Aug
31

I See the “Social,” But Where Is the “Media”?

In September of 2006, a few creative geeks in Boston hosted a small event called PodCamp.  It was designed as a peer education and social network for podcasters — that is, people who make audio and video content for the web.  They were expecting a few dozen attendees; they got over 300.

People from as far away as California, Florida and England converged on Boston that weekend to meet their peers, share their collective knowledge and build a real-world community around an online pastime.  The energy and insight on display that weekend was infectious, and so PodCamp founders Chris Brogan and Christopher Penn decreed that any of us who wanted to host a PodCamp in our own hometowns could do so with their blessing.

Since then, there have been dozens of PodCamps around the world, from Sweden to Hawaii.  There will be 20 hosted this year alone, including the 4th annual events in Boston and Pittsburgh.  Global attendance for PodCamps measures into the tens of thousands.  And yet, in all this growth, one subtle change seems to go mostly unnoticed:

PodCamp isn’t about podcasting anymore.

Instead, PodCamp has become a catch-all for blogging, social networking, personal branding and SEO (among other themes).  The number of actual podcasters has dwindled precipitously since 2006, while the number of casual social media aficionados has exploded.  (To wit: of the four long-running and nationally-recognized podcasts in Pittsburgh, all of them — Should I Drink That?, Something to Be Desired, The G Spod and The Wrestling Mayhem Show — existed prior to PodCamp.)  And it’s easy to see why:

  • Podcasting takes more time, energy and resources than text
  • Podcasting is frequently collaborative; blogging is not
  • Podcasting gets compared to the work of professionals; writing is personal
  • Podcasting is a multi-step process; text can happen anywhere

Our move toward ever-faster means of communication with fewer barriers to entry means the cheapest, fastest and easiest will always become the most ubiquitous, while anything more complex will be relegated to the Land of Niche.  But complexity is entirely relative.

When I first started producing Something to Be Desired in 2003, I thought we had to move fast because producing a web-based sitcom was so easy, everyone would be doing it.  I was only half-right; it turns out producing a continuing series only seems easy, while producing individual web-based videos is far easier.  Very few people have the time, interest, help, skill or ideas to sustain an ongoing show.  So although I expected the web to mount a serious challenge to TV and film paradigms through an explosion of independent talent, the web instead provided disruption through distribution, not production.

Who knew that the audience at the first PodCamp would be the anomaly rather than the norm?  Who could predict how easily we’d convert from an audience of makers to an audience of talkers?  And who could expect that the democratic web, which once seemed on the verge of detonating our expectations about what was possible artistically, would so quickly be co-opted as just another distribution tool by the existing media conglomerates — one which we’re content to analyze but not to utilize?

If actions speak louder than words, why are so many of us content to just keep talking?

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Posted by Justin Social Media, Sociology Subscribe to RSS feed
  • Justin, I agree with you. If I apply your comment to myself and my magic blog, it all comes down to time. I just don't have enough of it. Especially blogging (which is a hobby) about another hobby (magic) it time consuming in itself. I have on occasion made videos for magic and they have been generally accepted.
  • [cross-posted at Norm's blog]

    Other possible factors:

    1) Depending on your interests and intended audience, a podcast might be old news before it hits the net. You either have to be fast and relentless or able to find the low frequency signals in the high frequency noise.

    2) Podcasts are much harder to consume than blogs. I can slice and dice feeds in a zillion ways, but podcast consumption options are limited. I’ve been using a podcastcher called HappyFish because the one in iTunes sucks. HF isn’t perfect (and isn’t being maintained anymore), but it offers me a lot more options for how to retreive, name, store, etc. episodes. The relative dearth of decent podcatchers is rather surprising to me given then plethora of geeks devoting spare time to crowdsource lots of other cool social media tools.
  • Interesting... maybe there's space for an invite only event open to "Makers".
  • Good point, Norm -- and your blog post (and the comments there) are highly recommended for anyone who wants to continue this conversation.

    As for your specific question, I don't think anyone needs to produce LESS of any medium; I think it's a question of intent. I was under the impression that social media would have a massive artistic impact on society, but most people seem to get involved with social media for the purposes of self-promotion, marketing and general narcissism. Thus, they don't want expression, they want traffic and traction, and they gravitate toward blogs because blogs are the widest entry point.

    Considering the aesthetic power of audio and video, I'm surprised more people don't try to augment their personal brand (yarg) by adding A/V elements to their messaging. Perhaps the ROI is too dicey for most people to experiment with multiple media when they could write 10 blog posts in the time it would take to produce one good audio show.


  • So what are you actually suggesting? I agree that PodCamps have drifted away from the original reason for the event. Podcasting as awesome a delivery tool as it is doesn't seem to have enough support from the corporate world. Apple, while maintaining iTunes and the free service of delivering podcasts, could be doing more for the medium.

    I also think that most people don't make time for listing to this content. See my post and comments here: http://normanhuelsman.com/blog/index.php/2009/0...

    Back to my original question are you saying that people should be producing more audio/video content or just blogging/tweeting less?
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