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Odeo: Evan Williams speaks at O’Reilly
Yesterday at the O’Reilly Mac Dev Center, Richard Koman published an interview with Evan Williams (you know, the Odeo fellow). Considering I’ve been talking about podcasting and specifically Odeo’s approach to the business side of it, I was quite interested in seeing what Evan had to say about their business model for podcasts - mainly because, as I’ve said before, competition is going to be stiff.
Now, after reading the interview, I’m still trying to get to conclusions and predictions about if it’s going to work out for them or not. Evan talks a bit about their business model and he mentions 3 key points: podcast show hosting, premium content and targetted ads on podcast shows. Here’s my view on those:
1st: Show hosting is one of those businesses where you can never be too sure of how (and if) it’s actually going to work, mainly because hosting has been around for years. A new solution is going to be exactly that: just a new solution. Even if advertised or marketed as hosting for podcast specific material, I’m not sure if it has the ability to lift off on its own.
2nd: Premium content may work but we’re either getting audible.com-quality material or the competition is going to be hard enough to disencourage trying. I can see some options for premium audio content (like targetted conference recordings - you heard it here first -, or really good interview series) but I’m not sure. Evan will have to play the marketing game real well to convince me they’re better than the competition.
3rd: Advertising in podcasts. I remember when I first noticed Noah Glass buying podads.com (I noticed because I was thinking about that service too) that this might actually be the main revenue model for Odeo and Odeo-like services, and apparently I wasn’t wrong. Creating a solution that gets advertisers and content-creators together does give Odeo the edge over competition if they pull it off. That’s probably what I’d be interested in too, if acquiring a company like Odeo - now that the rest of their feature-set is not entirely unique. Adsense-like services for podcasts may be the key.
Now, there’s something that’s really missing in Odeo and that they haven’t even mentioned anywhere yet (which astonishes me to be honest, in the time for web 2.0), which is how developers may explore and extend their services. I’ve said before that services are the key to the web 2.0 and Odeo’s not exploring that field all too well yet. That’s exactly what made Flickr so successful. Am I missing something here?
I don’t know about this one actually. As with many other services found at the Internet sooner (more sooner I guess) the record companies will call for a halt to this new way of distributing music, videos and other multi media content. I asked several people ‘what about the copyright protection’ and it seems that most people stick their heads in the sand. YOur online radio station… how many times is this already tried? But all died on copyright issues!
Sure Apple has nothing to loose and moving fast to penetrate this market, read… they have some bucks to overcome this problem. I wonder what will happen here. I’m not a believer (yet) in the IPOD hype anyway. Sure some bucks will be made by the big players. As I wrote also the guys of ODEO not to forget another huge problem here at this side of the world, Asia… BANDWIDTH!
One of the biggest consumer markets is found here in Asia (India, Indonesia, China, Japan etc.) tough broadband is still a far away dream for millions and millions of people. Imagine me here in Bali downloading a 6MB file on my 33Kbps line. Forget it! I already gave up on ODEO and others just because… it takes to long!
Sure it doesn’t matter of course to make millions of dollars in the USA or Europe or any other Western country where you will find a good broadband infrastructure. Just a wink with my eye to all marketers out there. Probl. the only one understanding the market here is Nokia, Fuji and Kodak and how to reach out to their customers with Kiosk based services. Well I can write hours about this anyway…
The idea is not new you see and why should consumers go grazy about this? I remeber also services like pre-loaded webpages which you could download for later reading… Downloading overnight. People just stop using these kind of services after a short while. Imagine you have to reload your IPOD first in the morning with the content of your choice. Even 10 minutes is already to long if your in a hurry!
PODCASTING (and ODEO which already should feel the big brothers in their neck) no i think it will be a short hype only, intense but short.
With all new G3 or G4 networks coming up here in Asia I believe more in real time streaming to your multimedia mobile phone. I’ve seen it all working in Japan and wow it is just great! People want to hear their favorite music, maybe also their favorite radio station. But see also here, like in Holland the Digi-Antenna service almost covering the whole country, TV, Radio wherever, at home in your car, on your bike. Everywhere a good signal and choice out of hundreds of channels from music to talkshows.
I wonder how others think about this…
Comment by Mario Bali Indonesia — July 8, 2005 @ 8:52 am