Listen to the complete podcast here.
Chip: Hello and welcome to the 8th episode of Disruptive Dialogue for Tuesday, May 1, 2007. I'm your host Chip Griffin, and I'm coming to you today from cloudy Bow, New Hampshire, where we finally have no snow. And I have much less of a cold than I've had the past few weeks. So perhaps that means my voice won't be quite as fun, but hopefully the content will be at least as entertaining.
Of course, here on Disruptive Dialogue, we talk about the business of online communication. And if you've been here before, I appreciate you coming back. If not, you'll find that I talk about a variety of topics, including technology, PR, marketing, media, those sorts of things.
So stay tuned and you'll find out what it's all about. On today's show I've got some news items, three of them to be exact. And coming up after that, I've got several commentaries.
We'll talk about mass media and whether or not it's dead, and what that means for niche media. We'll talk about the phone interview kerfuffle that was going on between Jason Calacanis and Fred Vogelstein of Wired. And we'll talk about a new company called Vudu that allows you to watch movies on demand on your television. Doesn't sound that interesting, but stay tuned. I think you'll find it to be an interesting discussion.
And, finally, we'll have a bit of a discussion about what's going on in other podcasts, and also, of course, listener comments, because the name of the show is, after all, Disruptive Dialogue. That means I want to have a conversation with you.
So go ahead and share your comments with me. You can do so by email, you can phone the call‑in line, which you'll hear the number for in a little bit, or you can email your audio comments to me in MP3 format.
So sit back and enjoy the show.
[music]
Chip: Time for a bit of news, and I've got three news items for you today. The first one is on one of my favorite topics: newspaper circulation. The report out in today's New York Times says that the newspaper industry as a whole reported a quote 2.1% drop in weekday circulation, and 3.1% on Sundays in the six months that ended March 31st, compared with the same period the year earlier.
But they have this interesting bit later on in the article that says the New York Post and its rival, the Daily News, defied the industry's gravity. Circulation of the Post jumped 7.6% on weekdays and 6.2% on Sundays. And at the News, it rose 1.4% on weekdays, but slipped 2.5% on Sundays. So perhaps there's some hope for the tabloid format.
Really, I think what this is telling us is that, as I've been harping on, the newspaper industry needs to evolve. It's not a matter of whether newspapers work or don't. If there are newspapers that are actually seeing growth in circulation, it means that something can be done to improve the fate of newspapers. So don't whine about if you're a newspaper publisher, editor, or reporter. Rather, figure out what to do about it.
Next, have we reached the peak of Mount Blog? That's what I wrote about on Pardon the Disruption recently. And it was about some statistics that Heather Green at BusinessWeek managed to dig up. She convinced Dave Sifry of Technorati, who does a regular report on the state of the blogosphere and talks about how many blogs there are and how fast it's growing and all that.
And she got him to cough up some facts and figures that suggest it's not exactly as he seems to suggest in his ongoing report. In Sifry's report, he talks about 70 million blogs in the blogosphere, and this corresponds to the number of blogs that he and his team at Technorati are indexing. But there's always been a belief that there is a significant number of those blogs that are dead or dormant, that there really aren't 70 million actively updated blogs.
And it turns out that surmise was absolutely correct. In fact, a very small portion of that 70 million is actually active. And what Heather found out from talking with Sifry is that there are 15 million blogs that have been updated in the past 90 days. So, that means that 55 million blogs that they claim in their index aren't really there. I mean, they're there, but only for historical purposes.
So while the 70 million figure isn't inaccurate, it is misleading. The unfortunate thing is, 15 million is still a very impressive number. That's far more publications than exist in the traditional media world. So to me, I would prefer not to overstate the number, but rather give the real number and talk about it in context.
I'd also frankly be interested in seeing what the break points are in 60 days or 30 days. Does that 15 million drop down to five if you look at the last 30 days? How many blogs are updated on a weekly basis? These would be all interesting statistics to see, and I would love to see Dave Sifry put that information out.
