Managing the Gray - Marketing for the New Media Professional

Transcript for Managing the Gray #46
Facebook and the Passion of Listeners
Originally Posted on November 30, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #46. How’s it going? I am C.C. Chapman, partner of The Advance Guard, new media guy, just all around passionate individual about this space that we’re playing in. New media playground is an awful cool place. We get new tools, new toys every single day it seems like. We haven’t any really big new ones in a while. We got some new ones coming out now, which is exciting. Today, we’re going to be talking about lots of different things. We’ve got Facebook, Seesmic, lots of different things.

Lots of reactions to the last show. I usually don’t play a ton and ton of listener comments. I’m very selective about them and not selective in the sense of what you’ve got to say, just I don’t have enough time to play them all because I try to keep the show short, but the last show when I reacted to my buddy Scott Monty’s audio comment talking about stats and all this — I didn’t lose it. I’m passionate about that. I just kind said it how it is and you guys reacted, you guys really reacted. I got some comments I want play from people reacting to that. If you didn’t hear the last podcast, what I was talking about was how to me as an individual, stats don’t matter to me that much. I barely ever check them. I check them every so often once in a great while just to make sure if things are working, that people are downloading, there are no problems, but I don’t pay attention to them. I honestly don’t know how many listeners I have at the moment for Managing the Gray. I don’t know. I could check. Go to FeedBurner or something, but every stat is different. I just kind of said for businesses, knowing these types of things is important, but for an individual, I don’t see it as being as important, my blog being the perfect example where cc-chapman.com has always been more of a personal journal than anything else. So, you’ll hear me just posting stuff to update for my family to read more than anybody else and if I let people read it, that’s great, that’s cool for me. You guys reacted. Man, phone line. By the way, if you ever have a comment, 206-309-GRAY. That’s 206-309-4729. I always love hearing from people.

You know what? I’m just going to kick in here. There’s a block of comments. I just want to just bam! Right? There are tons of them from lots of different people, some from different sides of the fence, which I think is great. That’s why the conversation should work. They shouldn’t be all back padding and, you know, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” It should be honest, constructive, good conversations. It’s what drives the world. It makes it a fun place. So, I’m just going to turn it over to the listeners. You guys rock for a second. How long is this? CastBlaster is telling me this is 8 minutes and 45 seconds of listener call-ins in case you need to fast forward. I hope you don’t because there are some good voice and good opinions, all men I just thought of. We don’t have women callers. There’s got to be women listening to Managing the Gray. I know there is. I can hear Heidi Miller and Donna Papacosta going, “Hey, what about us?” I know you’re out there. I just realized that all the comments on today’s show are guys. Something’s up. Anyways. I forget who is up first. I put them all together. I think it’s Tim Coyne.

Tim Coyne: Hey, C.C. It’s Tim Coyne calling from Hollywood. You know what? I’m halfway through your most recent Managing the Gray and I don’t want to pile on the guy who just called, but right now you’re in the middle of just kind of talking about how the reasons why you do Managing the Gray is how you do any of your personal type of blogging or podcasting and I just felt compelled to call in because, God, it just speaks to me. All right, a quick anecdote. Living out here, I’ve been doing The Hollywood Podcast for a couple years and it’s all about what I find interesting. It’s literally my creative outlet. Whatever I want to put out there, I put out there. Whoever responds, responds, and that’s it. You were talking about how comments kind of feed you and I feel similar in that way. I recently had a guy came out here for business in LA, listened to my show and he called me and we went and had lunch. His name is Scott. To me, that is just sort of personally mind blowing and it’s just, I don’t know, anyway. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m just saying I’m with you and, yeah, that’s it. That’s it, man. Hope you’re doing great. Love the show. I’ll be here, man. I’m going to keep on doing this, putting out my stuff and whoever responds, responds. That’s the way it goes. All right, later. Bye.

David: Hey, C.C. This is David from Britney Mason’s Popcast. I just got down listening to Managing the Gray, November 15th episode, “Risk and Success,” and you went on about stats don’t matter to you and stats aren’t important. You do it for yourself and I hear that and that is definitely the noble road. You mentioned the fact that you didn’t have sponsors. It would be sad, you’d miss the money, but you do it for yourself. It was a reality bitch slap. I’m going to take the opposite of you because you and I have talked about stats in the past and you know I’m obsessed with statistics. Some of us who are in need don’t have the luxury that you do that have listeners that call in or email. We have no other way to gauge whether or not people are listening to the show or is anybody out there? Who are we talking to? We can’t all be just noble and nice because you are one of the nicest guys I know. You just got me fired up about that a little bit and that’s my 2 cents. It’s a way for some of us to gauge listeners and, yeah, I might become compulsive about it and obsessive about it, but at least I know there is somebody out there downloading the show. That’s it. I will talk to you later. Bye.

Sebastian: Hey, C.C. It’s Sebastian. I just want to leave a comment regarding your comments about your own stats and I got to say if you really [unintelligible] I think I might appreciate your work even more. Sure, you want to attract everything you do for the clients, but I mean for being so not interested in your stats, you have to be really comfortable with your work and really excited. You show this excitement every other week and I think [unintelligible] really profits from that. Then you got also the reason why your nook on Facebook [unintelligible], but maybe that has other reasons too. So, thanks again for sharing and thanks again for being so generous with your thoughts. Take care. Bye.

Dave Jacobs: Hey, C.C., Dave Jacobs, the Rock and Roll Jew Show, The Connected World Show, and davidajacobs.com. It’s a driveway moment, just after work and listening to Managing the Gray and just had to jump on the phone line even if I’m unpacking my bags. Great, great show the last time. I agree with you on stats. I used to check them habitually. I almost never check them now. I don’t really think it’s about how many people are listening, it’s who is listening. It goes back to an old saying our friend David Fleischer used to say and I totally believe that. It’s really not about the raw numbers; it’s about the kind of influence that you’re having over the whole social media space. That’s way more powerful than the kind of numbers that you have. You can have 50,000 listeners, but another guy can have 1000 and have massive influence because of who those 1000 people are. That guy is a lot more powerful than the 50,000 guy.

Also, on careers in new media, I wanted to pimp a new project that I have going. I think I sent you an email on this a while ago, but I have it going now. It’s going as a Ning group and it’s called New Media Professional at www.newmediaprofessional.com, an idea I had where people like myself and you who are trying to break into new media or who are just starting their careers in new media, we need to come together, form a community, help each other out, support each other, give each other advice, but I formed this social network group to do just that, all kinds of advice and forum topics that I put up, everything from marketing to sales, the legal tax advice, everything you need to know to get your new business going or to get a job as a new media professional in an interesting business however you are approaching it. It doesn’t always mean that you have to quit your day job and go on your own. There are new media jobs being created every day I believe in the traditional space and some of us are probably going to go that direction. So, I encourage everyone to come to newmediaprofessional.com and join in the conversation and let’s help each other out as we go on this journey together. Some of us have more experience than others and together we can push everyone together. So, that’s it. Have a good day. I’m going in to start mine right now and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

Gary Alexander: Hi, C.C. This is Gary Alexander from The Ultimate Podcast. I want to say that I just listened to Managing the Gray “Risk and Success” and I want to tell you how much I enjoyed that podcast. It was very, very honest and very straightforward and to me, it was one of the most enjoyable episodes that I have on my iPod from Managing the Gray. I think that you came across as a very heartfelt, very sincere, and, you know, just off-the-cuff almost, like you were really speaking from, you know, C.C. Chapman versus — and I’m not, you know, trying to dog out any of the other episodes, but this one just really hit me a little harder than the others. I don’t agree with you with stats. I’m one of those guys that, you know, figuring out stats is very important to me because I am in this for myself, that’s the reason why I started this, but also I do realize that this is a business that I can make some money off of and I look at it like that and I do know that numbers are extremely important. I do consider myself successful already, but would really like to grow those numbers, which is why I listened to your show trying to learn more about ways to grow my audience, ways to just learning more about social media and how that may affect my show and my possible future career, as you say, in new media, maybe that’s the word. I don’t know if there’s a word for what I want to be when I grow up. Irregardless, I started my show as a UFC McMartial Arts type of news and interview program and through that I am now the commentator and ring announcer for a new promotion that’s coming up the XFA, that’s xfalive.com, and I got that gig strictly through podcasting. So, I am really excited and appreciate the effort and input you put into Managing the Gray. Thanks a lot. I will keep listening and of course telling everybody that I can. Thanks bro. Bye.

C.C. Chapman: Congrats! You’re a ring announcer and you got that through podcasting? I purposely saved that one to the end because I was like, “Wow.” See? That’s what people need to realize is that new media as cool and slick and fun and everything it is, part of that breaking the echo chamber is the fact that there’s all these other worlds out there. Don’t forget the rest of the world. Don’t get stuck inside the fish bowl that is new media. Break out. Look at that, through podcasting, he’s a ring announcer. Would you have made that connection an hour ago? I wouldn’t have, but that’s the thing is the fact that people are connecting in weird ways that we haven’t even thought of yet. People haven’t even begun.

I was reading Dave Winer wrote a great blog post yesterday talking about how we haven’t even begun to crack the surface of what podcasting can be for a delivery mechanism. Don’t forget podcasting is really the delivery mechanism, the synching up and subscribing, that’s the podcasting. Why aren’t we doing more with it? He had some great ideas. Check it out at scripting.com. Dave has his days where he pisses people off, but he’s always pushing the needle a little bit further. He’s one of those guys. I got one more comment to play on this. It’s from the guy who started it all. It’s all Scott Monty’s fault. You know how Scott is. No, Scott is a friend, all right? We worked together at Crayon. Before we just kind of go on, I got to play Scott, right? I mean he called in too.

