Leslie Nassar: I spoke to him after the Perth Podcamp. He was instrumental in Radio National’s wonderfully successful podcasting effort. Their average user is 40 plus plus, supposedly well over the technology hill. Yet on a pro-rata basis they get THREE times as much email feedback from a podcast as they do from the same show when it’s broadcast. Why is that?

Leslie cites two reasons. Firstly, people are listening at their computer so the email client is within easy reach. Secondly, they have made a choice to subscribe so they have a higher level of commitment and a higher level of involvement. Hold that thought.

Also discussed during the day was the Crikey success story and I wanted to mention Stilgherrian‘s thoughts on this. He said it works because it’s made easy; all the articles are bundled up in a single email that arrives without you having to do anything. Late enough in the day to have commentary on the morning papers and perhaps a little morning news. Filling a niche vacated by afternoon papers.

You can’t explain the two successes in terms of technology alone or even content alone. Here is the similarity. They are both delivered/collected in a suitable context. We are so used to consuming media ourselves that we forget a media campaign – even a media program – must consider the context in which it is consumed.

As Marshall McLuhan so beautifully put it: people don’t read a morning newspaper, they slip into it like a warm bath.

But then again, younger consumers don’t read morning newspapers and they have showers, not baths. What is the context for new media?

OK, so you can buy an episode of Desperate Housewives for your new video iPod for US$1.99. And various free-to-air execs in Australia think that this is a great opportunity to “monetise content” by allowing time-shifted viewing. Are you sure? On a 2.5″ screen? How desperate would you have to be, housewife?

I think the video iPod is a small white elephant. The iPod is a portable device. Audio is portable. Works fine in the car and while walking around. But when you’re moving around you’re by definition concentrating on where you’re going. And when you’re sitting in a cafe with friends only one person can view the screen.

Should have been a clue: You’ve been able to buy small screen portable TV devices for years. How many people carry one of those around with them?

Where is the content for the video iPod? TV shows will struggle on that small screen. Movies are worse; imagine spending 2 hours; my eyes hurt just thinking about it. Exclusive content would help but if you had great content why would you sell it for $2.66 on iTunes? Great time-sensitive content (arrest of Osama Bin Laden) would be sold to the mainstream news media. Great uncensored content (high profile celebs having sex) would not work on a small screen. Music clips? Not a really big deal.

Content needs to be especially developed for the medium and it would need to be talking heads. Close-ups. Personal ads is one possibility but they don’t really need to be portable. For the life of me I can’t see the application.

Just because you can deliver a new technology doesn’t mean there will be a demand for it.

While the radio industry braces for the full effects of podcasting (reduced time spent listening, competitive content outside of the licensing system etc) they risk missing the newest threat: Pandora. You can try it for no cost until the end of September.

Pandora lets you build your own radio station on the net. You start with one song and Pandora finds and automatically programmes similar songs in that style. That might not sound feasible but the core of Pandora’s offering is a sophisticated database of songs classified according to style. The bottom line is: it works.

Pandora is the best of a new class of “recommendation technologies”. I’d just call it “auto-find”. The business model is subscription; US$38 a year gets you all the music you want. For older, busier users, the idea of hunting around P2P sites to find songs is too time-consuming. Pandora does it all for you in one-twentieth of the time it takes to find tracks, download to your PC, upload to an iPod.

So if you’ve got your computer hooked up to your stereo at home, Pandora is all you need. You get your favourite artists together with a selection of similar tracks, so you still get the surprise-factor inherent in broadcast radio. And for mobile use? Any web-enabled phone. Or, depending on bandwidth costs and battery performance you might be better off with a Wi-Fi MP3 player.

The subscription model is very ugly for the radio industry. Pandora collects the dough, pays the record companies the royalties; who misses out badly? Advertisers and commercial radio stations.

There are strategies they can adopt to protect themselves, but they’d better act fast. Pandora is a great product and word spreads quick these days.

I can’t say I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts but I’ve listened to some. We can only hope that people improve over time.

People are used to listening to well-produced programs on radio. They are the quality benchmark. If you expect to get an audience you better make sure your content is damn good because the chances are your broadcast quality is not up to scratch.

Some people will invent compelling content and slowly rise to prominence. They will have to claw their way over numerous no-talents.

The truth is, this is not broadcast radio. I say that despite the fact that public broadcasters like the ABC are raising awareness of the medium by allowing listeners to time-shift their favourite radio shows; Radio National is up to 200,000 downloads per week in Australia.

Podcasting is closer to what’s called narrowcasting; catering to a specific audience who subscribe to a service.

One of the things that distinguishes podcasting is context and this is where the opportunities lie. I’m not interested in tourism information unless I’m a tourist. If I’m a tourist in a new city and there is a good menu-driven podcast covering major tourism facts and destinations, I’m into it. When I’m walking past the Bell Tower in Perth, no that’s a bad example. When I’m walking around the Sydney Opera House I’d be quite interested in a podcast about the history of the building.

You’ve used audio aids in museums and galleries. They really add something. More general tourism programs can be developed that colour the tourist’s experience of a whole destination, not just one of its museums.

A second example of the power of context. Buying real estate. I’m walking around a Home Open. My iPod has a menu that says, “kitchen, backyard, neighbours …”. Each of these menu items contains a short podcast by the home owner or the real estate agent describing the features of the room. “The Louis XIV commode-scriban has a solid cherry inset with burl walnut panels and is inlaid with floral marquetry and cross-banding. Unfortunately it’s not included with the house.”

The new and powerful applications of this medium will be those that augment the visual experience of the mobile user. Think tourism, thing training, think shopping.

i’M a new iPod user and i love the way it works. The interface is simple and the implementation of podcasting is excellent but for the life of me i can’t understand why there has been no implementation of rss feeds (subscription) for iPhoto. Perhaps this is imminent?

Apple seem to think that people’s preoccupation will be looking at their own photos on their iPod. i don’t think so. What’s the big deal about that? i’Ve already seen my own photos. They were on my camera then on my computer; really i’M bored with them already.

This is exactly what happened with the development of the photo sharing juggernaut flickr incidentally. Eric Costello says he’d envisaged flickr as a tool for sharing photos with the family but it really took off when photographers started showing off their work more publicly. He points out that this allowed people to feel part of a community. Here’s the full interview. A digression: flickr have put together a “best of” selection of photos and it’s wonderful. it’s called interestingness.

Where the iPhoto has the potential to get REALLY interesting is allowing people to subscribe to other people’s photos. You can do this on the web of course when you subscribe to the web site of someone who publishes photos.

But when you view photos on the iPod you can still be listening to music so people will be matching music to their slide shows. it’s a nice way of listening to music. is the screen big enough for porn, one of my friends asked me when we were discussing this. i wouldn’t know.

The ABC’s step into podcasting is a screaming success. Radio National last week had over 100,000 downloads and are moving virtually all shows (sans copyright music) to the format. There is now heavy on-air promotion.

It’s a logical fit for RN. Lots of original talk content and most of it magazine-style; i.e. it’s not time-sensitive like news. The benefit of course is time-shifting. U can listen to the show when it suits U; not when it’s broadcast.

In the states NPR are not far behind. Of course, public broadcasters are one thing; there is no profitable business model yet developed. But I remember when they said about web search engines …