And I don't think it in any way takes away from what Technorati is doing. They do a tremendous job with indexing blogs, and I take my hat off to them. But let's deal with real statistics, because it's so much more meaningful.
The other interesting thing that Heather found was that the numbers haven't really changed that much over time. In the last six months, the number of active blogs has only gone from 15.3 million to 15.5 million. This clearly suggests we're at a peak, but until we have more data to go on, it will be hard to say that with certainty.
Also, she notes that the number of English language posts actually fell between last fall and this spring. In October, it was 507, 000 posts in the English language. And now, it's only about 495, 000. So not a huge difference, but nevertheless suggests that we really have hit that peak.
The other thing I would note is that the number of daily English language posts corresponds actually fairly nicely with the number of online media stories that we at.
Customer Scoop track on a daily basis, which suggests that as far as amount of content, there may be some parity between English language traditional media publishing online and blogs. So definitely something to keep an eye on.
And the final news item today is not so much communication‑oriented as business‑oriented. And I think it still has a lot of bearing for listeners to this podcast, so I wanted to share it. It was a story in New York Times over the weekend that suggests that Dell is rethinking its traditional direct sales model.
This is how the article begins: "Michael S. Dell, the chairman and chief executive of Dell who built his business by selling direct to his customers, is now thinking about changing the way the company markets its computers.
'The direct model has been a revolution, but it is not a religion, ' Mr. Dell wrote in a memorandum sent on Wednesday to 80, 000 Dell employees. It is the first time that Mr. Dell or any other senior executive has publicly conceded that the business model that was crucial to the company's success could and should be altered. Until now, the company responded with an adamant no when Wall Street analysts for customers asked whether the company would consider other ways of selling."
This is a huge transformation for Dell. For those of you who are not really followers of the company, they have typically eschewed going through retail outlets ‑ either their own, in the Apple model, or others, as other manufacturers like Lenovo with their ThinkPads have done. So, if they're considering selling through retail chains, I find that to be a huge development and something that all of us, whether we're communicators or businesspeople or whatever, need to pay attention to.
To me, the really interesting thing here is it plays into the immediate gratification model that we all have become accustomed to in the Internet age. If we want some software, we download it. If we want some music, we download it. We get these things immediately. We no longer have to wait for a shrink‑wrapped package to be sent to us.
Now, obviously, that's not possible with computer hardware. I defy you to try to download your next Dell computer. It's simply not going to happen, at least not for a long time. But how does the immediate gratification go along with Dell's model of customization? When you look at ThinkPads, or at Apples, they don't do a lot of customization for customers. It really is more the cookie‑cutter sales approach: take it or leave it.
Dell has always specialized in letting you pick whatever components you want and it will be interesting to see, as they move potentially to a retail environment, how they balance the benefit of instant gratification with the drawback of lack of customization. Maybe it works out fine. Maybe it turns out that the people who want immediate gratification aren't as concerned with customization.
But how does that dilute the brand? How does that change the perception of the company? These are very interesting things to watch and I will definitely be keeping my eye on Dell.
[music]
Chip: Will you be practicing voodoo in your living room soon? That's the question that comes to mind after Sunday's article in the New York Times about a startup company called voodoo that is preparing to offer films for immediate download and viewing over the Internet and on your television. Let me read a few excerpts from the New York Times story. It is a lengthy story so I'm going to pull some lengthy excerpts, just to give you a flavor for what is going on so we can talk about this.
It says, "Voodoo, if all goes as planned hopes to turn America's televisions into limitless multiplexes, providing instant gratification for movie buffs. It has built a small Internet ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of 5000 films now in their growing collection. The boxes biggest asset is raw speed. The company says the films will start playing immediately after the consumer makes a selection."
This of course is a big change over some existing technologies where you need to download a movie to your computer and then you can watch it on your television. If you're able to start viewing immediately in a streaming fashion then that provides some real benefits to the consumer.
