Seattle based podcast discovery and management service Pluggd is unveiling a major new feature at DEMO this weekend that combines speech recognition and semantic analysis to let users search for and skip to parts of an audio file that are related to topics of interest to them. It’s more than just speech recognition.

This is one of the most compelling examples I’ve seen lately of a growing trend: making multimedia content more granular and letting users take even greater control over the media we consume. We don’t just want to consume what we wish, we want to consume it in the way we wish.

Podcasts have a number of ease-of-use problems that this helps with. Only Apple’s podcast format can be properly split into chapters, for example, but those are less popular because you can’t play them on non-Apple devices. On an iPod, you can’t fast-forward an MP3 file. Lastly, podcasts can only be consumed in real-time — you can’t skim through it the way you can with printed publications.

However, while ease of use is highlighted, I think the impetus for search technologies in audio comes from other motivations too. For publishers, podcasts (and video) have proven difficult to monetise, with most opting for a flat sponsorship deal, if anything. However, if you know what words are in a piece of audio, or video, then automatically targeted advertising works a lot better. You could opt, for example, for your adverts to be appended to podcasts that contain the word ‘iMovie’, the same way that advertisers buy these words from AdSense. Advertisers might also be able to generate a blacklist of offensive terms and competitors’ names to avoid being associated with content they would rather not be.

There has been talk of metatagging innovations in audio and video, but the problem with all metatags is that they can be spammed. True audio search is superior in every way. The video equivalent is already underway at Dave.TV which will apparently monitor the words in a clip to decide on appropriate ads:

We will be using the same technology used by Homeland Security to monitor [telephone] chatter. Audio keywording will allow us to contextually figure out where to sell ads and to place more than just pre– and post-roll ads.

Anyway, he isn’t. Yes, he’s laid-back and he did use the expression ‘real good’. We only had a short conversation, but I can imagine him being a big hugger. I like that sometimes, though. Anyway, I was disarmed. He seems to be a charming man. Actually, I’ve been really lucky so far, and only a couple of my Web 2.0 interviews have been with people who turned my flesh. Bottom line? You try to knock the scobleizer and you go through me first. Also, cheers to Robert for doing a live interview after the recent debate on the subject.

So what got you into blogging?

Back in 2000, I used to work as a conference organiser for a tech company and I was asking all the speakers what the sessions should be about. Quite a lot of them said ‘blogging’. At that point, I had no idea what that meant. *laughs* I went and Googled it, and there seemed to only be about 150–200 blogs out there.

So I had a look, and it was interesting but I didn’t think it was good enough to do a session on — which is so ironic, given that there are entire conferences on the subject now. However, I thought I’d have a go. I was really lucky, after about a week, I was linked by Dave Winer, and that suddenly brought about 3000 readers. From then on, the readership just grew.

And so then you got hired by Microsoft. What was their attitude towards your blogging?

Well, I kind of assumed that they had hired me partly for my blogging. So that gave me the impetus to carry on in the same style. Before I went there, I had criticised the company and advised Steve Ballmer to split it in two. I thought that gave me a go-ahead to carry on in the same way. And so that’s what I did.

What did MS gain from the blog?

It showed that they were listening. Which is so rare. They got a lot of PR out of it, and I suppose that was the main thing. But it also affected the way the rest of the company communicated with users. I used to get technical queries about certain products and I used to just forward them on to tech support. I didn’t know who the people were who were really responsible and neither did any of the users. Nowadays, though, all of the product groups have their own blogs with the product manager in charge, and they’re engaging with customers all the time.

And so for businesses in general, what do they have to gain?

Well, the PR effect is mostly because companies never listen and the blog format creates a vehicle for that. Any kind of listening is a major thing. At the same time, it goes both ways. A blog post can be a lot better than sending out a press release.

On the other hand, companies that hire agencies to do their blogs for them aren’t doing the right thing. South West Airlines have set up a blog, but it seems to be written by their PR company. It isn’t human. You need to get the idea of real human beings behind the posts.

So why have blogs become so popular?

I think we have to start with Google, and the way Google works. Blogs are extremely search-friendly. And blogs also create an environment where linking is natural. If you link to someone, then the chances are that they will link back to you. It’s just human nature — people will return a favour. That affects your Google ranking. Also, journalists are using blogs as a source for stories and so they get good quality inbound links. Word of mouth is important. People just saying ‘have you seen this site?’. Also there are new mechanisms for blogs to gain a lot of traffic. The digg site, for example. People are posting on there, ‘have you seen this site today?’ And it works really well.

Your blogging style is very like a diary. You don’t really do articles, for example.

I just tried to write on my blog in the same way that I talk. I picked up the style from Dave Winer. I just wanted to try to be conversational and talk to the readers on my blog the same way that I would talk to you.

Sometimes you find your audience by accident, though. A lot of people just blog for their family and friends, and if they do that well, then the audience will extend beyond that and it becomes a different thing.

So this blog thing, is it a fashion or here to stay?

Maybe, but it’s hard to know where we’re going. At the moment, I am experimenting with video, and I’ll be doing a video thing later this year. However, what you have to bear in mind is that video is a lot more difficult to consume than blogs. Everyone can write because they were taught that at school, but far fewer people know the grammar of good video, how to tell a story with a camera.