Scott Monty: C.C., my man. Hey, thanks for playing my comment on your show. It’s clear that you’re pretty passionate about it. That’s one of the things we’re talking about. I didn’t expect to inspire such an early morning rant, but at any rate I’m glad I got your blood running. Just to clarify one thing, I’m totally with you on the whole separation of personal and business. I think absolutely, as I said, it’s essential for business to have some kind of measurement in place, some kind of set of goals against which to measure your success.

On the personal side, I don’t think that’s essential. I use it myself and like I said, I’m probably a stats freak, but I don’t think it’s essential for everybody to be measuring how many visitors they have. To me, one of the best measures of engagement if I’m just writing whatever I want is the comments I get back from people and how people basically respond to what I say, how I have conversations and, as you say, yeah, you write your blog for yourself, but at some point it’s nice to just hear from other people and know that you’re not just writing into a black hole. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to monitor how many people are coming to your site, not at all, but again it’s the passion that drives it whether you’re passionate about a business topic, passionate about a hobby, passionate about music, art, science, whatever. That’s what drives good content and in the end that’s what we’re talking about is delivering good content whether you’re delivering it for yourself, whether you’re delivering it for the one or two or 10,000 people that come to your site. It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re doing good stuff that you feel good about, that’s what’s going to keep driving it forward. All right, man, thanks for letting me go on about this and for entertaining the debate. Again, we’ll see you locally.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, Scott. It’s all good. It is all about passion and that is true about anything you do. It is about passion. It is about creating compelling content. It is about putting that before all the tools and the gadgets and everything. So, thank you guys for that debate. I appreciate it. It was good to open conversation. I hope it’s gotten you thinking about it. If you’re out there and you’re listening, you’re going, “How do I feel about this?” Just figure out what works for you. It’s exactly what I always tell people when they have kids. I say go read every book and then figure out which pieces of it work for you. No one book has all the answers. No one podcast, no one individual, none of us have all the answers. We all have our opinions, our thoughts and we’re figuring it out and we throw them out there. Take what sticks and run with it, you know? That’s where the magic is. That’s where the magic is for this.

One of the things I want to talk about too is Facebook. Facebook has been a really crazy thing the past couple of weeks and one of the things I haven’t done lately is talk about tools and giving you kind of news of what’s going on. Facebook this past week had a really interesting couple of weeks. Beacon happened, which for those of you who don’t know what happened, I’m going to generalize this. Go listen to like For Immediate Release or, God, what’s the other one. I’ll come up with it. They talked about Beacon in much, much more detail.

So, basically, what happened is all these marketing retail sites on the web use cookies. Everybody use cookies on the web. It’s okay, but what they were doing was there’s this network beacon. All these bigger retailers were using this cookie and then it was tied into Facebook so that all of a sudden — you know how your news feed happens in Facebook? It says “Hey, C.C. friended” so and so or “C.C. joined the group” blah, blah, blah. Well, what happened was with this beacon thing, all of a sudden you’d see “C.C. bought a leather sofa from Overstock.com” and it will put in my feed. Now, the problem here is people didn’t realize this was happening. Where was this crossover? In the past, everything you did in Facebook was shared, but all of a sudden here you had this crossover where people who were doing stuff outside of Facebook, all of a sudden that data was being shared with Facebook and that pissed a lot of people off. Now, what all companies seemed to realize is the fact that — in today’s world, the web, there are two critical things. There’s your reputation, which is it’s everything, it’s everything you do and it’s also your data. Now, we give up lots of data to things. I mean my Gmail account is on a server somewhere and Google serves me up ads based on what I’m writing about. That freaks some people out. It doesn’t freak me out personally. I have given up on that.

Facebook, I share a lot of things, but when all of a sudden things start crossing over and the user doesn’t know about it, that is when you’re going to run into trouble. They should have made a big honking banner, big full screen thing when you first log in and say, “Hey, FYI, this is going on.” People wouldn’t have reacted as badly. Communicate, communicate, communicate. One of the things I always do is it’s not even playing devil’s advocate, it’s how are the users going to react? This goes for anything you are going to do on the web at all, not even on the web. You’re going to be holding a concert. Try to think of what is the worst possible reaction you could get. Not so much what could go wrong because you hope for the best and you play in for the worst, of course. That’s rule one, but what is the worst reaction that could happen and how could that spiral? We always talk about that. Every project we do. Who could get a thorn up their butt and start screaming about this? You need to think about those things because in today’s world, that will spread like wildfire. You saw every blog, every Twitter, everything was talking about Beacon and flipping out. I mean Facebook blew it on this. They completely blew it. They’re fixing it now, but they blew it. The best blog post, Chris Abraham had a post how Facebook ruined Christmas. I mean think about it. You put in the most simplest thing… I mean Laura now is on Facebook. She sees my Facebook. If I have bought her something on one of these sites that uses beacon, it would have said, “C.C. bought a gigantic penguin,” which Laura loves penguins or something like that. That’s a simple thing, but maybe you shopped at a site that used a beacon and you didn’t know about it because of course you’re not going to know. Maybe it was risqué, maybe it was appropriate for Facebook, maybe it’s something you don’t want to share. What if it had been a health store?

Start thinking about these things. It’s not fun when your data is getting shared without your knowledge. One of the things I highly suggest you do if you use Facebook because I hadn’t thought about it until I saw someone twittering about stuff I was doing on Facebook, groups I was joining. It also happened when I left a group just because there was nothing going on. I was cleaning out my groups. I didn’t know what this group was and I got an email from someone saying, “Hey, why did you leave my group?” I’m like, “How the hell they know I did that?” You go into Facebook and on the upper right hand corner, there’s a privacy thing. Go in there and look at the things you can do. You can actually say what you don’t want to share on your news feed. I knew it was there. I just never actually dug through it. They have a lot of privacy options. I suggest you go on any site that you’re doing work, think about the privacy options. Just go check them out, really dig into it. Just look. It took me a little while and I said, “You know what? I really don’t want to share that.” I just don’t, little certain things. So, I highly suggest you do that. That’s what happened on Facebook this week if you weren’t aware of that.

In Facebook, another thing they did was they opened up pages in ads so now you can actually create almost like Google ads. You can create ads on target individuals. Now, what’s gotten people a little freaked out and marketers of course, you went, “Ooh.” I mean even I did. I went, “That’s kind of cool.” You can go into this and say, “I want to create an ad.” Now, even if you don’t want to create that, what you can do is you can get really quick research on Facebook demographics because as you start putting your criteria whether you do it by buzz words, you put in there “blogging” or “knitting,” you can put in words and what it’s going to do is it’s going to search things that people put in their Interests and whatnot in their profile. As you type in those words and it finds it in its database, you’ll see the numbers so like it starts off with 8 million users or how many users and then it starts getting smaller. It tells you how many users that ad is going to target based on that. As you filter, it’s kind of neat.

So, you can literally say, “Show me only women.” I forget if it’s just age now, but I think it does, “Women, 20 to 30, who are into swimming,” and it will slowly tell me how many there is. It’s a great way to quickly get demographics. Now, that kind of freaks some people out because like, “Wait a minute. Should you be sharing that data?” That, I’m okay with honestly because it’s not saying “and here are those 5000 users.” If it took it to that step that would be bad, but that would be stupid on their part. I’m okay with them saying “there’s this many users who do that” because I think that’s great. It kind of goes, “Oh, cool. There is a community here.” I think it’s a great way to target. The ads are kind of annoying, but I’m also already blanking them out unless it’s something really compelling.

The other day, I saw a face, I knew him, “Hey, I know him!” and I clicked on his ad just to see where it took me, but the Pages feature is also something neat. For those of you who haven’t figured out what’s going on with Facebook Pages, what it is, is it’s just like any other account in Facebook. The difference is they finally have allowed businesses to do this. I’ve had people in the past say, “Hey, C.C. What do you think about…?” I know somebody set up a newspaper account in Facebook and it got bounced because that’s against their Terms of Service. Terms of Services says a person and account, real person, but now businesses can create what are called Pages. They have pretty much all the features, but they are okay for businesses to set up. I think there are some nice categories, some local stuff which I love. I haven’t seen much happened with it yet, musicians, all this stuff, and you set up a Facebook account. Big deal, right? There’s a huge difference. There’s one huge thing that people seem to forget. These Pages are public if you make them so and what I mean by that is you can go to this page without being logged into Facebook. It doesn’t show you all the data, but it shows you the majority of it.

Yesterday, I was playing around so I made one for Now is Now, a band. I know Mitch. I have permission from him to do stuff like this, so I made a page and what’s neat is you can actually go to it and never have been in Facebook before. It looks like Facebook, it acts like Facebook, but you don’t have to log in. If you log in, you can become a fan and you can do things like that. The key part is the fact that your profile is outside of the walled garden of Facebook [unintelligible] and I’m seeing people create them for podcasts and I’m seeing them creating for other things. I’m still not sure. I don’t know if I need that. It’s one of those things I’m trying to figure. I mean I’ve got the Hey Home Fries group, which is working for me. If you are on Facebook, go to heyhomefries.com. It will redirect you into a Facebook group, which is kind of my landing ground for everything I’m doing and you become a member. I [unintelligible] once in a while over there. The Pages thing is neat because it’s another step forward and I’m interested to see where it’s going. Searching for them is kind of, not broken, but it’s weird. Facebook’s search algorithm kind of messes up sometimes like I saw yesterday Matthew Ebel had created a page and I went searching for it and I couldn’t find it, but I knew it was there. So, I don’t know how long it takes to re-index and all those things. Maybe it’s not broken, maybe it was a timing issue. I just wanted to give a kind of quick update to people on what’s going on, on Facebook because a lot has been happening there and I know you guys, a lot of you are trying to figure it out. You’re playing with it, you’re investigating it, and I just wanted you to have that update.

I got one more comment that called in because this one’s cool. I love when people call in and are excited and I’ve incited somebody to go. So, here we go.

