The Real UnderGround Online
All relentless evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, even now I clutch hopelessly to the assumption that hard work and talent will lead to success. I don’t know if the list of peers shuffled unceremoniously from the freshly acquired 1up brand has finally squashed my tender naïveté, but certainly it leaves it clinging to unstable life in that part of my brain where childish perspectives go to die.
In the wake of UGO's acquisition of floundering 1up.com, I realize in a very rational sense that there is no objective bad guy. UGO, while not a bastion of clever and innovative content, probably saved the jobs of at least some of the 1up staff before the entire organization slunk under the waves for the last time. Ziff Davis, already struggling with bankruptcy reorganization and totally ineffective at making things like money, had no choice but to find some kind of cost cutting and revenue generating alternative. And, who at 1up, from Sam Kennedy on down, could have hoped to stave off the inevitable? No, as immutable as the rising tide, this end has been in the cards for a while.
But, I don’t care. I’m mad. I’m disappointed, and I’m worried about the talented professionals who find themselves out of work in the worst possible kind of environment — at least until tomorrow hits to bring a new low — and I’m worried about what the failure of an ever growing list of quality outlets means for intelligent discourse about games.
If lashing out is all we have left to hang on to, then I say let the internet rage.
My personal rage has been simmering, frankly, since the Games For Windows magazine closure, though others trace the timeline further back to the untimely end of Computer Games Magazine. I produced some freelance content for GFW, and by extension Ziff Davis, in late 2007 and early 2008. What I took away from the experience was not so much the by-line or the pay check, but the opportunity to work with dedicated and talented editors like Shawn Elliot and Jeff Green. They have well earned their reputations as absolute professionals, and in the great collective of humanity, sometimes I’m certain that their neurons fire just a little brighter than everyone else’s.
I realize that kind of high praise borders on nonsensical hyperbole, but you really can’t appreciate how fully smart, insightful and interesting the once mighty crew of GFW actually was until you are fortunate enough to collaborate with them.
When I think about the talent pool described by the editors, staff writers, artists and freelancers that supported Ziff Davis over the past few years, I realize you would need a bathysphere to fully plumb its abyssal depths. I am staggered at one moment to imagine such a collection of accomplished game thinkers, and then absolutely flabbergasted at the next moment to realize how that talent has been ultimately squandered. On a gut-check emotional level, I simply refuse to believe that not being able to generate sustainable revenue with that level of talent is indicative of anything other than gross mismanagement at the top-most level.
It’s not just like watching the Yankees miss the post-season. It’s like watching the Yankees get the best talent on the cheap, miss the playoffs, go bankrupt and then accidentally set New Yankee Stadium on fire.
I realize that accumulating advertising revenue is an exponentially increasing uphill battle when married with commitment to editorial integrity, but the failure to sufficiently monetize that level of ability and community commitment suggests rigidity and lack of vision. What 1up needed was corporate leadership. What 1up got was screwed.
As for UGO, there’s little in the way of warm fuzzies I can gurgle up for an advertising delivery system such as theirs. They are a bastion of marketing vectors disguised as content, an antithesis to Ziff Davis's better histories and talents. Their ability to generate revenue seemingly exists in inverse proportion to their interest in saying anything meaningful. Put bluntly, they make Entertainment Tonight look like it deserves a Peabody Award.
Is that harsh? Probably so. Do I care? Not really. Logical as the argument may be that UGO is not the bad guy and that they only made the cuts necessary to trim their acquisition of 1up’s assets and branding into a ruthlessly revenue friendly transaction, it means nothing to me. The list of layoffs is an indictment on their vision for 1up’s future, and is as brutal as it is unsurprising.
UGO gains no points for being the first buzzard to peck at the still breathing corpse. I will be pleased for the people who were able to hold on to their jobs, but I sure as hell don’t envy them.
All that said, and odd as it may seem, I am not pessimistic. One can be angry at a situation, at the players involved in bringing that situation to pass, and yet at the same moment see the potential that unfortunate circumstances bring. I am hopeful because I know from experience, from personal relationships and from the machinations already set in motion, that talented people tend to be phenomenally stubborn, and that within days of the closure these people had already begun to congregate, organize and scheme.
The list of talented writers and editors that have been sloughed off the crippled beast over the past two years is a tragic roll call, but their voices have not been silenced. In the wake of the 1up podcast massacre, now another footnote on the page that includes the death of print and Gerstmanngate, already plans are in motion for new content. Blogs such as those by Dan Hsu or Jeff Green are cropping up anew, and certainly some will take hold and sprout important thoughts. The content, the talent and the voices are not dead, merely dispersed and perhaps given the opportunity to find new homes.
