Feeding Readers Ads Without Getting Burned

While listening to For Immediate Release this morning I heard the team discussing ads on RSS feeds. Specifically they talked about how Castrol was buying ads to promote its new podcast.

I was struck by the somewhat lukewarm reaction to the idea, since I've been seeing these ads for a while and, in the case of Inhabitat, bloggers Jill Fehrenbacher and Sarah Rich asked readers to change to a Feedburner feed (as opposed to the RSS feed created by the blog itself) specifically so they could sell ads.

I had no problem doing it at the time. I felt that Jill and Sarah were creating great content, I wanted to read it, having an ad was a small price. Another 300 or so people who use bloglines apparently agreed with me.

I know with me it helped that at the time they requested the Feeburner change the editors noted that they wanted to hire more writers to provide better content. It all seemed like a fair tradeoff, and one that pays dividends to readers.

But they did get a bit of negative feedback from readers, most of which blew over pretty quickly. During an IM conversation today, Jill said the bigger problem came when she tried to use partial rather than full feeds to encourage people to link directly onto the site.

"Content takes time to produce and when people read your RSS instead of coming to the site, you are basically giving away free content with very little benefit to you or your blog," she said. "When I tried [to switch to a partial feed] all hell broke loose with my readers, so I switched it back... Personally, I'd rather [readers] come to my site, so i can keep track of my traffic and use that to get more advertising, but people like the convenience of RSS."

That struck me as interesting. People were fine with getting the ads, but they revolted when their full feeds were taken away. I believe the feed change came before the Feedburner move, since it was an attempt to drive traffic back to the site.

Keep in mind that Jill is a grad student and still devotes about 20 hours a week to her blog. Obviously she's doing something right. The site measures upwards of 350,000 hits a month and, according to Feedburner, has about 1200 subscribers. Still, Jill says "But who knows, really? hard to measure these things."

Watch for Webbed Feet

My wife and I will often see friends purchase big houses, nice cars and put their kids into fancy schools. These are people with similar jobs and similar life circumstances, and we're sometimes stumped as to how they can seem to do it when we can't.

I believe that we just don't see everything. We have no idea how much debt someone may have piled up, we have no idea whether they have a trust fund, we have no idea of they have anything saved for retirement or if they're saving at all. We only see what they let us see, so it's impossible to do a true analysis.

When the Boston Globe first wrote a glowing feature about a 17-year-old Harvard student with a large book contract, something smelled fishy to me. As fishy as when I was a young, struggling reporter and Stephen Glass was the darling of the journalism establishment. He seemed to defy gravity. He did... he lied.

Now it turns out that the truth behind Kaavya Viswanathan is much more murky than the perception. It turns out her novel was "conceptualized" by a book packager and she's accused of lifting parts completely from another writer. All very strange.

This is why people hate public relations. Because articles are just a few hundred words, readers only see what PR people and reporters have let them see. Like a duck moving quietly and smoothly above the water, readers never see the webbed feet moving frantically underneath.

What's great about social media is that everyone can see the webbed feet. It fundamentally changes how PR is handled, because everything is going to be out there at some point. If you're consciously selling vaporware people are going to figure it out and it's just going to hurt more later.

If you don't believe me, ask Viswanathan.

A Picture is Worth....

A while back I talked about how the Pulitzers would recognize some online content as a tip of the hat to the New Orleans area papers that lost everything, but still reported. The blogging world was buzzing with how it's unfair that Pulitzers are only offered to print publications and not those that exist entirely online.

In any case, the list came out and, as expected, Hurricane Katrina coverage dominated the prizes. But the prize that has always fascinated me is photojournalism. I've done quite a bit of photography in my life, and a photo that can tell a story is something special. It's a method of storytelling that goes mostly unappreciated, as many people feel that a picture is a picture, they can take them on their cell phones. But a high-quality, well-done photograph can leave you awed.