Paul Lyzun: Hi, C.C. This is Paul Lyzun of the Video StudentGuy Show. We met briefly at PodCamp Boston and I’m looking forward to seeing you again and talking in person at the next New England Podcaster Meetup. Since PodCamp, I’ve made it a point of listening to a wider range of podcasts. I’ve got a long day of commute between Connecticut and Boston, so I can get through two or three each trip. I just finished episode #40 and I was so jazzed by your comments that I had to push this out to you. Listening to podcast on a commute is great. There is so much good, uplifting information out there. It’s just that I don’t have a chance to respond when the idea is afresh because I’m sitting behind the wheel. So, tonight on the way home with about 10 more minutes to drive, I decided once the show is over I’d run silent, think about what you were saying. I love your audience contributions, by the way. It really adds color to the show. PodCamp Boston was a great event for me. I didn’t make as many personal connections as I would have liked, but I came home with a lot of ideas. I didn’t get in on the Circle Conversation, but thankfully Chris [unintelligible] of the conversation at the end of the day on Sunday.

The thing I like about your show is the enthusiasm you have. It’s infectious. Right now I’m considering adding another show, a video cast, and the comments in show #40 on podcasters selling themselves short and ways to bring in money was very encouraging. Of course, it’s not going to be easy to get sponsors and advertisers. When you approach those goals, you’re talking about being a business. It’s serious work, but getting money for what you enjoy doing is certainly worth the effort and the way you, Mitch, Chris Penn, and others talk about it, it sounds completely doable. I’m busy like everyone else. I already got a podcast and I’m in school with a day job and a family, but after your show I feel like I have to absolutely must create a new podcast so I can swim deeper in the waters of new media. I know this is pretty longwinded. Use what you want and lose the rest. I just want to say thanks. I’ll talk to you later.

C.C. Chapman: Don’t lose it. I’m not going to lose anything. Thank you for calling in or sending an MP3 file. That was awesome. One thing, I just want to clarify this. You talked about having to swim deeper in the water. Don’t think you have to do that. Sometimes I’ve watched people, I’ve done this myself, you disperse out and do too many things and then you don’t just dilute yourself, but you also hurt yourself because you’re so stressed about “I got to do this, this, this.” Sometimes it’s just better to just focus in one direction, pinpoint, tip of the spear, figure out what you want to do and then when you get that rolling, then branch out. Don’t think you have to consume everything at once. Just be careful. I just want to advice you on that. If you’re listening and you like my passion, trust me, that comes at a price. I don’t sleep. I love sleeping, but I don’t sleep very often. Just take your time, get your feet wet, enjoy. Dip it in the deep end of the pool, but don’t think you have to dive in, all right? What is up with the water? It’s not even raining. I shouldn’t even be thinking about water. I love the fact that in your comment you said you like when other voices are in the podcast. Well, then you’re going to love today because there are all sorts of voices today and I am excited and I want your voice. You can email me at managingthegray@gmail.com or call the comment line. It’s just like voice mail. You just call up and say, “Yo, what’s up?” It’s 206-309-4729. I would love to have you on the show. This show just go on longer than usual and I’m okay with that. Things are going really good. I’m very excited.

Oh, I’ve got Seesmic invites that I have to give out. Okay, so Seesmic, what Seesmic is. Seesmic is a new upcoming video platform. Well, it’s just not a YouTube, but it’s different. There’s something different about it. It’s all Flash-based, which has some people liking it and some people not liking it. The FedEx guys are driving up. I’ve got Seesmic invites. You got to seesmic.com, check it out, you can watch videos. What’s cool about it is it ties into Twitter, it ties into YouTube, so when you submit a video, it ties into your webcam. I can record a video, hit Publish, it goes up in Twitter, people see it, they can reply, they can connect. They tie together. The community angles are coming. It’s in pre-alpha. Everybody wants the invites. I’ve got five to give away and I don’t know how to do it.

Part of me said I was going to ask you guys to do Managing the Gray reviews on iTunes, but I was like, “I wouldn’t want my listeners just to do that anyways.” I was going to maybe call in for them. I don’t know what I was going to do. So, let me make this really easy, no contest or whatever. The first five people who would leave a comment on this podcast on managingthegray.com get the Seesmic invites. Leave something besides “Hey, I want them.” React to the show, that way I know you listened. Don’t worry about putting your email on the comment because I’ll see it behind closed doors when you comment. The email is there and I’ll get in touch with you with the Seesmic invite. I guess that’s the easiest way to do it. I can’t think of anything fun to do, something goofball, take a picture of yourself listening to Managing the Gray and post it on Flickr. I was going to do something silly. I just want to give them out to people. I have five of them, so just go to managingthegray.com, leave a comment, and you get a Seesmic invite and we’ll go from there. I’m on there. I’m randomfoo because they didn’t allow underscores, I was pissed, or dashes in the name so I went with randomfoo. So, if you look me up, I do random videos there. They’re fun, they’re stupid, they’re brain dump, extremely conscious.

We’re going to wrap up because I know Roxie is going to bark at the FedEx guy. I don’t know what the FedEx guy is bringing me. I wasn’t expecting anything today. I’ll talk to you guys soon. Have a great time and listen, enjoy new media, just enjoy it. Have fun. Do what you want with it. Get people excited about it. We will all get there together. We’re all figuring it out. I’ll talk to you really soon. Take care.

- Originally posted on ManagingTheGray.com -

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Transcript for Managing the Gray #41
“Calculated Risks and Taking Chances”
Originally Posted on September 12, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Top of the morning everybody. It’s C.C. Chapman coming to you from the new C.C. studios here. Yeah! I’ve moved since the last show. This is episode #41 of Managing the Gray and I’m very happy to be here. There are a lot of things going on in my life right now. So, today we’re going to be talking about everything from risk to happiness to career changes to all those things that I’m going through right now. I had several people email me including John Swanson who sent me a very, very nice message encouraging me to share this. He wasn’t sure if I was going to share this sort of things and I had planned to. I get a lot of feedback from a lot of people and I’ve gotten a lot of messages over the past couple of days. Wait. I realized some of you may not know the news.

So, I have resigned from Crayon. I am leaving Crayon, a company that I helped form and launch and get going. Maybe I didn’t help form it, but I helped get it launched and all that. It’s been a great year. It’s been an up and down year, but it was the right time to do it. It’s honestly something I had thought about for quite some time and knew that was going to happen, but with moving the house, putting down a gun for hire free agent on a mortgage application doesn’t quite work. So, I stuck it out and I’m leaving. I wish them nothing, but success. I know they’re kind of changing themselves now. So, I hope Crayon goes on to do success, the guys there, the ones that are left I really like. I really appreciate it. I hope they do great things. There are still a lot of great ideas there. So, we’ll see what happens and keep watching them at crayonville.com and see what they’re up to.

Me? So, what am I doing? I’m taking a chance. I’m taking a risk and it’s something that I think applies to anybody who listens to this show is the fact that risk happens. You need to embrace it and be okay with it, but there’s a difference between a calculated risk and just throwing it out there and hoping things work. You got to think about things like this, especially when it’s involving your career. You’ve got to really think about the long-term implications. You’ve got to think about where you’re going to go, what you’re going to do. Can you do this? I mean things like financially, can you do it? I mean I just bought a house and I’m still selling my old house. It hasn’t been sold yet. So, there were lots of financial decisions in this, but at the same time don’t think just short term. You’ve got to think long term.

What I’m trying to get at is these are things you need to think about for whether it’s a project you’re about to do, whether it’s a career change, whether you’re going to college and trying to take your first job. You got to be comfortable with taking a chance and taking a risk because let’s face it. Depending on how old you are, you’ve got plenty of time to fix it. If you make a mistake, we all make mistakes because sometimes mistakes happen or chance turns out to be bad or risk doesn’t work in your favor, in which case you just have to change it around, get going and going again. The key is that you can learn from it. We’ve all heard the thing you can make mistakes, just don’t make them twice. That’s true. Learn from them.

I know pretty much any project I’ve ever worked on, things haven’t gone quite the way I thought and you learn from it and then on the next project you don’t do that and you learn from it again. We’re all learning. Anyone who says they know all the answers is wrong because everyday things are changing it. I was talking to someone the other day and I was talking about what I’m very excited about where I want to stay freelance for a while is I get to help companies, people, individuals “get it.” Her response was, “Yeah and that means first realizing that getting it changes every two weeks,” and that’s very, very true.

If you’re thinking about doing a career move, if you’re trying out a new project, just calculate the risks, really look at the things and look at it from every angle, analyze it. What I always like to do is, “What’s the worst thing that could happen? What’s the worst possible thing that could happen? What’s the next worst possible thing?” Once I get those out of the way, I can really figure out, “Okay, how can I avoid those two worst things?” Then I can focus all my energy on the positive because if you’re thinking about taking a risk, there are always a million positive outcomes that can come of it, but think of the two worst. Look at those and then do everything possible to stunt them out and move forward. That’s my advice.

Now, I get a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls from you guys. Oh, I get yelled at when I don’t give the comment line out. It’s 206-309-4729. That’s 206-309-GRAY. There. I get a lot of questions like I’m not happy in my job, what can I do to leave. If you’re not happy, get out. There are so many jobs out there. There are so many opportunities out there. You can make your own opportunities. I’ve always had this rule that if I get up in the morning — if I get up for a solid week because we all have those days you get up and you’re just like, “Oh, I don’t want to go.” We all have those days, but I’ve always had this thing that if a solid week happens and I just don’t want to be there or I’m dreading it, wherever that job is, that means it’s time to get out. It’s not worth it. Happiness is way too important and life is too short.