What may be lost in the collaborative and editorial process may be gained in the unshackled independence of an unfettered environment. Some will certainly reassociate themselves with the industry. For those who don’t, at least for a time, perhaps they will force change from the outside by lending a credible voice to the choir. Perhaps there are things to be said, to be written, to be absorbed that might not otherwise have ever been set free.
Welcome to the real underground, boys and girls. It’s time to get dirty.
Print
Delicious
Digg
Fantastic Write-up. My sentiments pretty much exactly.
I've heard this said before and I think you're right - but I still haven't heard any suggestions as to how to monetize it.
Frankly, I think that the success of places like UGO and IGN and the demise of 1UP.com speaks volumes about what the average consumer actually wants. IGN is profitable by pandering. To the masses.
Looking at my gaming links now, pretty much everything I visit regularly consists of sites like GWJ or RPS that are independently run without the goal of profit in mind, or the blogs of people like Jeff Green, Sean Elliot, etc. who I know will be well tapped into the gaming undercurrents, whose opinions I trust and whose writings I like. This means that I'm no longer actually visiting any for-profit sites on a regular basis for gaming news, reviews, or conent.
What I think this says is that people like me and my fellow goodjers who are actually interested in talented, intelligent writing are in the vast minority in the gaming community. We rely on small, niche sites to provide us with the content we crave. (Oh, thanks for that, btw). We'd like to have a site where a large group of talented writers could provide endless streams of quality content - but as has been demonstrated, most gamers will visit IGN for hot chicks instead.
So how do we monetize the talent? How do we make intelligent writing profitable in an age where most of the audience doesn't give a damn, and quality game sites stubbornly stick to "principles" and refuse to host ads for pirates and puzzles?
So far, the only option I can think of is an "Edge magazine" type model of charging a lot to a small audience. I can't think of anything else. But for now, at least we have sites like these, where friendly volunteers offer their time and sweat and keystrokes to entertain my during my lunch break.
I'm sad that 1UP is gone and feel horrible for the staff, but as for my own selfish gaming content needs, I know that the podcasts will continue and I still have you guys, so I'll be ok.
Steam: Dysplastic
I can't wait to see what those guys all move on to do, cause I think it's going to be amazing.
To respond to Dysplastic (that's a CRAZY name...), the only site that I can think of that is not a "news" site that has been wildly successful has been Penny-Arcade. I always turn to them to hear what they think of a game and I love the stuff they do. I think it's all about finding content (web comic, podcast, postings, etc.) that folks will come to. How do (or did) Gabe and Tycho do it? I have no idea, but I know that Child's Play just brought in over ONE MILLION dollars, so clearly, someone is visiting their website, if not a gajillion generous someones.
QFT. That's either because they're talented, of why they're talented. I don't know which, since I am not talented.
Certis wrote:
Zigguratbuilder wrote:
PSN name: DoubtingTom396 Frie-hend meeeee uuuuup!
Well, I suppose it depends on goals and overhead. Could 1up have moved toward any kind of user-supported model? Could they have done a better job streamlining their organization? Could they have changed the print model they used, perhaps examining how European outlets work and incorporating some of that success? Are they actually the victim of a Ziff Davis organization that was inefficiently segmented, poorly structured and guided by decision makers that lacked faith in this particular part of the business? What if that weren't the case?
I felt -- I feel -- that Shawn, Rob and Julian were making out with the game, and as their friend I felt it was important to point out that they were making out with an ugly chick. - Cory Banks, keeping it real
Reading this reminded me of a quote from Pat Lawlor (Pinball Designer) that I read in an interview yesterday...
Hopefully those who lost their jobs can form something that can do great things.
Live Gamertag: texasRay
The diaspora of talent as a result of this is disheartening.
In truth I do not forsee a way for talent to coalesce again in such a unique and interesting way.
I could see a variety of 'EDGE' type situations appearing as Dysplastic suggests, but I believe they, being a targetted approach, cannot offer the breadth of opinion offered at some place like 1up of yore.
pretend boogle wrote:
It was a failure to profitably transition to new media. (For me) 1up's crown jewels were the podcasts (GWJ's crown jewel too for that matter) and The 1up Show. They all only occasionally had advertising on them. I often wondered how Ziff supported so many resources spent on something that obviously was generating almost zero revenue. I listen to many podcasts, gaming and otherwise, and the only one that has consistent advertising is Revision3's Totally Rad Show.
