Yes, I still have a blog, it seems, and I’m still using it to pimp work events.

Next Tuesday, we’re doing What Happens to Radio? And you should book right now, honestly.

Some of you too-cool-for-school nu-media folk might be thinking ‘who gives a shit about radio?’

So this is why I chose radio for our next event.

• It’s already proven itself as the most adaptable media. It’s incredibly portable; it can do indoors, outdoors, cars, mobiles, whatever.
• It’s also adapted to the Internet era from the start. Almost every radio station has had an internet presence and streaming of some sort from the start (viz. 1995’ish). So we know that they’re great innovators and have been for a long, long time.
• At the same time, it’s been very static in terms of presentation and programming. Some disconnect there, surely?
• There’s a struggle there. People under-rate radio, again thinking that it’s somehow out-of-date and surpassed by internet services. Check your facts, people. The most meagre local station has hundreds of thousands of listeners. Test that against any internet radio-style service.
• There’s tons of innovation: not just DAB but whole new ways of experiencing and interacting with the medium. That’s what we’re going to be talking about!
• There’s a massive conundrum factoring the ephemeral and ambient nature of radio with the new demand for interactivity, audience feedback loops and more revenue.
• It’s square. Some people think that none of this stuff is happening and I wanted to show how wrong they were.

I promise that my next post will not be quite so promotional.

.…Findings show that [in the US]:

Half of those surveyed said that they would turn to network television for immediate news information (NB: 66% in the UK)
The next most popular source was the radio (42%)
37% of consumers would use daily local newspapers
33% cable news or business networks
25% of those interviewed would rely on Internet sites of print and broadcast media
6% would turn to Internet user groups, blogs and chat rooms (24% in the UK)
On average, says the report, consumers are four to six times more likely to feel that traditional media is more trustworthy than emerging news sources for news they feel is most interesting.

.…For entertainment, consumers most often picked traditional lifestyle media as the most trusted source. However, Internet blogs, user groups and chat rooms were selected next most often, followed by weekly or monthly general interest and news magazines.

.…52% of the consumers surveyed anticipate they will continue to mostly trust and rely on traditional news sources. However, 35% expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and 13% anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media.

At this point, the service still needs a little work. It functions, but not quite as smoothly as I’d like. The pace of development has been pretty hectic so far, though, so it should be straightened out soon. Also, I think they have a USP and offer a clever and original service, which I much prefer to hear about than another me-too video sharing/social network/news voting site.

I don’t really do product news. It’s an area that’s very well-served already. So I took the opportunity to ask rude questions about the background to the service.

(1) What is your business model?
Audabble is free to use but is supported by some advertising. However, the actual business model is based up premium services which will be added to the service in the next few weeks. These include the ability to customise the news feed aspect by choosing your own feeds, time intervals for specific feeds (you may want to hear BBC news hourly, but Digg stories half-hourly), and the ability to download those stories as mp3 for use on other devices/players.

(2) In what respects is this a Web 2.0 application?
Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a fair bit of discussion about this, and I was almost hesitant in using the term when I contacted you. But in the respect of a small producer being able to create a service relatively quickly and cheaply is the key for me, and that’s what makes audabble “web 2.0″. However, I could mention AJAX and RSS to complete the buzzword definition!

(3) How much time and money has it taken to set up Audabble?
Audabble is self-funded and has taken 2–3 weeks to create and set up. Its only costs are hosting which hopefully will increase if the service gains some popularity!