Look through anyone's framed pictures and you'll see lots of smiling faces, some from different stages in life, but most are posed and taken to record a moment in time. I try to tell a story in my pictures, even if it's about my children playing, dancing or a moment of joy.

Yes, I have my fair share of stagnant, smiling photos, but I strive for that storytelling idea. It's incredibly difficult, and I have a lot of failed shots to prove it.

But when photographers get it right, the results are amazing.

Online into Real Life

A while ago I heard Shel Holtz talk about the way he used to know the doings in a former employer. He was a smoker and regularly clustered outside with other smokers where random people from all over the company came together to talk.

When he stopped smoking he lost one of his key lines of communication.

Today that same casual environment can, in part, be replaced by a Wiki, but should it? There is nothing like a face-to-face meeting. Sure, you can talk with someone on IM, phone, email and even video conferece. You can read their blog, post comments and discuss things on a wiki, but those activities are all done between face-to-face meetings.

As I move through offices of clients, friends and even publications, I'm struck by how the environments never seem to take meeting places into account. People meet for different reasons, so private offices, conference rooms, lounges and even informal standing areas are all necessary.

But too often offices go one way or the other. I've seen massive rooms of flat desks with people quietly typing, every conversation is heard by everyone. I've seen row after row of private offices, each with a closed door. I've seen row after row of cube, making it impossible to decipher one from the other.

Companies spend plenty of money fretting about their online presence and determining what it says about the company, but how much do they spend thinking about the work area itself?

I'm curious to hear from people about what their offices are like, what works and what doesn't, and how their work concepts move from real life to online and back again.

Strange Doings

The other day, when I looked on bloglines, I had 14 or so subscribers. I looked today and there were none. I'm sure they didn't all go away, but I can't figure out why they're not showing up.

Is it a problem with Bloglines, Blogger or me?

Is Podcasting a Bust?

The social media world is buzzing about Charlene Li's Forrester report in which it's discovered that only about 1 percent of people are actually listening to podcasts, and many turn to traditional radio as a prime source of content.

So, should we just dismiss podcasting as a stepping stone and move on? Even Charlene says, "no."

What we're seeing now is a situation in which people have options as to how they want to receive information. A colleague of mine suggests, for example, that we put out podcast versions of press releases. Of course, these would be modified a bit, but it offers an inexpensive way to present information in a different format. Will it work? Maybe. For the cost involved in both time and effort, does it matter? Probably not.

Most of the work in a press release is already done. You just need to modify it slightly and read it, the messaging, quotes and content are long-since worked out. Conducting a quick, news-based Q&A with a VP of Marketing, CEO or whoever else is quoted not only acts as a podcast, but also a bit of media training for interviews. Not a bad use of time. And if one or two journalists quote from the podcast rather than asking for an interview (or if it gains a bit more coverage thanks to the information) than it's an even better use of time.

Keep in mind that television was first shown at the World's Fair in 1939. By 1950, 11 years and a World War later, it had entered just 9 percent of US households [reference]. Fifteen years later it reached close to critical mass at 92 percent, growing just 6 more percentage points through today.

Yet, you still hear people call the 1950s the "Golden Age of Television." Why? Because that initial 9 percent represented people with lots of disposable income, those who were influential as well.

Are podcasts reaching these people? I don't know, but I know that my uncle listens to a few, he owns a small business in New Jersey. My mother and father listen to a few as well, as do many people I know who own MP3 devices. Oh... and who has the disposable income to purchase MP3 players (such as iPods) that have good sized hard drives on which to store podcasts?

Take a wild guess.

Why I Blog

Long before I ever started blogging I started writing. I'm not going to run through my resume here, but I started in radio journalism at 17 and ever since have been getting paid, in some way, to watch my fingers move across a keyboard.

That said, I still have trouble selling freelance work. I spent some time making a living as a freelancer in the late 90s and found it to be a frustrating profession. I'd spend hours working on an article only to receive barely enough to cover a quarter of the work. So I landed a full-time job in PR and have not looked back.