Does advertising on podcasts not payoff for the advertiser? Are the advertisers Luddites and just not familiar enough with podcasts? Or are the people producing the podcasts just ineffective at marketing their product to advertisers? For 1up I suspect a little of "all of the above".
With all the talk of monetizing podcasts, I have an honest question: is there no mechanism in place to sell the podcast episodes themselves? Apple has a successful model in its TV shows: sell the episodes individually or all together as part of a season pass. Is there nothing like this available for podcasts?
I'm currently playing: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Nier, The Dig
Current Horizons Broadening Project: Forza 3 Motorsport
I didn't realize what had been lost with the demise of 1UP until my GFW subscription got shifted off to PCGamer. Now I'm actually rooting for print to die off completely.
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/biginjapan/
Truth. In fact, thinking about it for a moment, podcasts are absolutely my favorite form of gaming media across every site I visit. In-Game Chat (formerly Evil Avatar Radio), the GWJ Conference Call, the now-defunct 1-Up podcasts (I will particularly miss Retronauts), the Giant Bombcast that arose out of "Gerstmanngate"... I spend more time per week listening to those discussions than I do reading any sort of articles on games, though I do try to consume some of that as well, mostly from small-scale sites like GWJ, RPS, BrainyGamer, The Escapist. The only thing I consume from IGN these days is their podcasts, and those much less since I found the Conference Call and Giant Bombcast.
I think, for me, it has something to do with my (our?) unfulfilled desire to do precisely what they're doing; sit around a table with really smart people and just talk spontaneously about gaming for hours. Gaming news, good and bad game design, the crazy personalities that inhabit gaming - these are the topics that get our brains fired up, and the podcasts let us sit in on really damn smart voices we trust hashing out their ideas on them. We can usually only contribute in a limited fashion through emails to the hosts and whatnot, but at least we can listen in, and it's compelling almost every single time. The signal-to-noise ratio is maybe lower than you might get out of articles written by those same hosts, but by God that noise is entertaining.
I don't know whether there is a way to effectively monetize these "crown jewels" - certainly it doesn't seem like one has been found yet - but I absolutely get more value out of these podcasts than I get out of any other single source of gaming news and discussion, and it's very heartening for me to see (Giant Bombcast having come out of the ashes of the last fiasco, and Rebel FM having already come out of this one, with the 1UP Crew) that the passion for creating them seems to rival if not exceed the audience's eagerness to listen to them.
EDIT: Also, excellent writeup, Elysium.
Steam ID: Ravenlock
XBL / GFWL Gamertag: Ravenlock80
I write about games when I can find time at Erratic Gamer.
Exactly.
I'm sure inefficiencies and poor management squandered valuable revenue, but even if they ran a much tighter ship, I'm not sure they could have stayed afloat. (Man, I milked that metaphor.)
I agree with Dysplastic that the podcasts were the best content they had, but maybe that was because there was no money in it. They didn't have sales people telling them what sponsors wanted them to say. Because it was free, they could say exactly what they wanted, and they didn't have to answer or pander to anyone.
How do you reconcile that kind of honesty, with profitability? I know that this site is user-supported, but I'm guessing it's not user-supported enough to feed your families. It seems like a pretty depressing situation to me.
Steam
Rubb Ed wrote:
It is kinda painful to see all this crap go on. I was shocked when the whole Jeff/Shawn thing happened but I continued to support because there were enough people there that I enjoyed. Whether through podcasts or their editorial content during my commute or my lunchbreaks. I will miss those guys (well, the convenience of finding them all on one site) even though I know they're not done. They're too talented to disappear. I just know how I am and I heavily doubt that I'll follow so many twitters (besides, who really needs to know EVERYTHING someone is doing all the time) and blog posts. It wont be the same. I wish all you guys [1up] the best and keep on gaming. EGM, Shawn Elliot, Jeff Green, Milky, Ryan O', Ryan Scott, Donahoe, Matt C., Nick S., Anthony G and the whole 1upFM, 1upYours and 1up show cast and last but certainly not least Shane B! Take care guys and I hope to see or hear from you soon.
PS- Why don't they create the 1upShow for G4 TV and continue the podcasts on their own site. That would be awesome!!!
Don't talk about it BE about it!
