The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Eliot Van Buskirk writes an interesting post regarding Big Music and MP3 technology on Wired News yesterday.  His contention is that Big Music is being forced to adopt MP3 technology just as a weapon against iTunes.  He believes that Big Music will ultimately not allow Steve Jobs to run their lives.  They’ve played reasonably nice together so far, but maybe Steve has outlived his usefulness to them?

Eliot lists 7 reasons why MP3 has to be seriously considered.  I’d tend to agree with him.

So, relative to the title of today’s post, why is that relevant to podcasting?  Well, since MP3 is the audio techology that drives the recording and playback files in this podcasting world, it is critical that other peripheral uses stay alive so as to support a standards based audio delivery technology.  So, kudos (assuming Eliot is correct) to Big Music for keeping this corner of new media alive!

Over the weekend, there was some splash about a new trend - de-portalization.  One of the best posts was from edgeio with great graphics to demonstrate the definition.  The focus is on distributed content and less demand for portal sites.  The only reason I call it a misnomer is that what this is really saying is that the LARGE portals (Yahoo, etc) are becoming less significant in our overall web experience and that there are other “portals” that have new signifcance. 

For example, one cannot tell me that YouTube is not a portal.  Or that iTunes is not a portal, in the true sense of the word.  Keep in mind content aggregation is still a hot topic, so I’m just jousting on symantics.

Until search is so sophisticated that I can type in a word and get back relevant words, images, sounds, videos, etc, then I think there will be plenty of room for content aggregation. 

The good news is that the lock the big portals has had on us is loosening and many sites that are lower on the value food chain are seeing opportunity for niche plays.  Niches have value now and I think that is a trend that will continue for a long time.

At 6:55P, CST today, 9 out of 17 headlines on TechMeme are not traditional bloggers, but instead are newspaper reporters - mostly for the New York Times.  This has been a trend over recent weeks to the point that I now believe more firmly what I’ve said many times before - if traditional media begins to “get” new media, then there won’t be new media anymore - it will just be media and those thinking they had old media cornered and dead will find they have cornered a rabid dog…..

Yesterday, Steve Rubel articulated the issues around RSS and large, profitable web properties - specifically Yahoo!.  He updates today with a broader discussion of this issue here. I’ve been discussing this in presentations for the past year that RSS, while a phenomenal “new” service that web users can benefit from, requires a web property focused on pageviews to rethink their advertising strategy.

Namely, should a frequent reader only subscribe to your feeds, there is NO reason for them to come back to your website.  That is, unless you are primarily an e-commerce website.  So, can you monetize your RSS feeds significantly enough to replace the the money you’ll see disappear from your CPM reduction?  So far, advertising in RSS feeds is still nascient, so I’m thinking that you won’t be able to.  Thus, those web properties focused on ad sales to survive have to reconsider how quickly they adopt an RSS strategy. 

The big surprise for me is that Yahoo! appears to not have considered this when they started or at least when they saw RSS taking off.  Poor strategic planning, guys.

What do you think CNN, WSJ, and Time should/will do in light of this discussion?  AOL already has enough revenue problems and now, they have a new leader (Randy Falco) who doesn’t appear to appreciate email - is that a sign that he’ll adopt RSS or that he doesn’t yet know what it stands for….?

Finally, some real numbers regarding these threats are shared in an article in the WSJ Online today (subscription required) by reporter Li Yuan.  Sony Ericsson has sold 16.5 million Walkman phones in 14 months (not bad!), Motorola has sold 15 million MP3 enabled phones to date.  Nokia is projecting that in 2006 they will have sold 80 million music phones, which means that in 1 year, they will have outperformed the cumulative sales of Apple iPods (approxmiately 70 million).  So, between the 3 largest cellphone handset manufacturers, that means that there are approximately 110 million MP3 enabled phones on the market today and growing rapidly.

Will Apple roll out the iPhone soon?  One would expect they cannot ignore these numbers  - it certainly is momentum that will not stop.