But every once in a while a story pops out and lands in my Word file. I this past winter I took a blog post from my personal blog, expanded it and submitted it to the Boston Globe West section. They have a column called Suburban Diary in which anyone can submit a story. I received some good feedback from the editor, did some edits to get it down to the word limit, submitted again and waited.

I saw many good pieces get published, and a few not so good. But mine never came up. This week I finally received a note saying that it was officially rejected.

Frankly, I can't figure out why, but that's the Globe's decision.

So why do I blog? Because I want my writing to have an audience.

Blogger Gripe

I have a gmail account and one thing it manages to do very well is autosave. If I'm working on an email and walk away, it's still there when I get back. In fact, I can even shut the browser down, come back later and there is my email waiting to be sent or edited.

So why is it that Google can't apply the same technology to Blogger? I had a post in the works last night, just about complete. I was simply adding a few new links and BAM... my browser locked up.

Well, that was the end of the post. Unfortunately it was a long one and I haven't had time to rewrite, just know that I wanted to put something up but couldn't.

Looking Back

Again, because Blogger doesn't seem to do this on its own, I just wanted to direct everyone to a much older post that continues to see some great commentary.

This time Brian Stuy commented himself on The Future of Journalism. Considering there was a long back and forth with an anonymous reader on that, it's great to get his comments too.

...and a Star to Steer Her By

A close friend of mine is in the music industry doing mostly custom work. His market is actually marketers looking for custom CDs as promotional items, either sales or giveaways. So he spends quite a bit of time reading about marketing.

Today he sent me a story from Fast Casual Magazine called "Blogs surface in fast casual."

It's not a remarkable piece and basically boils down to concepts that many of us know already: read the blogs, respond, pay attention, etc.

During an IM conversation a few minutes later, as I pushed him on the idea that he and his rather large company should be out there, he protested telling me a) he's in B2B so it doesn't apply and b) he doesn't have time to blog.

I chose to ignore the time issue since I'm finding that it's a difficult issue to win. My feeling at this point is that if people see the benefit, they'll find the time. It's not that people lack the time, it's that they don't consider blogging (and the transparency that goes with it) to be important.

My clients are all in the B2B world. That is, few, if any, sell to consumers. Yet, blogging has benefits. But most importantly, you don't need a blog to be out there.

Case in point: I actively monitor blogs for a client of mine that is in the software industry. At one point I found a blogger writing about how he's considering a few pieces of software with my client among them. A few days later he posts in a rather annoyed tone how he had a negative experience with a sales person. He'd already moved on from my client's software, thinking it wasn't right for his needs, and it turns out that the negative experience was mostly a misunderstanding over email, but at the time we only knew that he wasn't happy and was looking elsewhere.

We chose to have the CTO drop the customer an email. What he wrote was a great piece of customer service that not only apologized for the sales issue but also answered many of the technical questions that had come up.

The result: the prospect changed his tone on his blog, said how impressed he was with the company. Later, when he found that the other software didn't meet his needs either, he gave my clients' another look (using the CTO's answers to help him) and was very impressed. All of this was done publicly, so anyone can go and read his experiences.

This isn't something strange and new, it's basic customer service. Find a problem, fix a problem. But with a megaphone.

In another case, a person posted on his blog how he's looking for other companies to contact him and tell how they solved a given problem. That's an open opportunity for one of my clients to have a happy customer contact him and help out. Again, nothing new and crazy, just using the available information in a smart way.

Many see blogging and bloggers as this mass of undgulating sea and themselves as being tossed along it. Not so. In fact, bloggers can be your star, just learn to use a few tools and you can steer yourself toward a few more sales.

Finding the Right Pitch

A big part of being in media relations is hitting on the right pitch. Sometimes that means resisting the temptation to follow what looks like a simple bit of reasoning, but turns out to be completely tasteless.

