The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Greg Sterling discusses the new Pew Research report regarding the segregation of internet users.  Greg’s headline is more grabbing than the stats, as it appears that what could be defined as the “Web 2.0″ crowd is 23%, which is more than I would have guessed at this point.  Pew’s own report says about 31% - but their definitions seem to conflict, so I’ll stick with the 23% number.

The greater issue, which comes up from time to time is whether there is an echo chamber that is Web 2.0 and will that continue our break out to widespread adoption and purpose?  No answers hear today, but a word of caution to consider if Web 2.0 is something you alone embrace, or your entire family, including near retirement “Boomers”…..

Ignore my sarcastic view of the PR sweet-spot words in this otherwise notable press release from Adobe.  Flash has made a big comeback with it’s popularity driven by applications in YouTube and other media aggregation sites.

Some of you may say - “Comeback - have you been under a rock or something?  Hasn’t Adobe’s Flash been a critical element of web design, rich media ads, etc for years?”  and to some degree, rightly so.  Here’s the reason for my choice of words “Comeback”:  Flash grew popular in the late 90’s and early 00’s for visually stunning mulitimedia websites.  Then came search engine optimization and search engine marketing best practices, which looked down upon the use of Flash in websites, as search engine spiders could not “read” a Flash file.  So, it’s been out of vogue if you wanted your website to be search engine friendly.

With the advent of YouTube and other media aggregation sites, Flash has become the new poster child for media distribution capabilities.  Now that it has an even newer lease on life on cellphone platforms, it may be here to stay.

So, strategic question - will the use of Flash media files take the place of MP3, MP4, due to the ubiquity of the Flash Player?  Of course, you technology strategy geniuses out there are saying “Ed - I had that figured out 2 years ago - what took you so long?”. 

This would have just a LITTLE impact on the current technology that drives music, film, podcasting and iPods, etc.  If cellphone MFRs implement Flash as their media technology of choice, the ramifications are pretty large…..I’ve already said that cellphones replace the iPod and other MPx players in the end game.  Maybe this accelerates the end game.

Well, the ugly side of the Creative Commons License got exposed via the naivete of one brilliant marketer, Seth Godin.  The big oops is detailed here and Seth encourages us not to buy the book, because we can get it free (assuming we want to help HP out and buy a bunch of print cartridges if we want it in print form) off the internet.

Publishing is going through massive change (just ask the major record labels what Steve Jobs did to them this week) and I’m sure we’ll see more change - but lets not be “bleeding edge” and then get surprised when things work out slightly different than we expected.

Being agressive and trying new things will not only give us the possibility of breakthroughs, but also the possibilities of breakdowns.  Don’t sign up if a couple of bruises and scrapes will make you sit out for a while.