Podcast

Some people feel podcasting is a lot like the month of March – in like a lion and out like a lamb.

As with any over-hyped, silver bullet-labeled medium, there is no room for success – only failure. But if you are willing to look a little deeper, you will find that podcasting is still a viable option for content delivery.

Everyone knows that iTunes is the most popular place to discover interesting podcasts. However, there are many sites across the Web where you can uncover some wonderful ear candy. Here are some of our favorites.

Podcast Alley

One of the first on the scene, Podcast Alley is a shadow of its once robust self. That being said, it is still a valuable portal. Featuring the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners, the site makes it easy to uncover audio content. You can stream directly on the site or download to your computer/device.

With close to 65,000 podcasts all you need are an audio device and an open mind. Read more

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Murti Hussain, the President and Co-Founder of Peanut Labs about the company’s advertising strategy and the social advertising landscape in general. Peanut Labs helps publishers monetize their sites (largely game publishers) through survey offers from large brands. The company actually got started through their own gaming site which used peanuts as a form of virtual currency.
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It is a tough market for job seekers right now. Job Radio dot FM can help. The Web site, owned and operated by job board vet Chris Russell, streams jobcasts daily, dishing career advice talk radio 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

(Full disclosure – My career advice podcast, the Working Podcast, is part of the elite roster.

Upon entering the website, the live streaming radio automatically comes up. However, if there is a particular topic you want to hear about, there are blog posts to read up on topics or audio clips to listen to such as: mistakes college graduates make during the interview process, twitter job hunt tips, or how to avoid resume blackholes. Read more

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Lauren Bigelow, the General Manager of WeeWorld. Recently I’ve become increasingly interested in following the ways that virtual worlds are generating revenue as virtual worlds and social networks have become increasingly integrated. I’m also interested in them because I want to know how social networks and virtual worlds are making money since that’s a fairly important factor in running a business.

While Lauren wouldn’t talk about the specific amount that the company is generating she mentioned that they have relatively strong monthly growth which is great considering the current economic environment. As with most other virtual worlds, WeeWorld generates revenue through the sale of virtual goods as well as advertising.
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Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Marks of Google about the current state of Friend Connect, OpenSocial, and the future of the social web. Friend Connect was initially seen as one of the methods for “out opening Facebook”. In other words Google was concerned about Facebook’s growing ownership of users’ identities on the web. While the initial steps were made for competitive purposes, OpenSocial has become part of a greater movement to simplify the models for sharing our social data around the web.
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Yesterday, Playdom, formerly known as You Plus, announced their expansion from MySpace to Facebook. I took the opportunity to speak with them about their thoughts on the state of social gaming as well as the differences between building on the MySpace platform versus Facebook platform. One of the most interesting things about Playdom is that like other large social gaming networks, they have a large percentage of users returning on a daily basis.
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Today I had the opportunity to interview Tim Schigel, the CEO of ShareThis, about the new ShareThis service they released today and what the future holds for the company. We had an interesting discussion about the future of sharing and how Facebook and Twitter are gaining traction at the expense of other “sharing distribution channels”.
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Last night Meebo announced a slew of new partners for its white-label instant messaging service. The announcement also included statements that the company now has almost 73 million monthly users which is most definitely a bold statement. I took the opportunity to speak with Seth Sternberg, CEO of Meebo, about what these announcements mean for his company and what the future holds.

We discussed Meebo and potential integration with mobile platforms as well as how his product fits on the social web. Meebo offers a product which is nearly identical to Userplane and heavily resembles Facebook’s new chat client. I spoke with Seth about these similarities and what all of the recent chat services means for the future of chat on the web.

Check out our interview below to learn more about the future of Meebo and chat on the web!

[podcast]http://www.rotorblog.com/podcast/RotorBlogPodcast8.mp3[/podcast]

Covering the launch of Google Chrome, Yammer – the TechCrunch50 winner, the next phase of Jott and 39 social networking apps for iPhone. Check out the podcast for more!

[podcast]http://www.rotorblog.com/podcast/RotorBlogPodcast7.mp3[/podcast]

Two of our favorite websites have redesigned – TechCrunch and Poynter now have better, upgraded look.

This podcast also covers TypoBuddy, NutshellMail and Hoffspace and more.