In the article, the Yuan mentions that Motorola states that about 50% of the MP3 enabled phones are used for music playing purposes - so true penetration and use of a multimedia phone is still some ways off.

As we’ve said here many times - the end game portable media device is the cell phone - not the iPod or other MP3 player.

Well, Reuters breaks some news picked up by CNET which opens my eyes to some of the barriers for cell phone use and penetration in what would be considered 3rd world countries.  It appears that state-owned telcos are not happy with other wireless carriers operating their own gateways to the world.  Hey - you let the competition in, Zimbabwe.  Now you have to pay the price.

Well, no great surpise as this from Matt Richtel of the NY Times has been discussed in the blogosphere for several weeks now.  But, what I want to comment on here is that Verizon won’t have the lock on this for long (blinding glimpse of the obvious, BGO for you Barbarians at the Gates fans) and YouTube and other aggregation points will be readily accessed by cell phones soon and without too much muss or fuss.

Look for this to be the norm before long WITHOUT Verizon’s $15 surcharge….

Apparently, in the world of Web 2.0 (or other semi-relevant monikers), the rules are changing.  Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Back in the 90’s, Mark Cuban was fond of saying “Content is King”.  While I can’t say if this slogan is attributed to him, it was and has been the rule of the web.  Today, that slogan is officially aged and cracking.

This morning, Rafat Ali, of Paid Content scoops Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang in his research article on how Aggregation and Context is the highest value in the information chain.  I use the word “scoop” because it showed up on TechMeme first and now the Bear Stears blog is the headliner.  Shows you how I rate and rank my content, eh?

This confirms what I’ve been believing and therefore modifying the MPReach business plan accordingly.  Watch this space for announcement of new audio/video/text networks that we’ll be launching (can’t call the digital media “podcasting or video podcasting, as Apple Computer might decide they own me….)

One of my favorite debates comes front and center in a New York Times article written by Matt Richtel today, which initially focuses on the wave of wi-fi enabled phones.  Belkin has a new wi-fi phone out and T-Mobile as announced a trial in Seattle where their wi-fi enabled phones will switch out between cell coverage and wi-fi coverage as needed to extend coverage areas, particularly in hard-to-reach areas such as homes and businesses.

At the heart of this new wave of coverage extension lies the question of switching between wi-fi networks.  In the case mentioned at the beginning of the article, a reporter tests the Belkin on the front lawn of a New York Times employee, essentially “stealing” his bandwidth.  Didn’t even leave a quarter on the front steps out of courtesy.   

I’m a big fan of using bandwidth I’ve paid for.  Others don’t seem to mind and use the argument “whoever setup the wi-fi router didn’t configure security to be enabled, so they must have been ok with me using it” or something like that.  That argument and others like it are not taking into account the ease of installation of one of those devices and ignorance of the need to set it up.  Do-it-yourself technology is great in one way, but it creates a lot of neophite adopters in the process - and unfortunately the more sophisticated seem to take advantage of disparity in the knowledge delta.

You can take the amount of blog headlines (or mainstream media for that matter, but I wouldn’t expect it too much from them) on RSS one of two ways.  Either a) it has now become “table stakes” and the technology crowd assumes you’re using it - OR - b) it is not mainstream for anyone else to use other than the crowd in a). (Which assumes you’re using it, but may be mistaken).

While IE7 makes it “daily life” compatible, this post from Stuart Brown lists all the specialty applications that pick up RSS.  The title of his post suggests otherwise, but it really is only a product comparison.  It appears that IE7 doesn’t have wide enough spread adoption to make it into his Feedburner list of applications used while subscribing to his blog.  Frank Gruber, from Somewhat Frank also comments with a similar discussion, but at least mentions IE7.

My question (formed by running a podcasting business) is what is the real adoption rate of RSS and will the mainstream truly see the advantage that most of us geeks and semi-geeks see?  Stay tuned.