
·         HP
·         Sears SK-You
·         Atkins
·         Dell’s Ideastorm
·         Intuit
·         Edmunds
·         Sony Backstage 101
·         Microsoft Windows

The Advance Guard, C.C. Chapman’s organization, has created a free white paper (downloadable eBook), “About Face,” on Facebook’s new Fan Pages, now just called “Pages.” It is a must read for every podcaster – every entrepreneur – who wants to grow his or her audience. This eBook is chock full of examples of how brands are connecting with fans and the opportunities to do so via Facebook.

Gadgets

Because it is a huge draw for people on the leading edge of new technology, South by Southwest interactive is a great venue for getting an advance peek at all the shiny gadgets and upcoming applications, long before they make it into the mainstream marketplace.

C.C. Chapman, co-founder of The Advance Guard got a super cool device called the Poken, on the show exhibit floor. He was wearing it during our interview. (Note: I’m jealous and covet one.) The Poken (pictured, right) is a little USB drive in the shape of a Manga-type character that has RF [radio frequency], which allows you to ethereally trade your social media contact information with anyone else sporting a Poken.

You match the Pokens’ “hands” together and they exchange contact info for you. No messing up the silhouette of your derriere with a wad of business cards in your back pocket. Later, you import the data and Poken automatically “[be]friends” your new contacts on social networking sites. I love my Cardscan scanner, but Poken makes collecting contact information at shows fun, immediate and easy. Sign me up!

Location + Conversation

Let’s take RF and mobile applications further…

The intersection of GPS and socnets has Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, lit up. He calls it “the secret of the annotated world.” Now we can [share updates on] Twitter in real time, and apps like BrightKite will show our location. The next level of this merging of location+ conversation will allow us to annotate or leave comments, anywhere we go, for others to read.

Another [excellent] application would be one that sends out placed-based, threaded conversations.

Here’s a rich excerpt from my interview with Chris:

“So, we could be at the South By Southwest conference and looking for the party that doesn’t have the line 700 people long. And I could push a button and say, “I am here.” I’d give you my GPS coordinates and send you a picture and type, “No lines here. Come and visit.” Within 20 minutes we’d have margaritas!

“The extension of that could be that you and I are standing next to a statue in the middle of the square, and it’s some guy on a horse like every other of these statues. Who is it and what do we know about them?  What if, when you turn on your phone, you could see who else left a note there, or that someone’s left us a URL?  So we can now go to a website and read more about the person on the statue.”

In another twist on creating and measuring the value of “being in the conversation,” Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank, has an emphasis on real-time data. He is closely watching for examples of the integration of web analytics with social media analytics.

He believes the impact that social media has on site traffic will soon be monitored through some kind of tool that mashes up Buzz Logic, Collective Intellect, Radiant Six or such, married with web analytics like Google Analytics, Web Trends or similar. Lee says, “Twitter’s bringing us kicking and screaming into the real-time analytics world, right?”

Perhaps kicking and screaming, perhaps gleefully skipping, hand-in-hand we go into this new era of connected, trackable mobility. Take my hand and let’s go.

Parting Thoughts: Facilitating & Integrating Conversations

Attending my second SXSW conference was a breakthrough for me professionally. Last year, I was new to the SXSW scene and just building my social reputation in that crowd.

This year, what a change (!) – I couldn’t keep up with the number of people who were sending messages about connecting! I found it really helpful to “broadcast” my location through Twitter, inviting friends nearby to come find me. It worked pretty well… But now I know I need BrightKite, Foursquare or any of the burgeoning companies in the “API-sphere.”

Oh, and one Poken too, please.

The number one reason most people attend this event is to see in person – love the phrase “meat space” — those with whom they have an online relationship. The panels are tertiary to the hallway networking and the parties. The idea exchange, and the ability to connect with others who will retweet your work or comment on your posts is paramount here.

Become the facilitator, if not the integrator, of conversations. Talk with other experts, and then promote those conversations and podcasts, instead of trying to make yourself the focal point of discussion.

By being the catalyst, you raise the reputation for yourself (your brand) and put yourself squarely in the thick of the brand/community discussion.

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.

Photo: Social Networks by 10ch

eMarketer reports that advertisers are switching to social media.

“Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter,” they note.