You can’t consume video in the same way, either. I can read maybe a 1000 blogs in an hour or two, but you can’t do the same thing with video. You have to give up after half-an-hour or so.

The thing is, that you can still get a lot of value out of a poor writer. You can scan their post for the good information. The same thing isn’t true of video, you can’t scan it.

That’s what makes me confident about podcasts, in a way. The audio element is so much more important than the visual element. If you remember the reports from Baghdad, when it was getting bombed. The pictures were appalling, but because you could hear all the sound, those reports were very affecting, picture or no picture. Also, podcasts are more location-independent. You can listen to a podcast while you’re in your car or while you are exercising.

So what makes for a successful blog?

Well, if I knew that… *we both laugh. There was a note of bitterness in mine*

Write about the stuff that people want to know about. You should spend a little time thinking about that if being successful is your aim.

Link a lot. People will link back to you. It’s human nature. They want to know that they’re being talked about and they will be generous in response.

People who have done it really well. Techcrunch. What they have is compelling graphics alongside really tight writing. That sort of format seems to be working well.

But for someone just starting, I’d advise they read 50 blogs for a couple of weeks. See what really interests you and try to be as good as them.

Any guidelines on posting frequency or length?

I would say that more is generally better. But then that depends on the area that you are in. If you want to be the best trucking blogger, then work out how much the current champion does and do a little better. If that guy posts once a week, then posting twice a week is obviously better. But I would say that most people who blog don’t care about having a big audience. They just want something they can be proud of.

If you are good and interesting then you will get an audience. That might take a little while, but I have known of blogs that have become famous overnight due to just one thing. For example, I search for the word ‘geek’ in blog posts and if I find it, then the likelihood is that I will go and read that post. This world — the blogosphere — is doubling every six months, though. It’s going to always be changing as a consequence of that.

Is blogging part of Web 2.0?

Sort of. The way I see Web 2.0 is that it’s mixing technology and communities together. Someone could reverse engineer digg, for example, and create an identical site on the technical level. But what they wouldn’t have is the community. And that community is what has made digg, in many respects.

Blogging kind of plays into that space. It’s user-created media. But also the communities around blogs are as important as the blogs themselves. When you participate, say by offering a comment, then you become a part owner.

picture credit: laughingsquid

The Bivings Group notes that while US newspapers are more likely to offer videos, podcasts and journalists’ blogs, UK papers win on message boards and forums.

The Guardian leads on technology with 13 out of the 13 technology features measured in the poll. Later to the market than papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian has been fast to embrace Web 2.0, with its blog section Comment is Free, rapidly attracting established writers and bloggers.

However, it’s worth noting that some of the UK’s most conservative papers, The Sun, the Daily Mail and The Times, appear to be the some of the most keen to embrace new technologies with eight, nine and ten out of thirteen feature ticks respectively. The Sun and The Times are both owned by News International, which might partially explain this trend.

Sadly, papers with the weakest circulations, such as the Independent, seem the least likely to use any of these features, all of which are designed to increase stickiness and loyalty.

found via Stuart Bruce

Rather than mimic Mark’s excellent digest, I thought I’d just comment on one part of the report, since it happens to be something I’m doing other work on at the moment, video and podcasts.

While newspaper websites have often been treated as an easy cut-and-paste job from the daily print paper in the past, times are changing as publishers switch on to the idea that a large part of their readership and ad revenue comes from the internet. Embellishing their stock-in-trade, words, with other media has become the norm. The majority of the top newspapers offer video clips alongside stories:

On the other hand, podcasting remains a minority activity, with the top-selling papers far more likely to offer an audio download than the lower half of the table:

Source: The Use of the Internet By America’s Newspapers, The Bivings Group, August 1 2006

What’s all this about? Podcasts are considerably easier to produce than videos, and take a fraction of the time. What’s more, they cost next-to-nothing to make. So why are the newspapers so much less interested in the audio format?

I’d offer four explanations.

(a) Newspapers are not broadcasters. While they offer video clips, they don’t produce these themselves: they buy them in from local TV stations and syndication agencies. Let’s assume that syndicated video content costs much the same as audio content. Of course, they’re going to go for video.

(b) Newspaper journalists are not (typically) broadcasters. They haven’t been trained in public speaking or working with a camera. If they do podcasts, then they’ll have to speak to the readership. They won’t be comfortable doing that, in a lot of cases. Perhaps, in many cases, they won’t be any good at it. That won’t be good for the paper.

© Video clips keep readers on the page. The newspapers’ revenue model is display advertising. If you produce a podcast of the days’ headlines, then readers don’t even have to visit the site to download it, which won’t do their revenues much good. The key advantage of podcasts is that you can listen where and when you please, but this doesn’t fit the business of newspaper websites. Monetising internet audio remains an industry-wide issue, with most major podcasts plumping for a sponsorship model.

(d) It’s sometimes hard to remember, but podcasting is still a very new activity. The word only gained any currency in 2004. Mainstream audiences (e.g. the audience of a newspaper website) will be considerably less likely to be interested, or to own a portable MP3 player, than the audiences of technology websites. On the other hand, anyone can click the play button under a video window.