You’ve got things in your life that you do that do make you happy. Mine, it’s my family. My family comes before everything and they make me happy. If I’m not happy, then I know something’s wrong. I mean I knew I made the right decision to move on when two days after I resigned, we were sitting in the living room and Laura looked at me and I go, “What?” She goes, “I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time.” When your wife notices something like that, that shows you that I made the right decision. I know I did. So, really look at your happiness. Figure out what makes you happy. Know what you want and what you don’t want, especially if you’re looking to move to a new job because let’s face it, right now, I mean I’m not going to lie, I’ve gotten some offers for jobs already and I’ve turned them down because I know what I want and more importantly, I know what I don’t want. For me, I’m a driving guy so a commute is like the ultimate hell for me. I hate commuting, especially like a long commute. It’s such wasted time and wasted opportunity in your life and it’s such a life suck. I hate commuting. The other thing, the rule I’ve told everybody and I’ve done this when all things started going crazy, I won’t leave New England. It’s just not an option. That’s just my personal rule. I mean those are my two rules. I don’t want to commute and I won’t leave New England. Those are my two rules. I won’t leave New England because it’s where all my family is.

It’s funny. I remember I had a company courting me a couple years ago and they were like name my price. I’m like there is not a single dollar value on this planet that will get me out of New England and it’s true. I just won’t because there are too many things that are more important than money and no job is worth leaving the things that are important to me. Think about that for you. Maybe it’s right down the list. I mean I keep a paper journal. I write down things all the time. It’s the old pro and con sheet. Again, this can work for projects too or company strategies. Think about these things. Life lessons, baby. It all ties back together. It has to do with business. It has to do with new media. It just does it all.

One thing too is if you’re thinking about leaving a job or you’re thinking about taking a risk, be realistic. I am not one of those guys who can just throw caution to the wind and just jump out of a plane. I’m going to check the parachute. I’m going to check the airplane. I’m going to make sure I know what I’m doing. Just think about the big picture and think about the long-term implications of what you’re doing. Sometimes a little risk can snowball out of control and the next thing you know, you’re drowning, you’re just going insane. You don’t want that. I always like to think long term. I like to think, “If I make this decision now, how could that affect things 6 to 12 months out or even further?” I can’t do the five-year plan anymore because stuff is changing way too fast. I’m lucky if I have a 6- to 12-month plan because things are changing so rapidly and the technology changes every month, day, whatever you’re talking about, but really be realistic. Look at it objectively. One of the neat things that I’ve always been able to do is take the creative, take the crazy rainmaker idea, go crazy, and then look at it from the realistic side of things and say, “Can this happen? Is it the right thing to do?” I did a lot of those thinking over the past few weeks, a lot of those things.

If you’re going to take a risk, especially if you’re doing it on your personal side, you’ve got to have the buy-in of the people you love and care about. I could not have made this decision without Laura. Plain and simple it wasn’t. We talked long and hard about it. She’s funny. She had the ultimate faith in me. It’s kind of crazy to have two mortgages and suddenly quit your job with nothing lined up. We’re talking about risk and taking a chance, but I knew it was the right thing and she was okay with it because we talked about it. She knew why I was doing it. She knew the reason. She knew where I was going. It’s funny. I thanked her. I said, “Thank you for believing in me,” because it’s a leap of faith on her part to believe in me, but what she said came back to me. It blew me away. She said, “You’ve never given me a reason to not believe in you.”

That meant a lot and that’s kind of personal. Yeah, this is showing I’m kind of wearing my life on my sleeve, but that’s what I’m about. I mean C.C. Chapman is an open guy and I share you guys and I’m hoping you’re getting something out of this and I’m hoping those people out there who said, “C.C., we’d really want to hear your side…” If you’re looking for dirt, you’re not getting it here. Just get out of the way because I’ve had plenty of people ask for that. Really make sure the people around you, your support network whether it’s your friends, whether it’s your family, make sure they’re involved and they will help you. I know right now, if you’re listening, I know that there’s like one person you could think of outside of your direct family that you’re like, “I could go to them and ask.” I have those people.

When I was ready to make this decision, there were two people that I knew I was going to call and chat with and I did and I talked at length with them. It helped reaffirm my decision and that’s not a bad thing. If you’re thinking about taking a risk or a chance, reach out to somebody. See what they think. Tell them because they might go, “Are you insane?” but then when they realize it’s a really truly good idea or good risk, they’ll embrace you, they’ll help you, they’ll give you ideas because that’s what true, true friends are about. They may be Internet buddies. They might be lifelong buddies from school. It doesn’t matter. You know who your trusted people are. Talk to them. Work with them. Chat about what’s going on because sometimes just getting it out of your brain — I find it very helpful to just get the idea out of my brain and just bounce it off to somebody. Just see what people think about it. That’s important.

Now, one thing I am going to push. Things are not going to be given to you. You have to make your own opportunities. I’ve heard from so many people over the past year doing this podcast where people say, “Oh, C.C., I want…” they expect things given to them. There is no such thing as a free lunch, right? Well, I’ve had free lunch before, but let’s face it. You need to make your own opportunities. None of this stuff is given to you for free whether you’re talking about growing a podcasting audience, whether you’re talking about influencer outreach to get your product out there, it’s not going to happen overnight by magic. Yeah, once in a while, Tinker Bell swings by and dusts it with pixie dust and all kinds of cool things happen, but in most cases you’re going to have to work very hard to make your opportunities. I’ve worked my butt off these past few years, really getting myself out there, getting my brand to where I want it to be and I want to take it to the next step and you’re going to see things in the new future taken it to the next step, but that has been a lot of hard work, a lot of hours, a lot of late nights.

You guys ask how I get things done. It’s late night. It’s the Mac on the couch with a beer at midnight going, “Okay, now, what do I need to do?” You’ve got to work hard. Opportunities sometimes will present themselves and, yeah, I’m finding out now that it can be out there. Sometimes just raising your hand will get you noticed, but you’ve got to work hard. Make your own opportunities. I cannot stress this enough. You’ve got to do it. Get out there. Reach out to people. Reach out to your network. Actually, use a social network for what it’s really used for. Find people. Interact with them. Make friends. Have a dog that barks in the middle of your podcast, things like that. Just work hard. It’s amazing what a dog will do to distract you.

So, I think this is a perfect time. I want to play a comment from Paul Colligan.

Paul Colligan: Hey C.C. It’s Paul Colligan. I just listened to your show about are we selling ourselves too short, new media selling itself too short. Yes, we’re doing that. That’s the problem and the problem is if we don’t get together and prove what our value is, scream what our value is, shout what our value is, then the traditional media is going to keep thinking they can buy us off for a case of beer or something like that. So, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to realize the value of what it is that we have. Now, the [unintelligible] changed in a number of ways. It used to be we associated value with the equipment that produced the value. Movies are better than home videos because the movies were produced over a multimillion dollar budget, whereas, the home video is a $300 Handycam kind of thing. Let’s face it, podcast, like you said, they’re basically free. So, what happens is a lot of times we associate the content as being basically valueless because it’s created basically free.

That’s not the case anymore. The technology is becoming ubiquitous. That’s what we wanted, that’s what we dreamed for, but the value of what we do with the content, the value of that information, that’s where all the power is. Second Life, one of your favorite hangouts, the technology is great, yes, but it’s what the people are doing with the technology that gives Second Life all its value. It’s the exact same thing as podcasting. So, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to realize how much value we have. We’ve got to only charge for that value. We’ve only got to let people purchase what we have to say at the value that we’re worth and then these things will change. It’s scary sometimes to realize, to charge what you’re worth. It’s scary that someone will say no. It’s scary that someone will invalidate you. Whatever the term is you want to look for, the fact of the matter is new media is worth it. Let’s stop selling ourselves short. Great show as always, man. Sorry I’m a couple of weeks behind, but it’s just too good not to call it on. Talk to you later, sir. Bye.

C.C. Chapman: Thanks Paul. Thanks, Paul, for covering up Roxie barking. You’d think with the new studio that I’ve got here, I’ve got doors on this studio, I’m just not used to shutting them so they are now shut and the bus went by so hopefully she’ll be quiet. What Paul was saying, it plays into it too. It played into the whole value discussion that we’ve been having for a while, but also plays into your worth and determining your worth. I’m having to face that now. I had someone yesterday call me up and say, “Hey, C.C. I want you to do this and this and this and this. How much is it going to cost me?” I stopped and I realized, “Crap! I got to think of these things now. I need to think of rates and things like that.” How do you determine that? Sometimes in today’s world, it’s not just based on talent or experience. It’s based on a lot of things. You can ask 10 different consultants and they will all charge you totally different things. It’s kind of interesting and that’s a problem I’m dealing with right now and I’m going to figure it out, but it is definitely something that, like Paul was saying, it applies to podcast, it applies to everything. I think you’re going to see a lot of discussions about this.

The Podcast and New Media Expo, newmediaexpo.com is coming up at the end of October. I know there’s going to be a lot of chatter about that. The Association for Downloadable Media is having its first public meeting there. I will definitely be in that. Profitable Podcasting, there’s going to be a meeting by Paul. There’s going to be a lot of great sessions, a lot of great conversations. Trust me. There will be lots of things going on there both in the Expo floor, in the Marriott and just all around. Homefry Breakfast, by the way, any Managing the Gray listeners, we’re going to have breakfast at the Spire on Friday morning down the street, basically have breakfast before the conference opens and you’re all invited. I can’t believe I’m going to say this. The invitation’s on Facebook. Wow. Email me and I’ll get you details.

