Pay Per Post, Another Broadcast Idea In An Interactive World

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This sucks. Enough has been written about how Pay Per Post will wreck the credibility of the blogosphere.  I don't need to add to it.  But I will point out that the reason why Pay Per Post exists is that marketers still view blogs as ad outlets from which messages can be pushed, and nothing more.  In other words, we'll keep trying and failing to turn the blogosphere into a broadcast medium until marketers start to change their ways and get involved in the conversation directly.

What will force that change in thinking?  I'm hoping it will be a few compelling Conversational Marketing case studies.  Having something come along that destroys credibility in the blogosphere is therefore quite scary, as it begs the following questions - Is blogging the phenomenon that gets marketers to abandon the top-down approach?  Or will it be something else we haven't spotted yet?  If blogger credibility is destroyed, what new vehicle will carry the legit conversations?

The migration from top-down to bottom-up is inevitable.  It's just that I had counted on blogs to be the transformative vehicle.  But what if it's something else?

In closing, let me say that I have nothing but contempt for companies that try to launch "solutions" that are in direct conflict with the rules governing blogs, especially if they do so in a way that lets marketers remain secluded in their ivory towers.

A Prediction Beginning to Come True

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One of my old predictions seems to be coming true, although a lot later than I thought. Check this article out. Looks like satellite iPod may be coming. Of course, it looks as if we're only talking satellite radio reception right now, but as I pointed out in my 2005 predictions column, a lot of really cool shit can happen once iPods start talking to satellites.

Yeah, you could listen to Howard Stern. Big whoop. How about your podcasts updating and downloading as you walked to the office? Ideally, we start to revisit the notion of IP content and interactivity through satellite bandwidth. It would be great to listen to an Internet radio station through one's iPod. It would be even better to be able to send feedback to that independent Internet radio station through the same channel.

Imagine you're sitting in your basement monitoring how your IP radio broadcast is doing. You note that a few hundred people are listening on their computers while a few thousand are listening to you on their satellite iPods. As a bootleg Counting Crows track switches over from a live recording of The Clash, the feedback starts coming in. 326 satellite iPods give the track a thumbs up, while 26 give it a thumbs down.

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Satellite bandwidth to enable the type of communication and applications we're used to on the Internet, but all over the place. I believe satellite companies have the bandwidth to do it. If not, perhaps they will one day.