Category Archives: podcasts

business, news, podcasts, Strategy 6 Comments

Getting Smart About News Podcasts

MostlyNews.net
See how simple podcast show notes can be?

(NOTE: I just published this on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, which is mainly read by mainstream journalists and journalism educators, but I thought Contentious readers might find it interesting, too.)

Like many net users, I get a lot of my news via podcasts. I’ve sampled several news podcasts and have settled on a few favorites as my current primary daily heads-up on the top stories: AP Newsbeat (1 min.), Denver Post All News (8-10 min.), NYT Front Page (5 min.), NPR News (5 min.), WSJ What’s News (3-4 min.) — and, of course, The Onion Radio News (1 min., a complete story, not a summary). Occasionally I also listen to BBC Newspod but that’s rare, since it typically runs 35-40 min.

(UPDATE Jan 24: If you want to subscribe to my favorite news headline podcasts all at once, I created a Mediafly public feed for them.)

That may sound like a lot, but since I listen to them while I’m doing other things (cleaning, cooking, e-mail, exercising, etc.). It’s actually pretty efficient, especially since I like to see how different news orgs are choosing stories on any given day. And I’m not alone in that — most news junkies follow multiple news venues daily.

There is a problem, though: None of my favorite news podcasts exercise their full potential for engagement. But used wisely, a good headlines podcast can support any news org’s bottom line.

If you want to get more direct benefit and mileage from your news podcasts, here’s my advice…

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business, podcasts, research, social media, video 2 Comments

Social Media Up, Porn Down? Hmmmmm….

I was just watching the first episode of Buzzlogic Vino Diaries, a pretty good vidcast where people get together in a wine bar to talk about social media. Just my speed on both counts!

Here, Buzzlogic‘s Valerie Combs talks with Bill Tancer of Hitwise about several intriguing online-media topics — over a fine glass of tempranillo. (Oh, I’m sooooo missing Barcelona again…)

Toward the end, Tancer makes an interesting observation:

“We’ve been tracking social networks as a category — and at the same time I’ve been trying to explain why the adult category has been on a steady decline. Two years ago, business to adult sites comprised about 16% of all internet visits here in the US. As of last week, that’s dropped to about 10% — so quite a steep decline.

“One day, one of my analysts decided to juxtapose those two charts, and put them together on one chart. …We did an analysis and found there’s a perfect negative correlation.

“So we then decided to dive into the demographics of visitors to these porn sites. What we found is that the 18-24-year-olds are disappearing from the adult traffic. And yet 18-24-year olds have been increasing in social networks. So we don’t have a lot of evidence, but we think there is a tradeoff happening.”

I’m not kidding, watch it for yourself. Enjoy!

(Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for recommending this vidcast, via Twitter.)