PR Thoughts

Discovering Second Life

I made my first steps within Second Life this evening, trying to understand the rules of this new world... I've been chating with several people from the US, Germany and Japan, quite brievely I have to say, it's amazing how you meet people in this virtual world.

My first visit was for Podcast Island, below is a picture of me in front of the Casino, I'll share my next experimentation soon here.

Technorati Tags: second life

End of PR Week Forum

That's it, it' s the end of PR Week Forum in Wales today, I am using the last hours of the wifi network that has been set up here to do this post, it has been a great Forum, and my blog is the most appropriate channel (in my views...) to thanks PR Week for having inviting me to handle those 2 workshops on "The rise and rise of weblogs".

By the way, in this week issue, PR Week has a interesting article coming from the PR and New Media conference that they organized recently, with quotes from Peter Bale, editorial editor of the Times Online, explaining why communities like MSN and Yahoo! also becomes their competitors, such as The Guardian and other MSM - from his point of view.

Interesting also to know about the Times Online's Sounds podcast, containing interviews with bands and some of their tracks, sponsored by Sony Ericsson, and which had notched up 170 000 downloads since January...

Back to Paris now...

Technorati Tags: prweek

links for 2006-06-27

• PR Thoughts
  10 reasons for broadcaster to podcast
  (tags: podcasting podcast)

Oooops, I've been re-instaling del.icio.us Firefox extension, and unfortunately made it wrong... But geeeh, what a lot of available extensions now, it's impressive, it's definitely worth having a look !

10 good reasons for Broadcaster to podcast

I spent few hours today with the management and marcom team of an international broadcasting company which invited me to have a discussion with them on podcasting/video podcasting.
As you can easily imagine, I love to do some evangelism on this topic and the discussion has been very exciting. Prior to get in the meeting, I've been thinking about 10 good reasons for broadcaster to enter the podcast world:

Podcasting is....

• A good way to give a second life to a huge amount of content that would directely becomes archives
• An opportunity to create and develop a new audience which might become a new community for the brand
• A way to prepare an evolution to "Television on Internet"
• Generating new traffic on the corporate web (podcasters and bloggers will link to the new available podcast)
• Providing a new form of content, for a younger audience
• Generating some rare content, available only and exclusively through the podcast
• Making some buzz to launch new TV shows: give pieces of exclusive previews through the podcast to give a flavour of it prior to the big launch
• A new source of revenu: you can have sponsors for your podcast (allocine is the first in France having been including ads in the show)
• Generate excitement for existing shows by producing "best of XYZ"
• An interesting way to reach niche audiences that would not normally be reachable for financial means

By the way, if you are interested in Web 2.0 topics, we have a great podcast in France produced by LCI (our CNN), called "Plein écran" (means full screen) that is definitely worth watching ! iTunes feed available here.

Launch your Talkcast

Have you heard about Talkcast ? "A live or recorded multi-person conversation, discussion group, talk show or podcast, led by a host with active participants and listeners" ?

If you're interested by this form of online voice discussion group, then you should have a look to this new service available since the 16th of june, TalkShoe.

It's an amazing way to host conversations and invite several people to join on a debate, which becomes available as podcast after the show ! The service is free for now and it seems like you can make money from it by hosting talk cast.

I created an account and I will definitely give it a try rather sooner than later, I have already an idea of what could be my first talk show....o) Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: talkshoe

Secrets behind MySpace's success

I was seeking for some informations on successful social network when I found this post from Robert Scoble relating part of a discussion he had with Aber Whitcomb, CTO of MySpace.

Some of the reasons which have made the success of MySpace are:

1) They made sure influentials in Hollywood (stars, bands) were among the first users.
2) They listen to their users and add features frequently (usually noticeable new features every week).
3) They let the users tell them what to do. He mentioned that other services, like Friendster, tried to tell their users what not to do.
4) When MySpace visitors first log on they already had a friend: the founder Tom. That was in contrast to other services where you had to work to find your first friend. His page also gave you a template to get started.

Definitely arguments to bare in mind if you're willing to launch your "MySpace"....