The claim is supported by research from the Aberdeen Group, who found that nearly 2/3rds of the companies they surveyed plan to increase social media marketing budgets this year.

Aberdeen also suggests that “best-in-class companies” should treat social media as an important part of their marketing.”

“Companies use multiple approaches to identify the individuals who wield the greatest amount of influence in any given topic area and to track changes in their influence over time,” said Jeff Zabin of Aberdeen. “Best-in-class companies engage these top influencers as brand evangelists, and then track the impact of their words and actions in terms of return on marketing investment.”

eMarketer’s article echoes a recent Forrester report, which found that marketers are moving their advertising dollars to social media.

What do you think? Is this good news for professional podcasters, bloggers and new media content creators, or do you think most of the advertising dollars will go to large sites like YouTube?

In four Michigan cities, the daily newspaper is becoming little more than a nostalgic memory.  The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times, will now come out only three days per week: Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Even more drastic changes are coming for the 174 year-old Ann Arbor News. The entire paper is being shuttered, its staff eliminated, and replaced by a new to-be-launched online news venue, Ann Arbor.com. The Ann Arbor paper will still be printed twice a week.

With no local reporters or support staff, this sounds a great deal like what Clear Channel and others have been doing in the world of terrestrial radio, a hollow “local presence” that exists mainly to serve up local advertising between generic chunks of content.

According to the Ann Arbor News’ Publisher, Laurel Champion, however, “This isn’t about abandoning local journalism, it’s about serving it up in a very different way.” The Ann Arbor News reports that News employees “can apply for positions with the new company, although job losses are inevitable.”

The economic downturn of the last six months has only exacerbated the crisis in newspaper (and other print) publishing, which has been struggling as ad revenues shrink, and readers turn their attention to other media. In Michigan, with its heavy reliance on the automobile industry throughout the state, newspapers appear to be even harder hit.  The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News recently announced that they are cutting back home delivery of their papers to only three days per week.

Decisions to close and/or reduce publication of the newspapers were made by parent company Advance Publications, which owns eight newspapers throughout Michigan. Advance Publications, in turn, is owned by the Newhouse family, which also publishes magazines through its Conde Nast division, and provides cable television through its Bright House Networks.

The company also announced mandatory two-week unpaid furloughs for its employees at most of its newspapers, according to the New York Times.

Ad Age has an interesting article today that looks at how big media companies are putting more and more pressure on Google to give them priority treatment -  above bloggers, microbloggers, podcasters and other indie media creators – in search results:

Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they’re newly upset that Google’s algorithm penalizes paid content.

“You should not have a system,” one content executive said, “where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately.”

The issue has become a hot button for Google’s Publishers Advisory Council, a small, invitation-only group for professional publishers that includes BusinessWeek, ESPN, Hearst, Meredith, The New York Times, Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal.

Effectively, members of Google’s Publishers Advisory Council want to cut in line and get preferential treatment in search results.

Big Media Needs To Get Some New Media Savvy

While these big media companies can blame Google for the fact that they are getting spanked by new media content creators in search results, they could fix the problem themselves by getting some new media savvy:

• They need to think about search engine optimization – large companies have done a terrible job of moving their content to the web. A recent survey found that Fortune 500 companies are “doing a very poor job of ensuring that their ‘money’ keywords are represented in natural search.” Successful indie content creators have adapted their publishing processes to the realities of competing for search engine rankings.
• They need to compete for links – you’d be surprised at how many companies have convoluted legal policies outlining the procedure for linking to their sites, instead of actually encouraging links.
• They need to get with RSS – go to many large publishers’ sites and you’ll struggle to find RSS feeds. This makes it harder for bloggers and mobile Internet users to follow and respond to big media content.
• They need to tear down those walls – too many big media sites put up signon or subscription barriers to readers. These are barriers to bloggers, too, who might otherwise link to good content.
• They need to get with The Social – people’s attention isn’t just moving away from newspapers and magazines, it’s moving away from big media sites to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and other new media/social media sites. Manty big media companies are off the radar for people that frequent these sites.

Instead of trying to “cut in line”, members of Google’s Publishers Advisory Council need to clean up their own house – and see what they can learn from new media content creators.

Image: bob the lomond

We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up earlier this week.