So, there are lots of opportunities going on. There are lots of conversations going on about how do you value your content. I just got back from PodCamp Philly a couple of days ago. What was interesting was there wasn’t as much talk about that there because most of the people there weren’t even into podcasting yet. Me, Mark Blevis, and Linda Mills did a session on highly effective new media and one of the first questions I asked was “how many people is this your first PodCamp” and easily, easily 90% of the room, 80-90% of the room raised their hands and I asked “how many people have never done a podcast” and it was a little bit less than that, probably 70-85%, but it was still a lot. So, there was a lot of new people coming in and learning about the technology and figuring out “does this work for me or does it not.” They’re going to be asking the value question before you know it, how to get sponsors, how to get…

There is so much talk about that and I think you’re going to see a lot of changes. I’m curious what gets announced at the PME. There are always big announcements happening. I know a couple that I’ve heard rumbling in the background so it will be interesting will anybody get more money, will people be joining new networks, will companies be merging, will there be new technology. Who knows what’s going to go on? I’m looking forward to it because it’s a business opportunity for me too now. Going the gun for hire route, the mercenary role now, I’m looking for work. I don’t have one. As of Friday, two days from now, I don’t have a paycheck anymore so it’s going to be kind of interesting to see where things go and I’m excited. That’s what I want you to think about is get excited about what you’re doing. If you’re not excited about what you’re doing right now and you want to do something more exciting, do what I was talking about earlier. Look at the risks. Figure out what’s important to you, what’s not important to you, what drives you nuts, what sucks your life blood away. If it sucks your life blood away, you don’t want that and whatever you moved to. You don’t want to work with that. You don’t want to play with that. Do you see a project coming down the pipeline that gets you excited at your company? If so, go after it. Raise your hand and say, “I want to be part of that.”

If you see one that you know is just going to suck every living day out of you, avoid it like the plague. Try to get away from it, but when you see something that excites you, go after it. Work hard, work very hard and make it work. Make it yours. Make your opportunities. Take the chance and just get out there, kick butt and have fun doing everything you’re doing. Be passionate about it. Passion is what drives everything or it should. Passion drives everything I do, everything I do, everything I live, breathe, and do whether it’s making dinner last night, spoiling my wife, or it’s recording this podcast, or it’s seeing a movie, or it’s painting a painting, or it’s writing my book, which I finally get to do more of. I wrote a bunch on the train the other day. It felt good. Chase your passions. Use that energy. Figure out what makes you happy and just go do it. All right? I can’t stress that enough. Seriously. Right now, write down what you hate and you love what you’re doing right now. That’s your homework. Just go do it and think about it. I tell you, if the side of the hate is longer than the love, you’ve got something you got to think about.

Call me up, 206-309-4729, or drop me an email at managingthegray@gmail.com. I would love to talk to you and hey, you want to hire me? You’re not going to hear me say this every time, I promise. Cc-chapman.com has got all the contact information. I would love to hear from you. I would love to work with you and if you think you’re too small, don’t. I’m very much excited about working with people, individual bands, movies, companies, whatever it is, other agencies. Heck, I’ll come in and do a pitch with you guys or facilitate brainstorm sessions. Whatever it is, I just am excited to work with such a variety of new people. That has me giddy with glee. Giddy with glee, C.C.? I don’t think so.

Anyways, guys, you take care. I will be back very, very soon. Until next time, swing on by managingthegray.com. All right? Go out. Be passionate.

Originally posted on Managing the Gray 

Posted in Transcript | Comments(1)

Transcript for Managing the Gray #40
Assigning Value and Monetizing Your Podcast
Originally posted on August 6, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #40. Hey, it’s C.C. Chapman here in MetroWest Boston. It may not be morning for you, maybe night, evening, who knows what it is? Whenever you’re listening to this, I hope you’re having a good one. I hope it’s a sunny day, beautiful day, and things are going well for you and I hope you’re having fun playing on the new media playground like I am. It’s a Monday morning here in Boston. It’s episode #40 of Managing the Gray and I wanted to get this out before the week starts, before the week consumed — you know how that happens sometimes? You have goals and things and then your week just kind of completely consumes you or even if just a day consumes you? I’m not worried about the week necessarily even though I’m headed off to Florida this week, not for vacation. It’s all work, no pleasure. Well, probably some pleasure, but who knows, but heading down there.

I knew this is going to be a fun show because I know I was going to get some quality feedback in the last show where I was talking about selling yourselves short, talking about Jaffe’s iPhone and all that. Of course, no audio comment from Jaffe. I see the guy in person, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be on my show. Anyways, lots of people called in to the comment line, which, again, in case you don’t have it, is 206-309-4729. It’s 206-309-GRAY. We love hearing from you, anything you have to say. We would love to hear from you. I’ve got tons of comments today to play. They’re very long. They’re very insightful. They say a lot.

The topic of selling yourself short and monetizing your podcast and bartering and all that. That’s one thing I want to say upfront too because there was a lot of discussion on the blog as well. I have zero problem with bartering. I am a huge fan of bartering. I once did some — this was a long time ago now I think about it. I did some logo work for someone in the early web days and they paid me a Best Buy gift certificate. I don’t remember why. There was something with their accounting. I said, “Buy me some Best Buy gift cards,” and it covered the cost and I was cool with that. I think bartering is an amazing thing. It’s worked for centuries. I have something you want, you have something I want, let’s trade and I’m okay with that. I have no problem with someone giving an iPhone for an episode. I think that’s great. It was just a particular podcasting question I thought that was selling that one short. Actually, let me play that comment right here because it fits before. Can you tell I’m just kind of flying by the seat of my pants today?

Mike Wills: Hey, C.C. This is Mike Wills of Mike’s Hotdish at nextgenerationofradio.com. You were talking about selling — are we selling ourselves short as podcasters and, you know, I would honestly have to say I have no idea. I think the people who have it in marketing and people who know what advertising costs or whatever knows what they’re worth, know what their show is worth, know what their audience is worth, and so on. I think people like me who are just your average everyday person or a programmer or just a geek or whatever, we sit back and like I don’t know what my show is worth, I don’t know how to charge for it, you know, just in general that kind of information.

So, we just “Hey, I’ll give you 20 bucks to advertise on my show.” “Oh okay. Yeah, sure. Great!” That’s income. We really don’t care, but, yeah. They don’t believe the stigma of “Oh gosh, you guys are so cheap, we can have [unintelligible],” you know, whatever. Anyway, I guess it all comes down to we as podcasters, most of us don’t know what we’re worth so we don’t know if we’re selling ourselves short or if we’re too expensive. Maybe we need comparison to radio and television, I don’t know. Is the audience worth more than them? I guess those are some questions that I don’t know and hopefully someone could figure out an answer for. On that, keep up the great show. I enjoy listening and I’ll see you guys next time. Remember, the nextgenerationofradio.com.

C.C. Chapman: So, that’s what I was getting at. What I’m getting at is that each podcaster has determined the value for themselves and yeah, I know a lot of it, especially if you’re just starting out, you don’t have a value. Any money that gets thrown at you is more money than you had yesterday. I used to say that and I still say that that anybody who fights the idea of monetizing your podcast, what I always say back to them is, all right, take your favorite product, company or charity or cause, I don’t care what it is. Think about it in your head right now. Now, tell me. If they came to you and said, “We will pay you to talk about us. You get to talk about it how you want. We’re not gonna push an ad down your throat. We’re just going to say, ‘Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Podcaster, here’s money to talk about us and you already love us.’” There is not a person on the face of this earth who wouldn’t take that and I’m sorry if you say you did. You wouldn’t, but it’s true.

The point is you’ve got to figure out what is good for you and it is different. A guy who’s just sitting around doing this in his spare time might charge different than a soccer mom doing a podcast who might charge different than a corporation doing a podcast. Just to give you an idea, I mean when we’re talking about advertising on television or newspapers even just banner ads on major websites, you’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars for one run or a week run.

One of the things I’m suggesting to you, I’ve heard Tim and Emile Bourquin over Podcast Brothers talk about this, is if you go to a company, a major corporation, if you actually get to the point where you’re looking for sponsorship and you go to a company and you say, “Hey, would you like to sponsor my podcast for a month? It’s four episodes and it’s going to cost you $500.” They’re going to laugh at you because they’re going to know you’re not taking yourself seriously. You’re an amateur and that’s not a bad thing. You can be that way. That’s a great thing to do. What I’m getting at is if you actually go out to look for sponsors, they’re not used to dealing in those little small numbers and they’re not going to take you seriously. It’s weird. I wish I remember the company because I know Tim Bourquin talked about an example where he was going out asking for sponsorship and it wasn’t working. Someone told him, “You’re not asking enough.” He actually went out and added some thousands to what he was asking for and the first person he asked came back, “Oh okay. Sure,” because they recognize that dollar figure and it was shocking. It’s sort of weird. You see that too sometimes when you’ve been on work and whatnot. It’s not always the cheapest one. It’s sort of strange.

I was talking about bartering and what I mean is it’s a great thing and I think it’s okay. If someone wanted to give me something to sponsor Managing the Gray or Accident Hash, One Guy’s Thoughts, I’d be cool with that. Perfect example, a very pertinent example would be One Guy’s Thoughts. If Panasonic or JVC or Sony wanted to give me a camcorder to be like the official, you know, at the end I would put “camera provided by company X.” I’d be all over that. I’d be cool with that.

Heck, week two or three of podcasting ever, way back in 2004, I reached out to a musician’s friend and said, “Hey, I know nothing about audio equipment. What if you gave me a mixer and a microphone?” That’s all I was asking for, for my computer and I would say “equipment provided by musician’s friend” on every Accident Hash out there. They said, “Sorry. We’re not interested in this podcasting thing.” They blew it, didn’t they? I mean for what cost me $200, was I selling myself short? Probably not because it was exactly the perfect barter and they blew me off. They said, “I don’t think so.” I remember they actually said, “Sorry. We’re not interested in getting involved in podcasting,” at that time. Now, they have podcasting packages. That’s what I was trying to push them to do, but it’s what I’m getting at. That I thought was a perfect barter.

I still think if a camcorder company wanted to donate a camcorder to One Guy’s Thoughts, I’d be down for that discussion to talk about it because I think it’s a great thing. Now, would I automatically do it? Maybe not. It depends. It depends if it’s a brand I knew or not. I just want people to start thinking different. The key is that you’ve got to start thinking about yourself a little bit bigger, a little bit different if you’re going to monetize. If you’re one of these people who don’t want to monetize your podcast, this whole episode is probably going to drive you a little nuts because we are talking about that concept today.