Sometimes it's timing. Pitching a disaster recovery story on September 12, 2001 was just wrong. Pitching that same story in the months that followed, as people started thinking about those issues, started to make more sense. Still, there has to be a balance. You don't want to profit off of a tragedy, but you want to make sure you get into stories that reporters are writing based on recent events.

But the tasteless pitch isn't always the PR person's fault. Sometimes you'll get a call from a VC or CEO who says "this is a great story, why aren't people writing about it?!?" and your job becomes counseling the client on the many reasons why that story is either ill-timed or simply won't work.

Of course, if the client is married to it, you end up pitching something you know shouldn't go out there.

I want to think that's what happened in this story from the Washington Post. I know, two WP stories on this blog in a week, it's a bit much. More coincidence than anything.

This poor PR person has a tough client, no doubt. And her job is to find ways to get the message out about the National Funeral Directors Association. I'm sure there are stories that are buried (yes, a pun) in among the membership, but the one described in this piece really shouldn't be among them.

Still, the Post story is an amusing read.

Future Redux

There is an interesting discussion going that relates to the Brian Stuy issue, but it's on an older post called The Future of Journalism. I post it here so other readers can see it, as Blogger doesn't make it easy to see these things.

Though, I wish the anonymous poster with the great ideas would post his/her name or some identifier.

The Subject Strikes Back

I'm watching a fascinating case study unfold that falls into many of the trends we've heard discussed. This one involves children, mostly girls, adopted from China. The topic is one very near to me, as my family welcomed a daughter home nearly a year ago. Shoshi has grown considerably since then in every way possible, as have we.

Over the last few months a story has unfolded in China about the possibility that many girls were abducted. This flies in the face of the notion many of us cling to: that our daughters were abandoned by parents as unwanted and would have lived very different, possibly much worse, lives if not adopted. During my trip to Fuzhou, where my daughter spent the first year of her life, I saw certain patterns emerge as to where kids were left. It gave many of us pause and caused us to wonder how much more of a story there was. In fact, standing in front of the orphanage gate, which is listed as my daughter's finding place, I couldn't help but think that I was a bit out in the open, something I wouldn't want to be if I were doing something as illegal as abandoning my child.

In any case, as with any story, the one of baby trafficking is far more nuanced and detailed than any one AP report. But this weekend the Washington Post ran a piece called "Stealing Babies for Adoption" (free reg. req.) in which writer Peter Goodman quoted Brian Stuy, a man well known in Chinese adoption circles for his research. I've written about him before.

The story talks about the illegal baby trafficking in China, and how some girls are stolen, then intercuts stories of parents in China pining for their lost daughters with stories of adopted parents in the US. The implication of the story is clear: we may be treating stolen children as our own.

For me, this obviously hits a nerve.

Stuy was quoted in this story as saying "It's a corrupt system... It's just so driven by money, and there's no check and balance to the greed."

But that's not the end of it. On his blog he notes that his quote was taken out of context, and refutes the notion that any of the stolen children reached the international adoption system. Then there is the ensuing commentary from parents on the topic and a post from Stuy in reaction to that. He also wrote a Letter to the Editor and put that up as well, since the volume of letters the Post receives exceeds what they can print.

There is no black and white here, only shades of grey. The problem with traditional media is that conflict and tension make great stories, so reporters are trained to look for that, it's how they see things. The best part of blogs is that people can fill in the lines and bring more depth to a story, giving it nuance, feeling and emotion.

Added Later:
One failing of Stuy's was not linking back to the article. I'd forgotten that the Post does this, but thanks to Technorati, the posts links to blogs writing about articles, so people reading the article online can find out what's being said elsewhere. It's an interesting move on the paper's part, and something Stuy could have used to his advantage.

Blogger Relations, Full Disclosure and All That Jazz

I've held off writing about the Wal-Mart/Edelman blogger relations effort, since so much is already being written. Mike Sansone has a fine writeup that links to a number of different opinions.