The question is how are they able to do this? And they do it through peer‑to‑peer technology. For those of you who are not familiar with that, it's where you share information between users. Typically these systems have been set up so that users do it in a way that they are aware of each other and they are directly sharing. But let me read from the New York Times article to explain how Voodoo is doing it.
It says, "The system, according to interviews and those patent applications will operate under the traditional peer to peer service but without any active participation by users. Voodoo boxes that already have a certain movie on their hard drives, say The Godfather, will send pieces of that movie to a nearby box when its owner suddenly gets a taste for the epic mafia drama."
Now that's all well and good but this is what is interesting to me. Listen to this next paragraph.
"But to get those movies playing quickly, the Voodoo engineers struck upon another notion. Using a slice of the digital real estate on each Voodoo box to store the beginning portions of each film. They also delved into the science of predictions. When the company determines that a movie is more likely to be rented or purchased early in its release for example, it will plant lengthier pieces of that film on unused portions of Voodoo boxes in customers homes."
So this does really do a good job apparently of meeting the immediate gratification needs of the consumer. And this really goes to the evolving environment that we see in the entertainment world. And the New York Times also touches on this point. The article goes on to say, "Voodoo is arriving at a time of rapid change in the entertainment and media landscapes.
This year for the first time, a majority of American homes will have broadband connection to the Web, according to iSuppli, a research firm. That benchmark has reshuffled cards in the media and entertainment industries.
With versatile data pipes now reaching into most homes, the deep thinkers in Hollywood and Silicon Valley say they believe that television shows and movies, just like email, web pages, songs and albums, will one day be cheaply and efficiently imported into the home. But the only question is when."
The article goes on to talk about the needs for consumers and desires of consumers. Here's a quote from a researcher who says, "Consumers want choice and control but for long‑term video‑like movies on the PC, that is not enough. You have to get the contents to the television."
And the New York Times article says this, "Steve Jobs at least understands that. Apple, which has been the most successful movie downloading effort so far on iTunes, offers just 500 films from two major studios. It began selling a device called Apple TV last month. Priced at $299, the box wirelessly draws movies, TV shows and music from the computer to the television."
The New York Times goes on to write, "The people at Voodoo seem particularly wary of Apple TV. They bought two to test. But they are betting that movie downloads will ultimately be free from the awkward dependence on the computer and they think that this could happen sooner than anyone else expects."
I agree entirely with that statement and I think that Voodoo has really hit on something here if they are able to execute it as well as this article suggests they might. I believe that most consumers really are just looking for something simple.
When you want to watch television you don't want to have to pare things out between your computer and your iPod and your Apple TV and all that. You simply want to go to your TV, use some sort of a remote control and bring things up. It's a lesson that we have learned from TiVo and DVRs and that sort of thing where everything is really intuitive and it all remains a TV experience fundamentally. It is not a computer experience on the television but a TV experience using computer and Internet technology.
So I think that, if we continue to see this sort of development from voodoo, things are going to be very promising for them. They're already on the radar screen of some potential acquirers. Reed Hastings from Netflix apparently has met with them recently although he was very noncommittal about what the purpose was.
But it also turns out that there are people who aren't quite as fond of Voodoo as you might imagine. One of those is the folk over at Podcasting News. They had a post titled 'Five Reasons the New Voodoo Movie Service Is DOA'. And here's what they write. These are the five reasons why they think that Voodoo is not all it is cracked up to be.
The first is kind of snarky. It says, "The Company has enough startup capital to employ 41 people. Yet it doesn't have the net marketing smarts to secure the Voodoo domain name." Apparently someone else owns that. So that's the first knock.
The second one is that it is competing with Apple and Microsoft directly with an offering that doesn't do a fraction of the things that the Apple TV or the Xbox 360 do. On this one I sort of take issue with Podcasting News because it seems to me that, based on what they are describing, the Voodoo box does something entirely different than what Microsoft or Apple is doing.