Of course, my good buddy Christopher S. Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, I’m glad he called in because I knew he’d have thoughts on this.

Christopher Penn: Hey, C.C. Chapman. This is Christopher Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, PodCamp, and Marketing Over Coffee. Regarding your comments about why new media folks are selling themselves short, I think it’s a sociologic phenomenon more than anything else or a psychological phenomenon, I’m not sure which is the correct term. As individual, $1000 is a lot of money, $10,000 is a lot of money, and $1 million is a heck of a lot of money because we’re used to dealing with smaller amounts in our personal lives. Podcasting and blogging are inherent with personal media.

We have our individual shows. So, if somebody shows up at the doorstep with $1000, it seems like a lot of money to us. Corporations are used to dealing with things that have 7, 8, 9, 10 digits in them and $1 million per ad spent is like the [unintelligible] cream cheese budget for Manhattan banks. So, for podcasters and bloggers to get out of the mindset of small sponsorship, they have to start thinking like a corporation. It may even help to sit down and legally separate out your podcaster, your product from yourself. Look at it as a company will look at it. Okay, here’s the ROI, here’s the AdSense, here is the operations budget, and things like that. Then with a more dispassionate look, understanding that you are not your show and vice versa, you can start to ask for more competitive sums of money as other forms of media.

Like I said, it’s a big part of the fact that it’s personal medium and we treat it as such, but it’s also a corporate professional medium as well. I know the Financial Aid Podcast, $20 million in loan volume last year is a heck of a lot of money and more than I’ll make this year or in the next several years combined, but for a loan industry that’s still a small amount of money. Even so, it would be worth it to a bank to acquire that $20 million worth of loan or whatever it is going to be for this calendar year. So, the money is definitely there as long as you think of yourself or at least your show as a corporation and do business to business work as opposed to business to personal work because that’s going to lead to trouble. Talk to you soon. Take care. Check out my stuff at financialaidpodcast.com, marketingovercoffee.com, and podcampboston.org. Take care, C.C.

C.C. Chapman: Thanks Chris, yeah, and quick plug for PodCamp Boston. We’re up to 324 registrations as of this morning. So, please check out podcampboston.org and register. It’s going to be a huge event, October 20… Chris is going to kill me. October 26 I believe is when it is, October 26 through 28, [unintelligible] VON Boston. It’s going to be a really good time. Chris reminded me of a trip. Ewan Spence and I were on a train in Germany talking about the fact that more people need to think about themselves as businesses. Now, I’m not talking about you have to go out and get all incorporated and all that, but what I’m talking about and Chris was kind of talking about is to treat yourself like a business. If you’re thinking about monetizing your podcast, you need to make business decisions. You need to think long term. Don’t sign a contract that locks you into five years unless it’s some really good money because the world’s going to change. I mean really think long term. Yeah, right now I might have 10 to 50 listeners. Where might that be in a year? I don’t know, but you got to think about that and just think about growth, especially if you’re going to sign a long-term sponsorship deal. Really think about it.

One of the things too that I see people do sometimes is they just take stuff for free and advertise it on their podcast, which is fine, but think about it. What are you getting out of it? Not much. Maybe you’re getting some free product. It depends on what it is really. I would give away lots of things on this show if it was something I personally believed in. I don’t want people to think about that. It’s funny. Part of me, I’ll be honest, was a little jealous of Jaffe that somebody actually came to him. I think that’s great. I was trying to think of what could people give me to sponsor an episode. I don’t know. I was trying to think of something I wanted and nothing came to mind. I don’t need the Xbox 360 or the big screen TV in the living room. I would take both of them, you know? I still think if Canon stepped up and gave me lenses or Sigma or someone will give me lenses for my camera to play with, I would even return them. I think they would be cool, but not really pertinent to Managing the Gray, but that’s another thing. It has to be pertinent to your show. Whoever the sponsor is should be pertinent to you. Think about it.

I have turned down sponsorships that I wasn’t interested in because — the ones that I’ve turned down have been personal reasons, I didn’t believe in the product or something I didn’t want to be showing. That’s something you have to think about too. So, one of the things I told you, there’s going to be heavy comments. Again, if something just clicks in your head, what was that number again? It’s 206-309-4729. It’s fun because I got a lot of different comments from a lot of different markets. This one was talking about music.

Rob C: Hey, C.C. This is Rob from the Fixion Media Advertising Network. That’s fixionmedia.com. I’m just off the hills listening to your recent podcast, “Is New Media Selling Itself Short?” I have to say it is. I liken it to the independent music scene where there’s a lot of great artists, a lot of great people who are trying to start independent companies and whatnot, but nothing really connects unless you’re connected to big business. At the end of the day, it’s an inferiority complex that we have to deal with as a smaller niche or subculture or underground movement of sorts.

In my case, it’s been an uphill battle since I deal with hard rock and heavy metal music and we’re only recently starting to look for publishers to expand within more of a demographic range, you know, the male 18 to 49 and whatnot, but at the end of the day, those corporate buzzworths said the demo, the male demo, the age group, or this and that, we’re not focusing enough on coming together and on operating together. That’s one of the reasons why I started my ad network. I started publishing an online music site called blistering.com in 1998. I find it pretty hard getting advertisers and really just surviving. Pre-dotcom boom is a lot easier to make a dollar off a banner ad and everything just kind of came crashing down at one point. So, what I did was I teamed up with another site called blabbermouth.net and we basically split everything down the middle. His site was about five times bigger than mine, but we just split all the advertising revenue down the middle. He had more traffic than I did. We aggregated our audience and a couple of years later, we ended up signing a couple more sites and now we’re representing 20 websites in the music space and interest is improving. I guess people are picking us up on Nielsen, on comScore, word of mouth, through our properties, and so on and so forth.

So, we represent an audience of millions now and from the client or brand agency perspective, we’re more of a viable source to deal with. I think podcasters and bloggers, anyone involved in social media or creating social media tools or interacting in any way whatsoever is truly the old adage of networking and know your neighbor. Team up and start a site with 10 amazing marketing bloggers or whatever the case may be. That’s the only way you’re going to get your voice heard. It’s the only way you’re going to have some sort of authority in the industry. At the end of the day, your words will speak for themselves, you know? And everyone’s words will speak for themselves, but that affiliation is that creating your own mafia or something like that. It’s a smart way to go in the business sense. That’s pretty much what I have to say about this. I love the podcast, C.C. Keep Managing the Gray going strong.

C.C. Chapman: That ends real fast. That’s another way to do it. I thought that was another great concept, the fact of affiliation and bringing yourself together. This is why things like Blubrry, PodShow, Kiptronic, Tripod, I know I’m going to forget a whole bunch of them, but these networks formed to pull — that’s exactly the model. I mean those PodShows are part of the model. I know guys, part of the model, and all these other ones from day one was pull these shows together and then when you go to an advertiser, you can say, “Look, you’re not just gonna buy on this one. Sure, you’re gonna buy across these 10 shows, 20 shows,” depending on who the advertiser is. It’s a great model and there’s nothing to say that you can’t do it on your own. Blogs have done it for a while. Why haven’t podcast? Rogic is the only one I can think of that has done a completely independent network. They’re personal friends. I’ll put that out there right now, Nico, Bob, Cat, Matt, all those guys, Mark. I’m forgetting a bunch of people, but the fact that they pulled together and they banded their shows together… I don’t think they’ve ever pulled together just for advertising. They pulled together for a lot of reasons.

The concept of tribal communities that cavemen did in the old days and we’ve been doing ever since, why can’t it work in new media as well? People cluster together. They work together. This goes beyond just monetization. You can work together. I know I have my small core group of people that I bounce ideas off when I want to cause some trouble or try something new. I have these core little groups of people that I trust and know and share similar interests with. Why not do that out in the podosphere? You can do that right now. If you do tech podcast, there’s plenty of people you can connect with. Maybe you have a super uber niche, but maybe there’s somebody else out there. People shouldn’t view things as competition. There’s room for everybody. Look at how many music podcasts are out there and here’s people pulling them together. You look at the parenting podcast, that’s a perfect one that should be pulled all together so people can come and get a parenting channel, I don’t know what it will be, about parenting something. You would go to one website and they could get a combined feed of all these select parenting podcasts. Marketing is another perfect example. I know we talked about Kapow at one point. Is there something we could put together on master feed to pull all of Kapow together so people could just describe the Kapow — I love saying that for you, thank God for the pop filter — and get all the shows. There’s a lot to do with pulling together and banding and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m talking about niches. One of the things I also talked about was the concept of the ADM, the Association for Downloadable Media. Evo Terra, God bless his soul and God bless his beautiful wife, she’s a sweetie, had some thoughts on that as well.

Evo Terra: Hey, C.C. It’s Evo Terra of podiobooks.com and funanymore.com, listening to your comments regarding the Association of Downloadable Media and some other organization you mentioned. I share your same concern. We need to make sure that not only these things happen for big, huge podcasts, but also little podcasters as you mentioned, but my take on this is if it all goes in one direction and we continue to look for what happens for the big guy, well, what happens for the folks that are big or maybe they’re small but they’re doing something different.

Podcasting can be more than two dorks in a microphone or even one dork in a microphone. Not that I’m saying it should be you, but there are some people not to mention like podiobooks.com, for example, I’ve got about 137 different titles up there right now where people are using podcasting, the medium, to get their audio books in front of a brand new audience for free. I guess what I’m trying to say is [unintelligible] and the reason that I’m thinking of joining one or both or all that come across is to make sure that we don’t pigeonhole podcasting into something. There are a lot of different things that I’ve seen that are completely unexplored out there in this magic podcasting. I think the distribution method itself is interesting enough that we need not just make it something very basic. On the other side, I think it’s very important that we do have standardized ad units. I work in online advertising as that’s what brings me most of my income and I wouldn’t be able to do my job if it wasn’t for the Internet Advertising Bureau. I would be going through and figuring out what would were the standard sizes of units that we should be using and how long they should be and the file size and a lot of things like that.

