DISQUS

One thing to consider: A lack of profile pic isn't necessarily a good candidate for instanuke. I've got several people who I follow who don't have profile pics, because they're sight-impaired. So unless they have someone add a pic for them, they won't have a pic, and legitimately so. Yeah, it may be a small percentage of people without pics, but something to keep in mind in any case.

Re: Whitney's comment:

I agree that Podcamp's not a right, and I'm not saying it's wrong to charge for it, or that it's not worth the admission fee. I'm just saying that the alternative that Chris presented (go to a free PodCamp in another city if you can't/don't want to pay the $50 for PCB3) isn't a reasonable one if you live locally and the $50 is a hardship for you. And really, the only people for whom the $50 would be a consideration are locals, because if you're already paying to travel to/stay in Boston, another $50 isn't that big of a deal. I wasn't commenting on anything but the last paragraph of Chris's post.

Regardless of my feelings on paid vs. free Podcamps, the argument that it's OK because there are other free Podcamps elsewhere in the country doesn't really work, because it costs a lot more than $50 to travel and stay in another city. So if you can't afford $50 to go to PCB3 and you live in/around Boston, then you certainly aren't going to be able to afford to go to NYC or DC for a free PodCamp.

This is a noble idea, but it's nearly impossible to achieve, once you start digging deeper. Most products that don't say "Made in China" are only assembled outside of China, but what about the component parts? If you buy widget A instead of widget B because widget A was made in the US and widget B was made in China, but widget A is made entirely of parts that were made in China, are you really helping anything?

Here's a good article on one person who tried: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21825517

I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but I think this is one case where it's going to be very difficult for even a large percentage of consumers to effectively make a difference. That's not to say that it's not worth trying, but just realize that what you're suggesting is much more difficult than it seems on the surface.

For the record, the NFL's had a fantasy football service running off their site for at least two years now. We've run a playoff fantasy league for Extra Points (http://www.extra-points.com) through the NFL's fantasy game for the past two years and it's worked out very well.

I've seen a number of sports-related social networks and/or sites that have tried to incorporate social networking (http://www.screamingsports.com is one that comes to mind) and I really just haven't found any that really jump out as compelling enough to stay. Maybe I'm just the type of person who enjoys sports a lot but not arguing about it, which is what a lot of that discussion degenerates into.

The other problem with fan-created sports media is that fans don't get the access that MSM gets, and if you do get media access, it comes with a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't say and do with it. Most of what you're able to create is commentary (like we do on Extra Points) or mash-ups of league-approved content which is technically on questionable legal grounds. It isn't like citizen journalism where someone with a cell phone camera can get as good (or better) a video as someone in a news truck because they're in the right place at the right time.

There's a great quote from a Wired article about the poor launch of the PS3: "PR fiascoes tend to be a sign that nobody's thinking about the customer." (Full article at http://urltea.com/ogl)

That's obviously true here. If Podshow was thinking about the customer, they'd probably rethink their pre-roll strategy entirely; at the very least, they'd realize that putting the same 60-second ad in front of all the shows on their network (including the ones who are just hosting on the PDN but haven't signed a contract) would make a lot of listeners angry. A main reason a lot of podcast listeners don't listen to the radio any more is because they're tired of being assaulted by commercials and of hearing the same thing over and over again. It amazes me that they thought it was going to be received well. Hopefully they'll take some lessons from this and come up with a better way to announce their future campaigns.

I actually just unsubscribed from a podcast I used to enjoy quite a bit because they switched from recording a four-way Skype call to using TalkShoe. Their sound quality dropped significantly, and there's nothing to help keep the participants' levels consistent; one participant was significantly louder than the rest and he blew out my ears whenever he started to talk. And this wasn't a fly-by-night podcast, either; this is a podcast done by several people who know how to make a podcast sound good, normally.

I think it's fine if you're doing a one-off thing or a live-only show, then they might be OK, but I think they need to improve their sound quality before I'd consider them a legitimate option.

I can do you one better. My wife and I bought a copy of The Bard's Tale for the Xbox from what was our local EBGames at the time, and we'd actually pre-ordered it. The kid goes to take the game off the shelf, and I ask why the hell he's doing that, but he assures me that it's brand new and that they just didn't get enough copies, so this was the display copy. The game had just come out a couple of days before, so I begrudgingly accepted the game. I get home to find out that he gave me the PS2 version in the Xbox case! So instead of being able to enjoy our game THAT WE PRE-ORDERED, we ended up having to go back to the store the following day and exchange it for the game we were supposed to have been given...