Today we share the third part (of four) by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

Social networks & online communities

Some of the most spirited discussion in my conversations revolved around the question, “If a company wants to create a solid social networking community around their brand, what are the most important things they should know/do?”

‘If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You Might As Well Go Home’

Patricia Martin, founder of LitLamp Communications and author of “RenGen,” says she’s keeping her finger on the pulse of “connoisseurs of community development.”

“Now consumers enter into the world as content creators rather than content consumers and how they are now seeking to actually control their identities is really interesting,” Patricia says. The Millennials [today’s young adults who came of age with ubiquitous computers and portable digital media] are an online reputation management-savvy generation. Patricia notes they are managing themselves as brands.

Another power tip came from Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of AllTop and author of “Reality Check:” “if you’re not pissing someone off on a social network, you might as well go home.” Guy has 85,000 followers. His point being, with so many followers, you cannot take personally any negative feedback.

Guy’s rationale: We agreed that whereas a marketer used to follow the axiom, “one bad customer complaint represents one hundred people who feel the same way and remain silent,” in today’s consumer-generated content world, one complaint is often simply that.

Courting Key Influencers In The Community

Angela Benton, Founder and Publisher, Black Web 2.0, suggests marketers find influencers for your brand by focusing on those who have smaller, but deeply connected followers. Trying to target only the very well-known in the social space can come off as shrill and could backfire on your “authenticity.” With all the talk about paid bloggers, it’s important to focus on those influencers who can rally customers for you who will resonate with your offering.

Cathy Brooks, Consultant, Other Than That, talked about helping mobile device maker Nokia place their phones into “more vertical” social communities. “There are so many people in so many markets: politics, food, family, technology, all of it, so how do put these devices into the hands of people who really need to use them everyday?”

Cathy is expanding the reach for Nokia into the second and third concentric circles of bloggers and Twitterers — people who can be brand advocates, who are influential to their own [niche] group. True, the Nokia conversation might not hit 100,000 people through a single influential person. But, if that blogger or Twitterer or podcaster has two or three hundred, or a thousand of exactly the right people that follow them, they are a key “radiator.” Those followers, subscribers, readers,  look to that particular person as someone who really does influence the decisions of many.

This has been Intel’s marketing strategy for nearly 20 years. Educate the influencer (aka the well-regarded, outspoken PC computer geek), and they will make the rationale to their followers why a PC with “Intel Inside” is worth a premium price.

Tara Hunt, who is Marketing Lead-Partner Platforms, at Intuit says that at Intuit, they created the platform for their small-business-owner clients to convene. For the most part, they [Intuit] stay out of the way. The community does “a darn fine job supporting each other,” Tara says.

Should brands be the facilitators of the conversation about their product?

Tara, The Advance Guard’s C.C. Chapman, Aaron Strout of Powered, Inc., and many others believe there are situations when it is appropriate for a brand to step in, to foster a community.

Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, MIT, feels otherwise. He thinks you should go where your customers congregate. I asked him how to find these places, and Henry eloquently said:

“the best way is to use a variety of search tools. So search Twitter, search the blogosphere, search Google, search every engine that brings you to sites where conversations are taking place. Listen to podcasts that are tied to the products that you’re involved with. Read the blogs, go to Live Journal, go to, you know, all of the other social network sites. You will find activity and discussions spontaneously occurring.

“You don’t need to bring people into your studio and run a focus group now. What you need to do is recognize how this product is used and talked about in the field. Engage with the people, engage with your consumers on that level. But you also are going to need to figure out what’s your value [of your input and participation]? Why should they listen to you? What’s your point of entry into this conversation?

“So when I talk to companies, they often are saying, ‘We’re worried about losing control over our brand message.’ Well, the reality is, you lost control a long time ago. Your consumers can take your brand and do with it more or less what they want. You might stop some of them with cease and desist letters, but you’re not going to stop all of them — and you’d be an idiot to sue your consumers.

“But what you can do is get into the game. By getting into the game, I mean you create a value for that community. You give them something that’s a resource that allows them to talk to each other about the brands that matter to them. You give them things that they can take back with them, back to wherever the communities they’re involved with, and continue the conversation. Sometimes you can become an active part of that conversation. But sometimes, just as importantly, you merely [provide] the resources that is at the center of the conversation.…”

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.

Photo: “Web 2_0” by Danard Vincente