After chewing on this a bit my opinions are somewhat middle of the road. Yes, I think using this kind of tactic (reaching out to bloggers through someone who is a blogger) is sound. In fact, on a strategic I think this is a great example of how companies can do it, that you don't need to have a blog to get your voice heard is one of the best parts of the blogosphere.

Todd Zeigler makes a great point when he notes that the outreach sounds more like a public affairs program than PR. That's because Edelman chose bloggers already sympathetic to Wal-Mart and then fed them facts and figures to bolster their arguments. It's a sound approach. Why get into a flame war with a Wal-Mart basher when you can get the facts to the public?

But I think Neville Hobson hit the nail on the head when he questions the disclosure. Did those doing the outreach purposefully or accidentally confuse the issue by identifying themselves as working for Wal-Mart? In a word: yes.

This problem isn't limited to the blogosphere. I often hear people pitching reporters, or even talking to customers of clients, and identifying themselves as calling from such-and-such a company. I prefer not to do that. I tell people I work for the PR firm, then tell them what company I'm calling about. I find if I don't do that up front things can get confusing. It could be as simple as a reporter starting to interview me rather than my client or a customer treating me as a sounding board for technical glitches with a product.

Of course, like everything, the blogosphere shines a brighter light on even small issues. I talked with a colleague of mine about this today, and we feel it's best if PR firm can brand itself a resource for information, either for reporters or the greater public. The more trust people working for the trust can earn, the greater success we can have in our outreach.

But earning that trust begins with proper identification.

Podcast and Music: What's up with that?

While the record companies seemed to easily embrace radio as a way to allow their audience to sample music before buying, they can't seem to get their heads around doing the same thing with podcasts.

That's preventing a lot of great podcasts from taking off. I'm not a legal expert on this, but I do understand that there is music that is "podsafe" and music that isn't. From what I understand, it comes down to rights and licensing. While radio stations have signed licenses to broadcast music over the airwaves, those licenses don't translate to digital properties.

So a guy like Pete Fornatale can't put his great "Mixed Bag" show out as a podcast. It's a shame, the guy is a legend and deserves to be heard outside of the New York metro area. Also, a friend who works for a major music label and loves jazz laments how the music is essentially dying because it can't find a mass audience. Too bad, because I'm sure it could find its audience using podcasting.

I happen to like the Americana Roots Podcast, which features some great "podsafe" folk, country and other "twangy" music. But I wonder what the show could be if the music industry would get behind this medium. It also comes with Randall's Random Reviews, which is similar, though with clips of songs rather than whole tracks. The show is certainly worth a listen.

Boston doesn't have a great country scene, so I'm somewhat limited in what I hear. Yes, we have a few great folk stations, and if you look hard enough you can find some decent country music on the college stations*, but then you have to know they're there (marketing is not their strong suit) and be listening at the right time. The podcast lets the music come to me and fit into my schedule.

The best part of music on a podcast? For much of it, if I like it, I just buy my own version on iTunes.


*Southern Rail, which is heard Saturday afternoon on WBRS-FM, is a descendant of the Across America show I put in place back in 1991, much to the dismay of those around me. It's never been cool here in the northeast to like country, folk, bluegrass and other things that go "twang." There are some exciting things coming out of the country scene that are very different from the overly commercial stuff you hear on many stations.

What Makes Podcasts Work: Does Size Matter?

Over time, certain timing conventions developed in traditional broadcast media. In TV its The 30 minute sitcom, the 60 minute drama, the 120 minute movie of the week. Even on HBO, where there are no advertisers, the 60 minute show is still pretty standard.

You can argue as to whether these are effective or whether we're just trained to watch TV in these kind of clumps, but by watching the ratings programming executives can see when viewers drop off and how long they're willing to stay around.