And while Microsoft or Apple have capabilities in that there are two units that do similar things, it's not the same. I believe that a computer free connection to streaming movies in TV quality on a TV really is different and meaningful.
The third item that Podcasting News offers up, "It's not cost effective. You would have to save a lot of money on DVD purchases to justify the $300 cost of a Voodoo." Again, this misses the point. If you've got the Voodoo, you have the ability to watch movies on demand. With the DVD, if you are using Netflix, you have to wait a couple of days to get it.
If you are using a local video rental store or video store to purchase, you have to go out and get it. If you just have an urge to watch the Godfather tonight, with Voodoo you can simply go and hit play.
The fourth knock, "It's all about on demand digital movies which haven't found a market yet and ignores one of the fastest‑growing areas of content on the Web, the video podcasts and Internet video."
Again, I think this takes the view of someone who is much more tech savvy. The fundamental point is that very few consumers, typical American consumers, are interested in video and audio podcasts right now. And that's just a fact of life.
As a podcaster I certainly want people to listen to me, but I also understand that this market is still evolving and there is a much larger market for people who want to watch movies on TV. I think that we have seen that on demand movies to work.
They certainly work in hotel rooms. They work off of the cable company machines that they put in your house ‑ the table set top boxes. So I think that this is a market that will work and if you have the kind of selection that Voodoo promises to have, that could make a real difference in the marketplace.
Finally, the fifth knock that Podcasting News offers up, "It's a closed single platform system. People want to watch movies on their TVs but they also want to watch them on their laptops and portable media players."
Again, I think this is the minority that we are talking about, not the vast majority of American consumers. The vast majority of consumers want to watch a feature‑length movie on TV. There aren't very many who want to watch them on a laptop and there are far fewer who want to watch them on an iPod.
These are small devices that are designed for portability and certainly if you are commuting on the train or something like that, you may want to watch on your video iPod. If you're flying across country as I do frequently, I certainly enjoy watching movies on my laptop from time to time. But recognize that that is the minority.
That's not the common consumer practice. Most people want to watch a movie on their television and Voodoo appears poised to offer them this. So I for one will be watching for Voodoo's launch. Frankly it sounds like the kind of gadget that I will probably have to pick up and try.
[music]
Chip: Regular listeners to 'Disruptive Dialogue' will know that the future of media and niche media in particular are particular interests of mine. So I was very interested to read a post from Rich Screnta of Topics this week titled 'Mass Media Was a Temporary Phenomenon'.
He starts out by saying, "In 1960, an advertiser could spend $5 million a year and reach 160 million television viewers. With the right message and sustained over a few years, 85% message penetration of the audience was achievable."
But later in the post he explains that this is no longer the case. "The audience isn't huddled every night in front of these three TV channels anymore. And you can't reach them with five million of 1960 dollars. The audience is divided across 300 channels, DVDs, TiVo, iTunes, YouTube, BitTorrent, Flickr and millions of other options. Saturation marketing can cost something like $30 million plus for a few week blitz to launch a new movie."
So then Rich asked this question, "What if you wanted to saturate like they could in 1960 and drill your damn jingle into every consumer's head until there was no way they couldn't hear it when they saw the box in the drugstore? The cost to launch a new top tier brand from scratch starts at $150 million now. So it is more expensive to reach the same audience of people because they spread out into a billion different places."
He continues, "But it isn't the Net per se that did this. It was scarcity that caused people to huddle around the same a few media outputs in the first place."
What we are seeing here are really is dynamic change in the media environment. People have a lot more choices today and while they don't necessarily choose to use all of the options available to them, for example, I expect even people listening to this podcast may not be familiar with Flickr.
I know lot would be but some won't. I know of some people who aren't familiar with iTunes still believe it or not, which to me is amazing because that one seems to really be a ubiquitous band in the marketplace.