I think for almost all podcasts the answer is "all of the above." I mean, the math is pretty simple. Unlike a website add, you can't charge "per click." A podcast add, no matter how prominent, has a disconnected call to action, just like a print advertisement. When faced with $20 CPM as a ballpark for non-click advertising, and a podcast with a (very very generous guess) 100k listeners, that's a total available pool of, say, $2,000 per show. I suspect that both the real CPM and the listenership would be much lower than that. By comparison, a short spot on radio runs about $15 per thousand listeners. Recent surveys showed "successful" net video guys are only getting $12.
4 shows a month, you're looking at a total available revenue stream of less than $100k a year. That may sound like a lot, but not if you're talking about making a significant contribution to anyone's salaries. The best a podcast can be is an adjunct to other forms of employment or revenue.
Last.fm | Twitter
"Publishers still speak in hushed tones about el bunny de la muerte." - *Legion*
Okay - I'll stray a bit off-topic for a second here, but I have to say, I really do wish that writers would stop falling back on ridiculous rhetoric like this. Not only are words like this likely to make a bad situation worse (some of the root causes of the original credit crisis are already working themselves out, but hyperbolic news coverage has now blessed us with a hypersensitive, frightened, tense consumer base that's not going to help anybody), but they don't really fit here. The 1Up staff were not drilling out fittings for automotive engines on an assembly line. They were doing journalism about video games, and they were doing it pretty darn well, and I really don't think they're going to have a problem coming up with ways to make money off of their talents. Maybe I'm just a little sensitive because of my own current work travails, but seriously - we might want to let up on the gas on this one.
But, to the point - you know, I hate to be the one to criticize, but watching the ZD empire operate from the outside, it always seemed to me to be grossly overstaffed and inefficient - not to mention entirely clueless about how best to use the resources that they had at their disposal. I certainly understand why we're all very disappointed in this result, but I think that we should be careful about letting that disappointment turn into anger, specifically because there's absolutely nothing productive whatsoever that you can actually DO with that anger. You think UGO is a terrible network of sites? Well, I tend to agree (though my opinion is colored somewhat by the fact that the one contributor to their content with whom I am familiar - Wombat - hasn't really impressed me in the past, though he seems like a perfectly nice guy), but all that you achieve by trying to hurt UGO at this point is hastening the forcible liberation of the remaining 1Up staff from their employment, so what's left to do? You don't like Ziff? What are you going to do about it? Not watch any of the shows that they no longer exclusively sponsor? Not buy the magazines that they're discontinuing? It seems to me like getting angry about the situation will just lead to a lot of impotent invective. I'm definitely sad, but I have a hard time really getting angry about the whole situation (which really says something when you consider the fact that subjects as trivial as a song in Rock Band have prompted me in the past to shout at the top of my lungs words that would probably kill a nun to death if she said them).
Oh, and one final thing, because this has always interested me:
I've noticed in the past that there's so little advertising on most podcasts that, yeah, it doesn't work. When any 1Up production ran ads in the past, they would put the same commercial in four times, which did little more than piss me right off. I didn't like your crappy Dead Space commercial (complete with idiotic tagline) the first time I saw it, so what makes you think that I'll enjoy it NOW? The only podcasts that I catch that seem to really understand how to do advertising are, ironically, ZD productions, and much of their advertising is incredibly incestuous, but at least when a commercial for GoDaddy shows up on CrankyGeeks there's a chance that I'll watch it until it's finished, and maybe remember the site with a context other than blind, unfounded rage. The Revision3 shows also seem to do a decent job of picking up sponsors and placing commercials, now that I think about it. The common thread between all these entities, I think, is a bunch of old TechTV veterans who got picked up at those respective shows after that network's colossal implosion - maybe podcasts need to get more folks from the actual TV industry to help open some doors?
From a pure for-profit perspective Ricky Gervais does it (sells them on both itunes & audible.com), but he has the name-recognition plus an audience that is orders of magnitude bigger than 1up's. From the non-profit perspective you can do a donation system ala GWJ or the Twit network. I don't think for-profit Ziff/1up could have done this. This American Life (from NPR) sells their non-current podcasts. But unlike 1up, most This American Life podcasts are timeless plus This American Life still needed to do donation drives.
For non-volunteers with a niche audience it has to be advertising.
Sure, what with the thriving journalism business and its growing catalog of paying outlets. I'm just saying, that it may be damn hard for a pipefitter to get work today, but this job market is not limited to certain sectors. Ask a freelance writer how easy it is to get good paying work these days, because I sure have and they seem to have a different point of view.