The same goes for commercial news radio, where the 22 minute wheel has become common. I recently heard WBZ radio adopt WINS' long-time slogan "Give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." Even NPR operates on a sort of wheel, where the same information gets repeated again and again. Yet, then there is Howard Stern, whose show seems to last forever.

So I'm wondering what length conventions may arise in podcasting. This will depend in large part on the feedback people get.

I happen to like the podcast For Immediate Release, hosted by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. They do a great job of giving me plenty to think about in the area of PR and communications, especially on many of the topics I write about here.

But strangely my one complaint is in the amount of content they put out. In fact, Shel recently addressed this on one of the podcasts, commenting that he and Neville worried about the length--which regularly exceeds an hour--quite publicly. The feedback he received was to stop talking about it and just do the show.

The listeners were right. I hate hearing podcasters talk excessively about how they do their podcast. Frankly, I don't care, just give me the podcast.

In any case, maybe it's me, but I find it nearly impossible to keep up with the mountain of content they put out. Yes, I can skim through some of it, but while a nice dog walk can get me through most, if not all, of a Cinecast, I need an hour-plus of dog walking to get through For Immediate Release. What's more, they put it out twice a week.

Many weeks I just skip it altogether, and it kills me because I know there's good stuff I'm missing.

So, what's my advice? Let me soften it a bit.

Back in grad school I attended the Columbia DuPont awards. The show was pretty tight, with each recipient having a small window for thank yous, and it worked. That is, right up until the end. The second to last recipient made a political speech about East Timor, going a minute over his allotted time. So when Fred Friendly was presented his lifetime achievement award by Mike Wallace, he had no time for a thank you.

After the show a professor of mine asked Fred what he thought. Fred replied that the guy did the right thing, and Fred would have done it himself.

But, he said, the guy needed a better editor.

What Makes Podcasts Work Part 2

I don't have TiVo, which means I need to watch TV when it's actually on. That's not such a bad thing since, frankly, I don't watch nearly as much TV as I did before kids.

But I do make time for Battlestar Galactica. Before you start screaming "GEEK!" watch the show. It is one of the best shows on TV.

So, why talk about it in a discussion about podcasts? Because it also happens to employ a great use of podcasting. Executive Producer Ron D. Moore does a podcast that accompanies every show, something that is basically a DVD commentary released right along with the first broadcast. The best part of it, for me, is its low production value.

While the show is slick and well done, just as a TV show should be, the podcast is done in Moore's home office on an echoey microphone. You can hear the gardeners running leaf blowers, his kids running around downstairs, the dogs barking, the cars driving by and the phone ringing. You can even hear when he lights a cigarette or clinks ice in his drink glass.

This apparently annoys some of the folks who write in the Battlestar Galactica forums, which Moore apparently reads. During a recent podcast Moore told his audience to "stop whining" and even had his wife walk in at one point and joke about tying muzzling the dogs and tying up the kids.

In fact, this past week his wife played a more central role, spending the entire podcast in the room with him adding her own commentary. She also gave a physical description of his home office.

Why does it work? Because it's like I'm sitting with the guy who's in charge in a very relaxed, personal setting. If this were a slick podcast with a musical opening and high production it would lose something. It's the lack of anything that makes it what it is. Through it I feel a personal connection to someone I'd probably never meet in real life.

Compare this to one done by Lisa Loeb to accompany her show #1 Single. It's interesting and all, but it's way too slick. Instead of feeling like I'm getting to know her a little better, I feel like she's just promoting her show, which is, ironically enough, a reality show.

Chet Curtis: Crooner

Back in my TV days I worked at Boston TV powerhouse WCVB-TV, also known in this market as "Newscenter 5." I worked there during interesting times, as the Louise Woodward trial came to a head, long-time on-air reporter Kirby Perkins died suddenly, and the venerable team of Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson was broken up, first by marriage, then professionally.

Chet has always been a class act. Here's a guy who knew how to enjoy life, gave a sense that he knew how lucky he was to be working in a career he loved, and would spend nights in the newsroom with those writing his copy, not holed up in an office somewhere out of sight.