Technorati Tags: myspace

Experimenting SquareSpace

Following a discussion I had with Philippe at the IAOC conference, he convinced me to give a try to SquareSpace. I've set up a new blog there and I am going to give it a try.

I have to say that I am so used to Typepad that it's not so easy to find my way in any other weblogging solution, but I made my decision to change and I now have to find the one I feel more comfortable with. I will definitely also consider WordPress, following Neville's exemple and successful move since few months already, so if you have any feeling you'd like to share on one or the other of those both, please jump in the comments.

Technorati Tags: squarespace, typepad, wordpress

Conversation with Neville Hobson, co-producer of FIR

Both Neville and I are attending today the IAOC conference in Bruxelles (See Philippe's first post yesterday evening there), I've been taking this opportunity to do a podcast with the master himself, co-producer with Shel Holtz of the most famous marcom podcast: For Immediate Release - The Hobson & Holtz report.

We haven't prepared anything, we just went through it between my talk and Neville's one, and I publish it without any cut.

Neville and Shel have been doing their show live from the IAOC conference, using Skype to bring us Shel's voice in the room.

Click on the icon below to listen to the show, right click to save and download it.

Use this link to subscribe to PR Thoughts' podcast.

Technorati Tags: iaoc, neville hobson

Conversation on New Media

Today I've had an opportunity to spend some time with Christophe Labédan, founder of the Social Media Group (SMG), the first french experimentation in the field of vertical blogs or blogzine, name it like you want, following a first podcast we did together 9 months ago.

It's a very unformal conversation, we haven't prepared anything but just decided to  make an update of his Group and of the market in this show. Christophe is sharing with us his views on the evolution of this estonishing market, we are talking about the growth of the SMG, the business model, blogvertising and his first success stories.

Hope you'll enjoy it, and again, no preparation and no sound cut...;o)

Click on the icon below to listen to the show in Windows Media Player, right click to save and download it.

Length: 16.34

Weight: 7.3 Mb

Update: apparently some technical problems with either Typepad or Dewplayer, the speed of my voice is three time what it should be, impossible to have the link working on the podcast icone, so I am using the most basic way to share the MP3 file with you, get it from here directly. I'll double check in the afternoon to see if this is fixed...;o(

Update 2: unfortunately this is still not fixed, so I delete the dewplayer feature, simply click on the blue podcast icone to listen to the show...:-(

Robert Scoble to join PodTech

You probably already heard about this story.... Robert Scoble leaves Microsoft to join PodTech (the company behind the famous InfoTalk podcast from the Silicon Valley), part of the reason why is there. Scoble considers his job at Microsoft is done and wants to participate in a nascent industry.

Today, PodTech's server has been down for an hour due to the huge traffic coming from the blogosphere following the announcement of Robert's departure... Amazing and not astonishing at all...

The press release is available there, by the way this is the first time I see a release on a corporate website open to comments...;o) and to trackback !!

Robert Scoble was a "first time" in the blogosphere, we are going to need a new one as reference for the corporate blogging world...

Technorati Tags: podtech

Peugeot is podcasting

Peugeot launched it's first podcast, announced as a weekly show, the first episode is about the exterior design of the new 207. A specific website has been designed to host the show (a videopodcast precisely) which is in french and of 1.50 min. length.  It seems to me that it's the first french car manufacturer to podcast.

Good luck Peugeot !

Technorati Tags: peugeot, peugeot207

Map your blog's network

An amazing way to graph your connections, although no information is available on the nature of each link, still a nice visual effects. Get your own graph here.

Click on image to enlarge

See more informations there.
Via RMen's

Another tool available is TouchGraph, providing much more information on your network as it shows who is each contact and their own network of connection:

Click on image to enlarge

In the same spirit, you should also have a look on Swarm:

Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm and grow larger. Conversely, sites that lose traffic move away from the center and grow smaller.

As soon as you use Firefox and download Swarm extension, you share the information regarding the websites you are visiting with other users and so does every member of the community. The most popular web sites will be the closer to the center of the map. Definitely worth having a look !

Click on image to enlarge

Technorati Tags: firefox, swarm