As to the anger, different people will get worked up about different things. This one hits close to home.
I felt -- I feel -- that Shawn, Rob and Julian were making out with the game, and as their friend I felt it was important to point out that they were making out with an ugly chick. - Cory Banks, keeping it real
Hey, I agree, there were a lot of talented folks who will, one way or another, land on their feet. But I don't think you can deny that this IS a crappy time to lose a job--any job. And as someone else who writes for a living (like Sean, and like many of the 1up folks) I can tell you that freelance isn't particularly good right now. Add to this that all of this talent floods the market at the same time -- we all have the same rolodex -- and yeah, it's a pretty damned crappy time to be coming off a gig as a full-time games media person.
Of course, just like a person working in a machine shop, they've all got transferable tallents. But if you're fundamentally "a magazine guy" then you're in a rapidly contracting industry. Which means a lot of folks will be looking not just at a genre change, but a full on industry change. That sucks.
Last.fm | Twitter
"Publishers still speak in hushed tones about el bunny de la muerte." - *Legion*
I think the trick to advertising in Podcasts is to deliver the ad live, rather than in a canned segment. For example I don't find the Audible ads in This Week in Tech to be annoying because they insinuate it into the conversation with nary a hitch. Maybe it's because I listen to a lot of PBS but this type of plea doesn't annoy me like a canned ad would, but there's more to it than that. As some others have touched on, the strength of the podcast medium is its mysterious ability to make you feel like you're conversing with a group of friends. Podcasters and advertisers both need to learn to make sure sponsored advertising doesn't feel forced and artificial.
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/biginjapan/
I think the Edge model is something that someone should seriously explore. I know I am willing to quite a bit of money in order to get the podcast content that I consume on a weekly basis. Now, I probably would have never discovered that content if it weren't free, but now that I have, it has a lot of value for me. The problem is many gamers probably do not feel the way I do about this content, and won't pay for it.
Maybe one of these 1UP splinter groups will start a site that produces some content for free, and charges for other, more in-depth content. For example: Printed news and reviews are free, along with a podcast, but video reviews, features, and longer and/or more frequent podcasts are sold for a monthly fee. Ryan and Matt mentioned on the Rebel FM podcast that they thought about producing The 1UP Show in HD, and charging for the ability to download the HD version. I wasn't a religious viewer of The 1UP Show, but I might have paid for a subscription (although 1UP stuff took forever for me to download, which is a major reason I didn't download the show every week).
There is value in the content the produce, and the trick is getting people used to paying for some of it. In a way, it reminds me of the things that Zonk talked about in his piracy article a few days ago. Valve has convinced users to accept their DRM by giving them additional value above and beyond the norm for PC games in the past. In the same way, I'd like to see a small group of thinkers and writers in the gaming industry try to start a primarily subscription website/magazine that delivers the type of content that 1UP used to provide. If we are no longer getting that content, then maybe people can get used to paying for it.
XBL: The Counselar PSN: TheCounselor Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheCounselor
"You realise that you're questioning the internal logic of a game in which a fat plumber rides a dinosaur in space?" Jonman
I don't listen to This Week in Tech, so I have a question for you. By delivering the ad live, do you mean that the ad is integrated into the content, or is it similar to a radio DJ doing a live ad for a company where they are doing a remote? I don't think that ads integrated into the content are a good idea, but I can see the radio DJ thing working on podcasts.
XBL: The Counselar PSN: TheCounselor Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheCounselor
"You realise that you're questioning the internal logic of a game in which a fat plumber rides a dinosaur in space?" Jonman
I'll avoid talking at length at how upset the whole firing makes me, and instead say that I sense some very good things coming soon from the abandoned crew. I'm sure it will be surprising and awesome, just like Giant Bomb was post-GameSpot with, I hope, a focus on the 1Up crew's unique editorial and podcasting talents. I haven't listened yet, but they already quickly ran off to make a podcast, Rebel FM.
Doogiemac on: Twitter | Xbox Live | Steam
If I understand you correctly, it's more like the radio DJ thing. It's clearly understood that they are plugging a sponsor (they'll say "we'd like to thank our sponsor, so and so..." ). The TWiT guys do it a little differently than the typical DJ approach in that they usually do have a bit of an unscripted chat about the free book of the week or whatever, so they can still have a bit of fun with it yet keep you thinking about the plug. It's an ad, but it's an ad where the personalities of the podcasters can remain in the forefront.