So, yes, we do need those standards, but I want to make sure that, as you mentioned, the little guy is taken care of and like I’m concerned with that people are doing something unusual and different with the podcasting method, I want to make sure our needs are met as well. So, that’s why I’ll be in there fighting my flag and making sure that all voices are heard. Ciao!

C.C. Chapman: Amen. Amen! That’s why I love Evo Terra. He’s like me. He wants to make sure everybody’s voice is heard, not just the big guy. I agree with you. If you’re not familiar with the Podiobooks model, podiobooks.com is such a killer idea. I’m talking about the network idea where Evo and I know there’s other people involved and I’m sorry to them because I don’t know their names on the top of my head, pulled together audio books. Everyone knows the Sigler and the Hutchins and the Nemcoff names when it comes to Podiobooks, but there’s a whole bunch of other authors out there that people may not know about. If you go to podiobooks.com, you heard, he said they have 137 I think titles up there where you can get these audio novels and they’re getting at it all the time. That’s just screaming for appropriate advertising to put into it. It also seems like a lot of possibilities for acquisitions and if I was a book publisher, I’d be listening there to every book that came out because you could get a feel and find some new authors, but that’s just me. Hint, hint.

I agree with you, Evo, about the Association of Downloadable Media sense. I was really hoping I would have a comment from them for the show, but I didn’t unfortunately. That’s why I kind of held off hoping certain people would comment on this and they didn’t, but that’s okay. I talked to several members because I am officially a member of it because I want to see what they’re doing and keep an eye on it and be involved with it. Not only are they going to try to standardize some metrics and whatnot — it won’t work for everything, that’s for sure. I know the way Financial Aid Podcast measures their success versus Podiobooks versus me is very different, but at least getting some metrics out there. Just the number of listeners, I would love to have a standardized way of doing it because everybody throws numbers out there. “I’ve got 10,000 a month” or “I’ve got 100,000 requests per day.” Those are very different numbers. They don’t mean the same things. If we can just even get some standard things like with web stats, it took a while to get hits, page views, unique visitors. It took a while to get that type of stuff. We need to get there from podcasting to make people talk numbers across the board easier.

The other thing too is I hope these associations take it to the global concept because podcasting and new media in general is completely global. It’s not a US-centric thing and most of these associations and networks for that matter seem to always start very US-centric, which I’m fine with. I’m sure there are legal ramifications and corporate ramifications, but you got to remember this is a global concept. There are people around the globe and podcasting is borderless. What I mean by that is I know of several major sponsors and one comes to mind that sponsored several podcasts, but turned down another because of where it was recorded. It was recorded in Europe and they said, “Oh, we only want US-based podcasters.” Completely missing the point that there are people around the world right now listening to this.

Yes, I am in Boston recording this, but who cares? I could just as easily be in Singapore like Mitch Joel just did on the beach. I could be Mark Hunter up in Scotland. I could be somebody in China, maybe not China. I don’t know if they allowed podcasting yet. I could be in Cape Town, South Africa, like the ZA Show. I mean I could be anywhere, but the fact my listeners could be global and advertisers need to wake up. One of the things too while I’m thinking of that, advertisers are more clueless than podcasters are as far as selling themselves short. Marketers don’t have a clue what they’re doing with podcast. I’ve seen very, very few sponsors do it right, realize that this isn’t just another media buy. It’s not the same thing as buying television. It’s not the same thing as buying a print ad. It’s not a 30-second middle-of-my-podcast radio spot. That doesn’t fly, people. Advertisers have got to figure out that this is a unique medium and work with the podcasters in the community to figure out a way to do it right, to do it in a way that people are going to pay attention and actually care about your product.

That’s where I think things like when I was talking about the camera idea for a video podcast — I know when Kevin Smith did his Train Wreck, which were his video diaries leading up to Clerks 2, it was sponsored by Panasonic. At the end, it said “cameras provided by,” that made sense. If there was a 30-second commercial at the beginning of every episode advertising Panasonic cameras, I would have flipped it off. I know MTV does that. It drives me nuts. MTV has these little 30-second podcasts, video podcasts, kind of like highlighting news and I love watching them, but at the beginning of every one, there’s a 20-second — I’m not going to name the product, it’s like a moisturizer thing, but there’s a commercial and I’ve now gotten to it. I know how long it is. I just fast-forward through it. I just skip it. I’m like “I don’t want to watch this.” It’s stupid. They could be much better done. So, advertisers, wake up.

One more audio comment.

John Havens: Hey, C.C. This is John Havens from Blog Talk Radio and also PodCamp NYC. I wanted to comment about your show “Is New Media Selling Itself Short?” from July 27th. My answer is yes. Period. We are all selling ourselves short as content producers if we do not look into ways of monetizing, if we want to monetize. I did a show on about.com with my podcast. It’s still up. I think it was April and I’ll look for the episode number if anyone wants to go there, episode #33, I interviewed Justin Kownacki from Something to be Desired. He’s got an amazing videocast. One of the things we talked about was whether or not content producers should charge. So, people listening, the universal answer all of you will say I know is “no, of course you shouldn’t charge.” The second you charge for your podcast even if it’s a buck, you will lose your audience. Okay? So, first of all, I want to say I understand reality. This is the nature of what the era of the Internet, where we are right now.

Right now, if you charge as a podcaster, if you were to call it the premium podcast and you say, “I’d like $1 per episode,” the majority of people will say, “Well, you’re an idiot. No one’s gonna buy it,” and they might even get offended, “How dare you charge for your content?” First of all, there is someone who I do respect. It’s the guy who runs a show called The Roadhouse Podcast. I believe that’s the right title. He charges $1 I think it is, forgive me if I have this wrong, but I really like this model so I want to give him full credit. He charges $1 for a version of his show with no ads and it’s a higher quality sound rate because it’s blues music or he lets you listen for free, but he has ads and the sound quality isn’t quite as high. Now, I think that’s brilliant because what’s that saying to a listener is — that, to me, what it’s saying is, “I’d like to get paid and if you want a version that’s really listener-friendly, pay me a buck and that helps pay for the cost of the effort it takes to make it.” I think that’s a great model. Okay? So, he is monetizing. Most people when they hear about that, podcasters that I talked to, think it’s fantastic. However, now, if he just said, “Please pay me $1 for my episode,” again, most people would say, “What are you talking about? Of course not.”

All right, now, here’s the thing. As C.C. pointed out, on your episode C.C., when you create a show, it has inherent value because of who you are and how well you produce it. Okay? I say how well you produce it because we’ve all listened to a musician who may not be the best technically, but we still love their music and we’ve all listened to musicians for instance who are great technically, but we don’t feel they have the heart. Okay? So, if you are producing content that people loves and they want to download, first of all, amen. Awesome. Keep it up whether or not you want to monetize. But if you want to monetize, talk to your audience and tell them. Be honest. “I would like to monetize. I would rather do my podcast and work at, whatever, Starbucks or at my corporate job. If this is something you’re willing to pay for, let me know.” Always talk to your audience. I would never say just start charging. Okay, C.C. If this records for some reason, I left like four long messages. [Unintelligible] We all know I talk too much or leave long messages. So, I’ll talk to you about this. Bye.

C.C. Chapman: I hadn’t listened to that one all the way through. John, that’s the only one that came. But there was good stuff in there. There was very good stuff in there. I didn’t realize, what’s his name, Tony was doing that with The Roadhouse Podcast, which by the way, if you guys like blues at all, The Roadhouse Podcast is amazingly blues. I’m not a big blues guy, but I can dig it and he does an amazing job. I’m talking about a well-produced podcast. Check that out. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Great, great show. Good guy too, very standup individual, which I like. John bring up some good points there too about different models for monetizing. It doesn’t have to be advertising and seriously, we are in the puppy days of this world. Remember when people said no one would ever buy music online, Apple is doing horrible from that. Forget the DRM question. That’s a whole other question, but people are buying music.

It’s the same if you want to buy podcast because let’s face it, you’re listening to podcast right now, but we’re still in the echo chamber where maybe we wouldn’t pay for it, but I guarantee you if I made it so that someone could do pay-per-view subscribe on their television set — I bet a lot of you people have TiVos and DVRs that pre-record stuff that’s automatically there. I would lay money on the fact that if you could stand in front of your television and say, “I want to subscribe to Tiki Bar TV,” I’m trying to think of some big, you know, or GeekBrief.TV, come on, any of these things, it will go “Okay, that will cost you 5 bucks a month” whatever if you get premium packages, people would do it and it would just show up on their television sets. That’s podcasting. People, it is. That’s where things are going to go. It’s going to get to that point.

There are certain shows I would pay money to subscribe to. Maybe I get them early, I’ve seen that model before. What I’m getting that is people outside of the podosphere, people who are not producing podcasts, those millions of people who haven’t found out about it yet, they would pay for these things. Part of me says because they don’t know any better, but part of me says because that’s the model they’re used to and it is a model that we’re going to get to at some point. There’s going to be a point where you’re going to pay — a video podcast is a perfect example where maybe I can download the iPod version for free, the little screen, but I thought if I want the Apple TV version, I’d pay something for it. It’s a higher res, it’s more bandwidth. I see that model working. I think it’s a great model and I’m waiting to see someone try it. Now, for me, it’s got to be the right content or I won’t buy it, but that goes for anybody.

