by
Tris Hussey
on September 26, 2006 01:51PM (PDT)
The Q-Ads Tool is the most exciting thing to come out of Qumana, well since Qumana. So much to tell, in fact, that I thought only a podcast would do it justice.
For this podcast I'm using the new podcasting service PodcastSpot from Mack and Dickson of Paramagnus. PodcastSpot has just launched as well and looks very cool. So without further ado ...
To get the Q-Ads Tool (which is an IE plugin or Firefox extension ... works with many blogging platforms including MySpace) ... visit the Qumana homepage
Of course, all sorts of bloggers who know how to play with html and embed video clips into their blog posts. But most newbies, and many of us more practiced amateurs, still don't like wrestling with image and video upload and the publishing function inside the major blog platform editors. Even if it isn't complicated any more, it still may seem complicated to many users, so they don't get into the habit.
And it can really be fun to publish video clips easily ... and often.
Qumana now makes it really really easy to publish video clips from YouTube or other similar services. It's not elegant (yet), but here's how ... now.
Update: I had a whole section here .. well, actually only three or four sentences ... describing the "How-To", but hadn't noticed Arieanna's earlier post. I've deleted mine
I often find myself wondering what will be next .. and then next .. and then next .. in the endless stream of applications that help us manipulate, manage and sometimes mangle the process of writing and publishing to the Web.
At Qumana we have been conscious for a long time that every individual has her or his own working style (have you ever watched over your friend's, or your sister's, or your dad's shoulder whilst they are doing something on the computer, or on the web ? I'll bet you're just like me, and everyone else I have ever seen ... you just instinctively want to reach out ands steer, because they aren't doing it the way you do) ... ;-)
The Web is now a major part of hundreds of millions of peoples' lives. Personal publishing of some form or another, whether it's called blogging or something else, won't be going away any time soon.
On the Web, info flows in to your conscious awareness all the time .. continuously. Whether it's via an RSS aggregator, or through some search activity, or just by browsing and link-hopping. You're always watching, reading .. using your cognitive capabilities and style to *interact* with the flows of information passing in front of your eyes.
Ours (and many other peoples') quest is to design, make and offer applications that give you maximum time for reading and thinking whilst you are at the center of this continuous flow of information. Ideally, we would get most operations - most anything you want to do, other than typing itself - down to one click, but it's not likely that we'll get every operation down to that level of simplicity. But many, if not most will be.
In the blogging / personal; publishing environment, we want to make publishing all sorts of other digital content (think podcasts, self-created mp3's, photo slide shows, video clips) as easy as publishing text, links and images are now. We want to make Qumana, and Qumana integrated with Lektora, formidably simple *information pivots* which will allow you, the personal publisher, read, think, write and express yourself as clearly and elegantly as possible ... whilst still offering you significant flexibility, versatility and power to address the wide range of individual's personal publishing habits.
We want to help you become more effective in the ongoing, never-ending, flow of information. We will welcome any and all feedback that helps make this quest a reality, for you and all your fellow personal publishers.
It's been a while coming and since we're in Boston, Waltham actually, meeting with Lycos Jen and I thought it would be a great time to do a little podcast talking about Lycos-Qumana partnership.
We all know that online advertising is increase by leaps and bounds year over year and quarter over quarter (roughly 30% a year). But if you look only at the blog, podcast, and RSS segment (or consumer generated media -- CGM) it increased 198% in 2005 and shooting for 145% in 2006. This is according to a new report by PQ Media (report intro and press release).
In actual numbers the CGM component is was $20.4 million in 2005 and trending towards $49.8 million this year. The chart above shows where the dollars are going by category and it reflects overall online spending pretty closely.
The question is, why is the growth so fast and why CGM? The speed of increase is primarily due to the newness of this media segment. This is also why there will be a "slow down" in spending 2005 vs 2006. But why CGM? Frankly marketers are realizing that CGM is where the audience is. People who read CGM are at the cutting edge of a lot of areas, and they tend to be better educated and earn more than the general online population. Bloggers and blog readers tend to be the influencers, the connectors, and if you're looking for an affluent audience ... it just makes sense doesn't it.
For consumer electronics, automobile, and similar advertisers blogs are becoming the places people go to not only chance the latest news, but also reviews and recommendations of products. Great place to advertise ... or sponsor. Having your brand associated with a top-notch blog and blogger could be a very good thing.
The one piece missing in all this is that the tools to advertise on blogs are only in their infancy. The models and techniques are just being proven. 2006 might very well prove to be the beginning of the CGM advertising explosion.
A new research paper from eMarketer trumpets the coming of the podcast as the next big online advertising opportunity. To quote from eMarketer:
The audience for podcasts has shown meteoric growth, particularly in the US. It is variously projected to reach between 20 million and 80 million by 2010.
While advertising on podcasts is in its infancy, the nature of the audience and strong growth already have major brands investing in podcast-based promotion. More advertising and sponsorship will inevitably follow.
With so much interest, there is a huge opportunity for these consulting firms to sell research to people who think they need to know what's happening. It should be pointed out the research firms (Forrester, Yankee Group, IDC, Gartner) played this game during the dot-com boom. While many of their projections failed to play out as expected at the time, many of their forecasts now materializing - albeit a few years later than what they envisioned.
Steve Rubel figures that 50 million listeners is enough to get the attention of advertisers. While this is great, but according to eMarketer's projections that will be in 2010 (I'm guessing sooner, myself, maybe 2008). So, what about now in 2006? What is the opportunity here and now?
