The Internet's First Blog For Information Marketers
 Brad Smart |
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During this 1 hour Virtual Book Tour, Brad reveals the story behind his latest book, Top Grading. The book’s promise is: “How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People”.
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Because of technology, the world is at a turning point in the way people communicate and in the way people monetize their content. With the advent of podcasting and small, affordable media player, communicating content to other people has never been easier, faster, or more convenient.
A song can be downloaded almost instantly over the internet to go with you wherever you go. Instead of carrying a CD player that holds one CD with about a dozen songs, we can carry one small media player in a shirt pocket that holds hundreds of songs or hours of instructional audio.
We don’t have to drive to the store to buy the music or wait for it to arrive at our house in the mail. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that.
Take Portable Media Expo for example – I see this expo growing as fast as Comdex has.
Consumer Usability
When going to http://podcasts.yahoo.com/ I see something that I’m very familiar with; audio button, listen, subscribe.
These are going to be icons – a meme. This is the beginning of a meme, very exciting! I go there right now. I’m looking at it. There’s a podcast that says ‘Unicef′. I click listen and what happens? There’s a little box that pops up. There’s fast forward, fast rewind, play, speed, and volume. This is brilliant. Why is it brilliant? Usability.
I can do this from anywhere in the world.Consumption usability. We talked about the power of directories. iTunes owns that. Now the power of usability; Yahoo owns it. All I have to do is click the “Listen” button and boom, we′re there.
If I subscribe to it, how easy is that? All of a sudden, I go into Yahoo ID and password and boom, they have me that way. I think Yahoo has a different intention behind what they′re doing here than Apple. It may not be about monetization. It may be about building their Yahoo database, whereas Apple′s intention is appeasing entertainment.
The fact is I don′t think that I’m alone when it comes to understanding new technology. I didn′t realize in the beginning that iTunes was on-line. Well http://Podcast.Yahoo.com is online and it has a subdirectory. Usability.
Paul Colligan recently had his biggest day of podcast downloads ever after sending out an e-mail letting people know they could go to a Web site and click to listen. Is this a coincidence? No, I don′t think so. It all has to do with usability.
Is Yahoo Podcasting killing iTunes? What I’m going to talk about is what′s going to put Yahoo ahead. That is usability. Usability is everything.
Before Outlook looked like Outlook, there must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into developing its usability. A lot of companies spend a lot of money on usability – it′s extremely important because for a guy like me who doesn′t know technology very well, usability is the thing.
If I don′t consume it, it′s not going to be utilized. If it′s not utilized, I don′t pay for it.
Yahoo′s Launch
Let′s take a look at a couple things. The first thing is Yahoo made a big announcement when they launched a Beta; www.Podcast.Yahoo.com. The link is www.Podcast.Yahoo.com, the sub-domain of Yahoo. Talk about a firm commitment, Yahoo has made a commitment to podcast just by the nature of the name.On the other hand, when I type in Podcast.Apple.com I get an MSN search. It goes from Apple to MSN! Bill Gates is getting the last laugh.As an Internet marketer, it is a big mystery to me as to why no one at Apple has made Podcast.Apple.com or just http://Podcast.Apple.com. Why don′t they have that go to the podcasting page at Apple? It′s inexpensive and takes a minimal amount of time.
As beautiful as Apple is, what Yahoo announced just might win.
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 Chris & Ann Frederick |
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During this 1-hour Virtual Book Tour, Chris and Ann reveal the story behind their book, Stretch To Win. The book’s promise is “Flexibility for Improved Speed, Power, and Agility.”
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Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is an umbrella term that refers to several technical methods used to control or restrict the use of digital media content of electronic devices.
Basically, this is a way to keep consumers from copying content by making it inconvenient.
It′s what Steve Jobs had to employ to ensure the success of the iTunes store. DRM is the very technology that launched the iPod revolution. People wanted a safe way to broadcast their content without fear of theft.
The question is, “Is this the future of all online audio and video content?” Specifically, “Is DRM a must for premium podcasts?” Almost all download music media sites use DRM.
We don′t know where the future of premium podcast is going to go because it hasn′t gone there yet. Some groups like Audible say that spoken work content – premium podcasting – absolutely must use DRM. Others, like Rush Limbaugh, don′t use it at all. Nightingale-Conant and the Chautauqua Institution provide their websites′ MP3s without DRM. MyAffiliateGuy podcasts do so as well.
DRM is tightly integrated into some players like the Apple iPod. Others, like the Arcos line, have absolutely no DRM at all, and those from Creative, the MuVo line, and all the PlaysForSure products have some DRM, some unlocking.
What does Harry Potter have to do with podcasting?
Steve Jobs of Apple Computer announced that they had acquired digital rights to Harry Potter for their iTunes store. The significance of this is that Apple has digital products that people want, and they are only available through iTunes. There is only one place you can download Harry Potter and only one place you can listen to it: on an iPod device. There has been much discussion about which type of media player is best for information marketers to use in marketing their products to their customers. The debate has been whether to used locked players such as the Apple iPod or unlocked players such as the Zen.Locked players present several security challenges and preloading iPods with your own content can be a challenge. In contrast, an unlocked player allows anyone to upload information onto it and use it.
Podcast Directories
After some hesitancy I decided to use the iPod Nano media player to market my information products. The main reason I caved in is because of the iTunes podcast directory.After some hesitancy I decided to use the iPod Nano media player to market my information products. The main reason I caved in is because of the. In the first two months, the iTunes directory brought 15,000 podcasts into the directory and 7 million podcasts subscriptions. It has its own search engine, so you can use keywords to attract exactly the type of market you want. It is growing the same way search engines did in the late 1990s. Anyone not listed in this directory is going to be left behind.
Dominating the Market
Apple announced that iTunes is selling 1.8 million songs a day. This shows that people are going to the internet for content and are willing to pay well for it. Songs are soft content. If consumers are willing to pay $0.99 for soft content, how much more are they going to be willing to pay for hard content?
I think the biggest news is that iTunes just released the iTunes phone, a cellular phone that holds about a hundred songs. Because it has a screen, people can choose the song they want to listen to, unlike the iPod shuffle that has no screen.
Another announcement is that 30% of all cars sold in the U.S. in 2006 will offer an option of including some sort of iPod connectivity. This opens a whole marketing channel for information marketers.
Perhaps the most exciting item announced by Apple is the release of the iPod Nano. It has a gorgeous color display, is thinner than a pencil, and weighs 1.5 ounces. It also uses Flash memory instead of a hard drive resulting in fourteen hours of battery life.
Revolutionizing the Marketplace
Most people don’t want to buy and carry around multiple electronic devices, but most Americans today already have a cell phone. Now Apple has come out with the iPod phone.
Although not everyone is going to buy the iPod phone in the next two months, I think that in the next year every phone is going to have some sort of MP3 capability on it, and Apple is going to lead the way.
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