I guess what I’m trying to say is — we’ll wrap this all up because it’s going really long for a Managing the Gray — the key things I want you to take away is if you don’t want to monetize, don’t worry about it. There’s nothing saying you have to monetize at all. I love the people who have no aspirations to monetize. It’s fun. You’re doing it strictly for the pure fun of it and get the information out there and podcasting and new media is a whole [unintelligible] gives you a voice. That’s okay and that’s cool. Those of you who do want to monetize, start thinking like a business. I’m not saying you have to go get lawyers and accountants, but just think and what I mean by that is always think long term. Think “what if my podcast suddenly explodes and get hugely popular? Do I want to be locked into a contract for $50 an episode?” or whatever the number is. I’m not going to focus on numbers. Assign a value to yourself. If you have questions, talk to like-minded people and they will help you. “What do you think about this?” Maybe band together. It’s funny.

Managing the Gray has been around now for over a year and it sort of saddens me that it has never had a sponsor, not kind of saddens, it does sadden me. Have I actively gone out looking for sponsors? No, I haven’t, but it sort of bothers me as having a new media and a business-focused podcast, I seem to think that my audience would be a perfect audience for the appropriate advertisers to reach out to and I’m extremely open to advertising, sponsorship of the right type. Seriously, email me, managingthegray@gmail.com or cc.chapman@gmail.com, happy to talk about it, happy to barter. I’m open on all sorts of things. People seem to miss the opportunity a lot. You know me. Come on. I work for Crayon. We live and breathe thinking of creative solutions. So, I’m more than happy to figure out something that works for my audience because I’ll tell you, somebody comes, “Hey, I wanna drop a 30-second spot on your show,” it better be a product I’m really into and it better be a really good 30-second spot, and even then, I don’t think so. I’ll stick it at the end. You know? That’s the way we roll. I just want to put that out there.

One thing too before I go. I got an email, trying something new here. I’m not endorsing this because I’m still playing with it, but there’s this new company that is testing out podcasting on-demand via cell phones. This episode would be long to listen to on a cell phone. If you’ve got a pen and paper, here’s a number I’m going to give you. If you dial +1, because in the US, 5637735510, if you call that number, you can listen to Managing the Gray on-demand. Say, “I want to listen to this episode.” Now, what I’m curious about is when this episode is going to be up there. I’m not sure if they’ve set up a way that they get notified yet. This is brand new. Someone who reached out and said, “Hey, C.C. Would you be interested in playing with us?” and I said, “Yeah.” It sounds pretty cool, especially if it was a short podcast. People could do it sitting in an airport, “Oh, C.C’s got a new Managing the Gray. I can get it off my phone.” You just dial it up and you listen to it. So, try it. The number is 563-773-5510. I just want to put that out there in case you want to try it. Please give me feedback because I want to give it to the company because I tried it out. The quality is obviously not the same quality that I’m recording because it’s going on the phone. I get that it gets compressed.

Also, I’ve had for months, I don’t know how many of you listen to it that way, phoneshow.com. On the left-hand side of managingthegray.com, there’s a place where you can put in your phone number and as soon as I upload, it’s usually a couple of hours after I upload, they will send you a message to your phone with a link to listen to the show, which is cool too. Phoneshow is doing some very cool things. I dig those guys. All of these, unpaid. I hate now.

By the way, I will put this out there right now. Any time I’m being paid to say something, I will say so. If I don’t say so, it’s not paid. I had someone the other day, I forget what I was getting giddy about, some product, and like, “Hey, C.C. Is that a paid endorsement?” No. The rule of thumb is I’m not going to tell you every time it’s not paid, but if it is paid, I will tell you. When somebody gives me a sweet hi-def big ass camera to film my video podcast or someone gives me a new toy or something, I will tell you. When I get the iPhone paid for, for a year. I don’t know, I don’t need anything, the Sony VAIO laptop, I don’t care, I will say it’s paid for. That’s my promise to you. That’s transparency. All right?

This has been a really long Managing the Gray, definitely a different one. Next time, we’ll be talking more about new media. We’ll be talking about all kinds of fun stuff, not all about the money because it’s not all about the money, but I’m going to get out of here. Again, comment line, 206-309-4729, or managingthegray@gmail.com. Everybody take care. Have a good one. Hope summer is going well for you and I’ll be back really, really soon.

Originally Posted on Manging The Gray 

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Managing the Gray #38 Transcript
“Idle Well and Book Reviews”
(original post & podcast)

C.C. Chapman: Sure, I’ll try to help you. Hey, it’s C.C. Chapman here at Managing the Gray, episode #38. Getting it right out of the way, if you ever want to call in questions, comments, concerns, any of that stuff, the number is 206-309-4729. I’ll say it again later. I’ll put it in the show notes, but I just want to get that out of the way because everyone’s always saying, “C.C., you forget to say the number.” I apologize.

So, how are you guys doing? I’m really jazzed this morning. Show notes work good for Managing the Gray, but sometimes it’s just better just to have topics. I’ve got all these papers, just a couple of topics today I want to talk about. I’ve got a great call in from Whitney Hoffman, lots of things going on. So, what was really exciting, what I want to talk about today is something I’m watching happen quite a bit. There are new tools coming out everyday. I swear everyday or at least once a week, I’m getting a new invite to some new tool. Last week seem to be a really crazy week. I mean it was insanity. It seems like there was a bunch — I mean MrWong, 8apps, Pownce, Demonoid, Skitch, Stitch? No, Skitch. I’m trying to think what else. It was a crazy week and things are blowing up and people are getting very, very busy trying to stay on top of all these new tools. Now, it’s exciting to try these new tools, but I think what’s key is you’ve got to figure out what works for you and what’s important to you. I mean what are you going to do with these? It ties into the whole social media burnout thing I was talking about and it’s funny because I’ve started changing my opinion a little bit.

One of the things I always talk about is the fact that I think you need to be on every one of these, to at least have a presence so people can find you. Now, I think that’s still true with the social networks, things like the Facebook and the MySpace and whatnot where it’s setting up an account, but now things like Twitter and Pownce and all the copycats that are going to come for those, I’m not so sure that you need to be on all of those. Granted, try them out, figure out what works for you, especially if you’re a company. You need to at least check them out so you understand what you would recommend to a client. “Hey, this is why I think this one is the right one for you.”

I have a Pownce account. I don’t use it very often. I use it every so often. I go out there to look at it, but it’s not what’s being used right now. Twitter seems to be the microblogging tool of choice for me personally and the people that I want to follow and pay attention to. Pownce is out there. It’s still being used and I go in there every so often, but I find I go in there once a day, maybe twice a week. Twitter, I’m in there all the time. I tried them both and I figured out which one I like. Same thing goes with all these other sites. I trashed Facebook left and right, trashed it, just totally trashed it, but what’s interesting is after the initially wave of everybody just having to do stuff, now I’m seeing it started to take shape. I see people leaving groups or people who are joining these massive groups and now everyday I see people who have left groups or they have created groups, very fine tuning what they’re using Facebook for and I think that’s very interesting because I’m watching it and I’m seeing it become a little bit useful. I like the homepage that shows you what your friends are doing. It’s very interesting to see photos and what people are doing. Still, it tells me a little more information I need on things. I’m seeing it for event promotion working very well. We’re doing a Missing Pages movie premiere on Crayonville on Thursday. I know Mark Forman posted something there. So, it takes this Second Life event and makes it way outside of Second Life. It’s pitched as a movie premier. The Second Life location is a secondary aspect of it, which I thought was great, so people who may not even have ever seen Second Life are excited because it’s a movie premier and they get to come to it. The fact that it’s in Second Life is just — it will be a barrier for some, but it will just be a quick barrier for most hopefully and they’ll come in and they’ll take part in it. So, Facebook is working with that.

This 8apps thing, the thing that excites me about 8apps — it’s the number 8, 8apps.com. What excites me about that is I like the collaboration part of it. It’s not really there yet. Somebody called it it’s like part Facebook, part Basecamp, but doesn’t have the project management pieces in it that Basecamp does. What I do like about it is the instant collaboration idea in it. It’s got kind of a neat brainstorming tool like virtual sticky notes page I thought was pretty cool, but guys, it’s brand new. I’m already seeing people trash it, but I’m more of those let’s-wait-and-see, let’s-let-it-evolve-a-little-bit. I don’t even know if it’s officially beta or alpha, whatever it is, but that excites me, a social network where people are working together. 8apps is one of those things where I haven’t given in yet to just let anybody be my friend. I’m only kind of acting with people that I actually want to work on projects with. It’s only got — what is it? Three apps in there now and the fourth one is coming. I’m curious what the other four apps are going to be. It’s an interesting concept and I’m going to keep watch of that space because I think it’s going to be interesting and I’m excited by it.

Now, one of the things I wanted to talk about is I’ve got some giveaways for you today. Thoughtout.biz is a very cool company. They’re mainly known for the PED stands, the PED2, the FlexPEd. What these are, they’re iPod stands, but they’re not just for iPods. What’s cool about them is they are these heavy metal stands. I have one for my iPod, but it expands. I’ve seen people put their Treos in it. Does an iPhone fit in it? I bet you it does. I haven’t tried it because I don’t have an iPhone. Anybody want to give me one? No, I don’t want an iPhone because I don’t want to pay — what I hate about — I won’t rant on the iPhone right now. Thoughtout.biz does a lot of very cool things and one of the neat things they make is a MagStay Pro and when I got the MacBook Pro, Mike sent me over some of them. He said, “Dude, you’re gonna want one of these and I’ll give you a few for your Managing the Gray listeners.” I’ve heard people slam these. What it is, you know how you’ve got the magnetic thing for your MacBook Pro? If you have one of the new Macs, it’s a magnetic power cable. It just pops out. It’s a magnet. So, that way, if someone trips over the cable, it doesn’t pull the whole laptop off the desk, but what I found and it’s funny what this is. It’s just a little plastic contraption that works with your MacBook Pro and what it does is it keeps it in there and in the tagline is “Sometimes, a magnet is not enough,” and I asked myself, “Doesn’t that kind of go against the reason of why the magnet’s there?” He’s like, “Yeah,” but they’ve seen these to be very popular for people who have to leave their laptop on like when it’s rendering. If it’s rendering video or somethin