For advertisers it is certainly a wait and see approach, for marketers, though, getting into this area now, building your audience and style, is a good idea. Since podcasting, like blogging, takes time to build up steam in the "mainstream", those who get in early and develop their online brands will be the ones to be able to leverage the advertising opportunities first.
Does this mean podcasting is mainstream? More than iTunes supporting it, I'd say yes. Not everyone wants iTunes or an iPod (I don't have iTunes or want an iPod). Yahoo is universal. Yahoo is Mac, PC, Most (maybe all) browsers.
More that some of the social portals (Yahoo 360, for example) I think this is a huge step forward. I'm looking forward to reading (and listening) more about this tomorrow!
Caught an article in the Globe on podcasting—Globetechnology- Firms lining up to capitalize on podcasting phenomenon—anything we don't know? Nope. Just another example of how blogging, now podcasting, are quickly reaching the mainstream. Is this good? Long-term, yes, short-term, maybe. Maybe because when things become "cool" a bubble forms. With bubbles, come hype. Hype is good for building the market, but can lead to things getting out of hand. Long-term, of course what this means is that podcasting, and blogging, will become major forces in marketing and advertising.
In the meantime, what will happen is a larger and larger audience will need tools and services and as the audience grows advertisers will take notice.
The best point, though, and the one that is going to keep the throttle back is bandwidth. If you become suddenly popular you could be facing a huge bill from your host.
Solutions? OurMedia.org sounds good, but I have some questions. I think we'll just have to wait and see.
Apple took the wraps off iTunes 4.9 yesterday and the big news, of course, is it's built in support for podcasts. So is this the watershed moment we've been waiting for in podcasting? Yes, I agree with the other blogerati and pundits on this one. There are millions of iPod owners who can now subscribe to podcasts painlessly. I think that podcasting has the potential to become more mainstream than blogs, in fact. Reading blogs is a tied to computer affair right now. You need a computer, a net connection, and power. Yes, I'm oversimplifying things, but still keep this general. Podcasts, on the other hand, take advantage of the interstitial moments in our lives. Times when radio or music CDs would've been used. In the car, walking, on mass transit, working out. All these times when reading something on screen isn't safe or practical.
So what's next? FeedBurner is continuing to help all podcasters out with improvements to their service—Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog—support for Odeo and iTunes 4.9 is coming and it will be a part of the free service. Talking to Rick Klau of FeedBurner at Gnomedex I got a strong feeling that there is more and more cool stuff coming down the pike for bloggers and podcasters. Some, I gather, will be free others not. I think that's fair. Services that employ additional programming, bandwidth, and the like need to have their costs covered. I'm a hard-core FeedBurner users—Rick I'll still take a sponsorship any time ;-)—and I really like the power and data that I get. It's one of my first stops in the morning online.
Now back to the explosion, hopefully, in podcasting. There is a problem, though, will this popularity—bandwidth. Podcasts might be cheap to make, but they are expensive to distribute. I'm extremely lucky that my blog is sponsored by Blogware, otherwise my podcasting would be significantly reduced. Even Adam Curry feels the pitch. He's going to start distributing his podcasts in BitTorrent format to ease the pain. I'll probably do the same soon. What about the rest of the world? Yes there is OurMedia.org and others, but still a larger solution is going to be needed. I'm thinking one option is going to have to be advertising. Yes, I would put adverts at the beginning and end of my podcasts. I think there is a real potential business model for an ad network to supply pre-recorded, professionally produced ad files. [Hmm, he thinks to himself, I know a professional voice over person ... hmmm].
Regardless, I for one am looking forward to seeing what iTunes 4.9 brings us. Let the recording begin!
Hey everyone! The Qumana team is back from Gnomedex and our own Arieanna Foley, Queen of Event Bloggers, wrote 23 posts from there! Twenty-three! Just how does she do it? Well, Arieanna runs the show on this podcast and gives us her tips for how she just plain out typed and posted me the whole time! Man I'm glad she's working for us! No listener comments or questions to note in this podcasts, so we dive right into the topic.
Of course we get a little off track talking about schwag, WiFi challenges, and other Gnomedex stuff, but we manage to stay mostly on track. Have a listen!
And as always feedback and comments are always welcome!
I recorded this before I went to Gnomedex where the whole subject of ads in and on blogs, especially within feeds or posts, was a hotly debated topic. So enjoy this. The annoying clicking is my recorder hitting the buttons of my shirt. Clearly I'm not going to try the "hands free" approach again!
Arieanna and I wax poetic and celebrate the launch of QumanaLE 1.0 and the new Qumana website--hey who is that guy on the homepage?--! We couldn't have done it without the whole Qumana team--Fred, Victor, Graham, Jon, and Ianiv--not to mention Travis and (Super!)Susie of Hop Studios. We hope you like the new version which is, btw, FREE. Yep FREE. We're giving this sucker away. In the next few weeks we'll be rolling out some new features that haven't made it into this 1.0 release. Believe me there is cool stuff coming down the pike!
For this podcast I'm using the new podcasting service PodcastSpot from Mack and Dickson of Paramagnus. PodcastSpot has just launched as well and looks very cool. So without further ado ...
We all know that online advertising is increase by leaps and bounds year over year and quarter over quarter (roughly 30% a year). But if you look only at the blog, podcast, and RSS segment (or consumer generated media -- CGM) it increased 198% in 2005 and shooting for 145% in 2006. This is according to a new report by PQ Media (
A new research paper from 
Walkabout Podcast No. 31, Trackback Spam
Continuing on the trackback spam theme (this is it I promise) ... a podcast I recorded yesterday before I turned off trackbacks, etc. Enjoy!