Nevertheless, people are making additional choices. I know, for example, that last night I was watching my wife's viewing habits and she was watching a show from the BBC. That's something that is a relatively new phenomenon. It was only once digital cable came into being a few years ago that people started to have those kinds of choices.
Previously you might have 50 or 60 choices on a really robust cable system. Today, as Rich says, it's 300 or more channels. In fact I know that our own TV system goes up to something like 600 and something including all the digital audio channels and on‑demand sports and all that sort of thing.
So there are more choices. And how do you reach people? I think this is where my argument for the niches comes into play. As more and more things splinter the environment, it provides it actually requires that brands start targeting their message more effectively.
But I believe that more than requiring it, it is actually a good thing for the brands because it means that you're not wasting your message on millions of people who don't care.
Frankly if you are selling something as ubiquitous as detergent, there really is a niche market that cares about the detergent and what the various qualities of it are. So target to those people, the demographics of the buyers who actually will make a decision.
It's much like in politics. It's very uncommon for a political campaign to target members of the opposing political party. It simply serves no benefit. There needs to be more of an effort to energize the base and reach undecided voters because those are the people which your message has an impact on.
The same thing now has to happen with marketers. There has to be a better job to use niche media, to target those people who are more likely to buy your product, to talk about your product, to promote your product, to advocate your company.
Those are the kinds of things, which if you do effectively, can have a real benefit for your company and frankly at much lower cost than you ever could in the past because you're not wasting your message on the wrong people.
Initially this may scare you off because sometimes niche marketing costs more per pair of eyeballs or pair of ears or whatever than would typical media. But when you actually look at the conversion rate for those people, if you actually look on the return on investment, I think you're going to find in most cases, if you are doing a good job of targeting, that it really is beneficial.
So throw mass media out as Rich says and focus on niche media.
[music]
Chip: Should you talk to a reporter on the telephone? That's the question that is being tossed around the blogosphere lately in the wake of a kerfuffle between Jason Calacanis and reporter Fred Vogelstein from Wired Magazine.
It turns out that Vogelstein wanted to interview Calacanis on the phone about Tech Crunches' Mike Arrington, but Calacanis refused. He said he would only grant the interview by email. And in fact he then went on to discuss this on his blog with Jason.
It also turns out that another individual who was being interviewed by Fred for that story was Dave Weiner and he too refused to grant an interview by phone.
So the question is 'is this appropriate for a journalist to do?' Is it a good idea to grant a reporter a phone interview or should you insist on doing everything in writing? Ultimately Calacanis did have a conversation with Vogelstein, but he recorded it and he turned it into a podcast.
I have yet to listen to it myself so I can't comment on the content of it, but I have been following the debate in the blogosphere on this and there was a piece on Jeff Jarvis's blog over the weekend, or perhaps yesterday, Monday, where he quoted from Scott Rosenberg, who was talking about the episode. Rosenberg writes this, "It's undeniable that the pros prefer voters.
Partly it's because the phone is fast. The most senior level reporters today learned their craft when the phone was really the only channel available. Also it's because a good reporter can capture an extra bit of color by listening to an interviewer's voice and tone.
But mostly it's because reporters hope to use the conversational environment as a space in which to prod, weasel, cajole and possibly trip up their interviewee. Any reporter who doesn't admit this is lying either to his listener or to himself."
Now that's, I think, a little bit harsh on journalists. And I am not generally a defender of the media and reporter is but I will tell you that I do believe that there is a real benefit out of having a conversation over the phone or in person with someone.
It is true that when you are writing responses in email, you consider what you are saying more. And it is hard to discern actual meaning. Rosenberg addresses this and says that as a writer, Vogelstein shouldn't be saying that because he conveys meaning in words all the time.
However it is important to realize that not all interview subjects are quite as comfortable with the written word. They may use it for defensive purposes, but they may not be as artful in expressing themselves. I know that I frequently receive emails from folks and it is hard for me to know sometimes if they are being serious, sarcastic, humorous or what have you.