He also would regularly ask to see pictures of my son and talk politics, sports or anything else. I just can't say enough about Chet the Person.

So you should check out Mark Jurkowitz's feature in the most recent issue of the Boston Phoenix. It's nice to see that he is still the same Chet, just in a different chair.

What Makes Podcasts Work?

I love podcasts.

While my iPod is great for music, I'm not always a music kind of guy. In fact, I like a lot of NPR shows, but have always found myself frustrated by missing them since I don't usually have the radio on around the house. With three kids, finding time to just sit, listen and/or read is just impossible.

But podcasts fill that void perfectly, and I subscribe to many. In fact, podcasts have made walking the dog in the dead of winter a much more palatable task. Why bring this up? Because I'm fascinated by how some are being used and how many people just don't seem to fully understand the medium.

Over the next few posts I'm going to talk a bit about things that work and things that don't. Let me start with one of my favorites: Cinecast, a movie review program broadcast out of Chicago.

Unlike many movie reviewers, hosts Adam Kempendaar and Sam Hallgren need to pay for their tickets. That changes things a bit. One is a father and must take time away from his family to see films, so this increases his commitment even more. In fact, the hosts readily admit that they only review movies that they are interested in seeing. Since they're both pretty big film buffs, this list is pretty long. Still, you're not going to find quickie reviews for Big Mamma's House II on this show.

I don't get out to films as much as I like, but I love hearing their reviews. They're intelligent and give a great synopisis of the film. It's like being back in college and discussing film as art, not just as eyecandy.

But here's the best part: they're sponsored by Peerflix. It's not that they went out looking for sponsors, though they often joked about wanting one on the show, but doing the show takes up enough time, getting out to sell it would take even more. No, the sponsor came from a listener who thought that the two lined up perfectly and connected them. Talk about a loyal audience!

So, what works here? First is the hosts. They are wonderfully smooth, understand their subject matter (Adam has a degree in film), have a passion for their subject, and have used the podcast and the show blog to create a strong community of listeners (1662 according to Frappr). They regularly read feedback representative of the audience, offer up polls on the show blog and take listener suggestions seriously. One listener suggestion about creating a top five list of "man crushes" brought in weeks of emails and voicemails on the topic.

Also, the show notes that appear on my iPod give me timecodes for everything, so if I just want to hear listener feedback, that's all I have to hear. They also have a solid schedule that they follow to the letter, keep shows from getting too long and don't go off too far on tangents. I don't know their political views and frankly, I don't care. I'm here for movie talk and that's what they give.

Would this work as a radio show? Perhaps, but then they'd have to worry about ratings. Because this is a labor of love and not tied down to any concrete geographic area, the right listeners can find them from anywhere in the world. If Adam and Sam found themselves on NPR and saw blips in the ratings each time they talked about a particular type of movie, they'd start to gravitate in a particular direction.

For now, this is perfect the way it is. And my dog is just grateful to Adam and Sam that I'm giving him a little more time on his walk.

Call it what you want...

But the concept is the same.

I call it Open Communications, Charlene Li of Forrester calls it Social Computing, but at the center it's all the same. It's about the level playing field created by new technologies. It's about opening up the communications channels and giving up on control.

This comes back to the reason I keep pushing back on the term "Blogger Relations. Says Charlene: "...as I often stress, it's not about the technologies but about the new relationships that users will form. Technologies will come and go, but the power built on the relationships created by social computing will endure."

She continues in her post on the subject:

To fully appreciate the value of social computing, companies have to let go of control. That means letting customers control the brand if you're a marketer, and it means enabling new enterprise tools that IT can't easily control to attract and support employees with high social computing needs. In many ways, this is the source of the great distress that I routinely hear from corporate managers.

I'd like to take a look at the report, but I'm not sure it's in my personal budget right now.