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/biginjapan/
The problem is that podcasts are *generally* aimed toward the tech-literate, a segment of the public that's used to getting these casts for free. Even if you did have a good adoption rate, there's invariably going to be a few Robin Hoods that take it upon themselves to repackage and redistribute the 'cast.
Like the REBEL FM folks said last night. There's a lot of people saying they'd pay, but how many of them would actually pony up the cash?
I see one of the failure of podcast advertising as being badly-targeted ads. GFW, for a few weeks, had an audio ad for "Hail to the Chimp", which was apparently some kind of jungle-themed party game? That's just farking TERRIBLE ad placement. I didn't mind hearing the ad pop up every now and then. I understood it was kinda necessary. I just wondered if this was the best they could do. Of course, they proceeded to run the ad 2-3 times in the same cast, which I dare say is pretty much a turn-off for listeners.
A related problem would be the ads themselves. The podcast crew weren't quite bound by professional decorum. I can imagine the various crews ripping the hell out of bad ads. That doesn't scream a warm, welcoming place for marketing people to go to, you dig.
the 1up podcasts obviously had a big mindshare, a large listening audience. It's really a wonder that a big-name company didn't try and run some kind of promotion with them, considering all the ears and brains they reached.
PA was fortuitously placed as pretty much the original gamer-focused webcomic. They were there first. But really, G&T are just gamers at heart. They love the medium, love playing, and I suspect even love hating bad games. PA isn't a business enterprise (despite their massive success), as it is an extension of their love for gaming. I think their dedication shows.Gabe constantly challenges himself with new artstyles and strives to be a better artist. Tycho's newsposts generally have equal measure analysis, humor, and game news. PA's basically become a nexus of gamer-thought, and their related ventures (PAX, Child's Play) really demonstrate a commitment to the art.
PA is a fantastic example of community-building through * personality recognition and * community conferred authority
Revel in the sheer improbability that in a universe of such mind-shattering emptiness, you have someone to love...-Coldstream
They stopped being meaningful to me as devices a long time ago, and now they've stopped being meaningful as things-ClockworkHous
To what Elysium said, A-f*cking-men.
Steam, Live, AIM: DrJonezMD | My reviews: http://emajkut.blogspot.com/ | Twitter: http://twitter.com/emajkut
Quote for truth, mostly. The only worthwhile gaming magazine as far as I can see is Edge, and I've been considering subscribing ever since GFW died. I wish it were cheaper, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100 00101110
Except instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, they will largely be stealing from the poor to give to the (probably) less poor.
XBL: The Counselar PSN: TheCounselor Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheCounselor
"You realise that you're questioning the internal logic of a game in which a fat plumber rides a dinosaur in space?" Jonman
Agreed. And this is the most troubling aspect of matter. That and the fact that there's no reason to believe that the talents of the remaining 1Up staffers will be put to any better use by UGO.
XboxLive: Fly GWJ | PSN: The _Fly | Twitter
So who is left over at 1UP? Did they let everyone go or just some of the folks?
Freeagent is formerly known as divorced. Please make the necessary legal and illegal adjustments.
Yankeefan4444
Podcasts are not exactly the end all of content, they carry pretty significant problems.
They are not searchable by content. They may be searchable by tags but that relies on users finding relevance in the tags you are creating. I actually don't understand the concept behind "tagging" of content because either you risk not getting hits because you didn't use an appropriate tag or get marked as irrelevant because you try to apply every possible word as a tag in order to be seen.
Content sensitive searches, such as Google, work so well because it looks beyond metadata and meta tags and searches what you've actually posted. No such thing exists for audio or video yet. I think any YouTube search will confirm how incredibly random non-content sensitive searching can feel.
This is a huge problem for anyone who wants to make money off of Podcasts. Either the quality has to be good enough that people will pay for it, in which case you have to convince enough people to buy to make it worthwhile, or you need money for advertisers. Advertisers have very little information as to who actually was exposed to their ad. You might be able to infer something by the number of times a podcast is streamed or downloaded, but that goes back to how do you get circulation numbers for the podcast up? Whoever it was that compared it to a magazine advertising was actually dead-on.
Podcasts are a good marketing device and a neat feature, but with the current technological limitations they are unlikely to be anyone's bread and butter in the near future.
Buttonmashing.com
X-Box Live Gamertag - Botswana GWJ
Less chatter more splatter!