Sometimes the same words can be interpreted in different fashions. That can be a real risk actually if you are communicating with a reporter who misunderstands your tone. That's something much less likely to happen in a phone interview. Of course, on a phone interview it is possible that the reporter will transcribe incorrectly or take your words out of context, but I do believe that most reporters are not out to do that.
I also agree with Heather Green that it is easier to get follow‑up questions in a person‑to‑person discussion, either on the phone or in person. It allows data back and forth, give‑and‑take. While you can ask follow‑up questions in email, it's just not quite the same. It's not synchronous. It's not something where you just have a dialogue and it feels natural.
I know myself that if I am having a lengthy email conversation back and forth with someone, I usually tell them, "Let's pick up the phone. Let's talk. We can get through this quicker and hopefully illuminate more information in that way."
Rosenberg concludes his commentary that is quoted on Jarvis's blog by saying this, "In the online conversation, the reporter doesn't get the last word. And the reporter doesn't get to filter which parts of the conversation are available to the public. No wonder journalists want to stick with the phone. But I think it is going to keep getting harder for them to get their sources to take the calls."
Jeff Jarvis concludes the post by saying, in Jeff's words, "One blogger said I was issuing a dictum against phone interviews. No. I was just saying that it's the interviewee, not the interviewer that gets to issue dicta now."
And I think that's just a little misguided as well. This isn't about dicta; it's about trying to figure out how each interviewer and interviewee wants to handle things. Frankly, that's how it is always been. There have always been ground rules established between subjects and reporters and that's not going to be something that's going to change in the online age. It's just going to evolve in that there are different choices.
It's no longer a question of, are we going to meet in a coffee shop for an interview? Will you come to my office? Is it going to be recorded or not recorded? At what point do we go off the record or on background which I just have to say are very dangerous, so be careful about using such terminology.
In any event it's just an evolving negotiation and the issues to be discussed simply change over time. I personally don't believe that I would forgo all phone interviews. I certainly think there are instances where phone or email make sense but in each case it's up to the interviewer and interviewee to make that decision.
[radio break]
Chip: I only have time for a very brief "What's happening in other podcasts" section today so I will do just that and keep it brief. I think that the most interesting topic being past around on other podcasts lately has been ghost blogging. And whether or not that's a good thing, bad thing. Ethical, unethical. Whether it violates transparency, etc. And there's been discussion in particular on the probecast podcast by Topaz Partners.
And also on for immediate release on this subject. Obviously there have been others as well. But those two are ones that jumped out at me. And I encourage you to listen to both of those recent episodes to hear what's going on. I believe it's probecast number 13 and the FIR number 236 were those topics recovered. And it deals primarily with a Topaz Partners' client that Topaz was ghost blogging for and there was no disclosure of this.
But at the same time the blog that was in question with the client was not signed. So it's not really ghost blogging to me if something is unsigned, because your simply saying, if it's unsigned that it's the views of the company. Or the views of the organization that is hosting the blog. So to me this is a bit of a kerfuffle about nothing but never the less something interesting to discuss. And I encourage you to check those two out.
[radio break]
Chip: So in listener comments today we have one from a colleague at custom scoop. Ryan O'Rourke. And he writes about in response to last weeks discussion about pitching bloggers. And here is what he writes. "I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how a blog's frequency of posts impacts readership and outside participation through comments, etc. In both the short term and long term.
Would you expect a significant increase in the average number of daily posts alone to boost overall participation in readership? Would it water down the importance of each particular post? And as a follow up you mention that pitching unfamiliar bloggers is OK as long as you do so in the context of building relationships. Let's say two such blogs have the same readership/Alexa rating.
But one features 50 posts a day and the other two. Who would you target first? Or is that not a significant concern?" Well Ryan first thanks for the comment and you've touched on a lot of issues here. So let me give you the blanket answer and then move on to a little bit more detail. The blanket answer of course is, it depends.
It's very difficult to say with any certainty, just based on generalities, what one should or should not do. And how frequency of posting impacts the credibility or participation of a blog. So let me just touch on it a little bit. Certainly the number of posts does affect readership and participation. And it's one of those things where like any medium you have to figure out what your readership is looking for.
And you need to try and match their expectations. And you have to deliver on the expectations that you set. So if you represent yourself as someone who's going to be posting once a day then don't suddenly change to do 10 a day without some sort of explanation.
Similarly if you've been doing 10 or 20 posts a day on your blog, if you all of a sudden drop down to one, that warrants some sort of a discussion with your readership as well because it changes how you are interacting with them. There are certainly blogs that are well read that have one post a day or even less. Take a look for example at Ray Ozzie with Microsoft.
He posts every couple of months but has massive readership and attention whenever he posts. At the same time there are blogs like Techcrunch or Paidcontent which may have five, 10, 20, sometimes even 30 posts a day and yet they have massive traffic and attention as well.
It really depends on what you're delivering. If you're focused more on commentary then I would suggest you probably would be at the lower end of the number of posts. If you are focused more on sharing news and information with your readers then you would tend to be on the higher end.
Myself with my blog I tend to do a mix of commentary and trying to inform my readers so I tend to be somewhere in the single digits. Maybe three to five posts a day. But it depends. There will be days where I only have one. And there may be days where I have six or seven. But certainly I'm never going to be a 20 posts a day person. And I try to have at least one each day.
As far as comparing two blogs and trying to figure out which one to pitch; that's an interesting question. I think really it comes down to your perception of where you're going to have the greater impact. Your talking about two blogs that have potentially the same level of readership but one has 50 posts and the other has two.
Your first instinct might be to focus on the one that has two because there's more attention perhaps being paid to it. But at the same time I think you really need to understand what the audience is. It's not simply about numbers of posts or numbers of readers, it's about how does that match up with the message that your trying to present. And of course my suggestion frankly would be that you reach out to both of those blogs.
There's really not a reason to avoid having dialogue with multiple blogs. It's not like the old media world where if you started talking to other reporters folks would get upset at you. Bloggers understand your going to talk to more than one of them. And frankly, having that dialogue and building those connections proves valuable to companies in the short term and the long term. In fact you may talk to both blogs and only one or perhaps neither of them will write about you today.
But you've started to build that relationship for the future. So go out there, talk to blogs, pitch blogs and you will have some good success I think. And of course remember disruptive dialogue is just that, a dialogue. It's a conversation between me and you the listener. So I encourage your comments. So submit them either in email or in audio format, and I'd love to have you participating.
[music]
Chip: So that brings to a conclusion the 8th episode of disruptive dialogue. I'm glad that you stuck with me this long and I look forward to having a conversation with you next week. In the meantime I want to tell you about an event that I will be speaking at in a couple of weeks on May, 15th. The Yankee Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
In conjunction with Southern New Hampshire University is hosting a social media skills workshop. It'll be from one to five on May, 15th and it's about $50 give or take. The information on registration is at the Yankeeprsa.org website. So go ahead and check it out and find out about it. I'll be teaching that class in conjunction with Doug Haslem from Topaz Partners.
We'll be giving you some hands on instruction on how to pitch bloggers and podcasters. We'll talk about the importance of social media. And we'll have some hands on where you'll actually learn how to create your own blog and podcasts. So if these are topics that interests you I encourage you to come out for that event. In the mean time go ahead and share your comments and feedback on this weeks show.
I'd be interested to hear about anything from the format to the show to what you think about mass media, niche media. What you think about ghost blogging. What your thoughts are on the Voodoo media video download service. And of course your thoughts an any of the news items that I brought up. So until next week, good luck.
[radio break]
The latest episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available. This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 23:37. You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode. 
