Hey Rox,

I agree that virtually everyone doing a show should have their own Web
site with community features.

As I look around the catalogue of blip users, I see a trend: show
creators who are part of the videoblogging community (i.e. members of
the Yahoo! List, visitors to the Winnies and PodCamps) have their own
sites powered by either blogging software or, increasingly, products
like Ning. New arrivals, though, tend not to have these things. If
they do they're very simple and barebones and offer not much in the way
of useful community functionality.

There's another problem, too. Each of these social networks is an
island. And increasingly sophisticated shows have more than one of
them. There's the Ning or blog community, there's Facebook, there's
MySpace, there's blip. None of these systems really connect to each
other. This speaks to the frustration you're voicing in your second
paragraph: there's no good way to keep these things in synch.

In the past three months we've been working to build blip as a
destination for independently produced shows. We've been doing this
because more and more show creators are asking us to help drive traffic
in addition to providing publishing and monetization tools. One of the
ways for us to do this is to build a destination site.

In order for us to build a viable destination site we need to offer some
measure of social and community features. Without them the destination
will be of fairly limited utility and stickiness. That said, we don't
have to isolate these social and community features from show sites and
other social networking platforms. In fact, I firmly believe that in
order for these tools to be successful they have to be as integrated as
possible with both show sites and other social graphs.

Comments on blip can already be integrated into your existing show site
via RSS. A simple perl script should be able to grab the comments from
blip and insert them in the comment stream in MovableType, WordPress or
any of a number of other blogging and content management systems. I'm
not sure if this works with Ning, but we'll be working with Ning and
other platform makers (SquareSpace and Kick Apps, for example) to
facilitate this.

We'd also like to get comments on show sites onto blip. This will be a
little tougher, but I anticipate the way we'll do this is with an
authenticated comment API with a per-show shared secret. Again, this
will require writing some code, but it's doable. Over time we'll work
to add support for platforms like Ning, and we'll also see what we can
do about either developing or facilitating the development of plug-ins
for platforms like WordPress and MovableType.

Beyond that, there's the social graph. We're hoping to avoid the
construction of a blip-only social graph. Instead, I'm hoping that we
end up integrating the Facebook and OpenSocial graphs. This will
provide compatibility with Ning, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and lots
others. In the end it'll mean that your friends on blip are the same as
your friends on, say, Facebook. Whether this will work in practice I'm
not sure, but we're at least going to try.

I understand, completely, that you've got your own show site. Not
everyone does. We'd like to provide people who don't have show sites
(and who maybe don't have the expertise at first to build them) with
basic show sites. We'd also like to provide a coherent and powerful
community on blip for the shows who use the service, and integrate that
community with the rest of the Web -- especially off-site show sites --
as seamlessly as possible.

In the end, though, we're here to serve you. If you don't think this is
a good idea then we'll figure it out. Our business model is about
serving content creators, not about foisting things on content creators
against their will. If we do that we'll be out of business.

-----Original Message-----
From: blip-users@yahoogroups.com [mailto:blip-users@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Roxanne Darling
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:55 PM
To: blip-users@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [blip-users] Re: Community & Groups Feature?

Just to weight in here - and this may conflict with your business
model -- but I like blip as a place to find shows and support them via
hosting, etc. but NOT to have users build a community around. I would
much rather see integration with ning. Virtually everyone I know who
is doing a "show" (blip's differentiator) already has a main site
and/or groups on ning/FB, etc to connect with the audience and build a
community.

I find it very frustrating having comments about a single episode
scattered across the universe! And ditto on not reinventing the
wheel. Figuring out a way to let users move their attention across
their choice of platforms and still be engaged in the conversation is
the challenge for us all right now i think.

Aloha,

Rox



On Nov 17, 2007 9:42 AM, Mike Hudack <mike@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hey Jeff,
>
> I'm really looking forward to getting some sort of Ning integration
> going. We'll definitely keep everyone posted on the progress there.
>
> In terms of "media," "video" and "audio," it's true that video is our
> bread and butter right now. We don't really have any good ways of
> monetizing audio, and it's kind of the bastard stepchild of blip
right
> now... we support it, but not nearly as well as we support video.
>
> That will change to some degree. We have an item in our roadmap right
> now to enhance our audio player. But I don't anticipate in the short
> term that we'll be solidly embracing audio podcasting much more than
we
> already do -- we support it, but it's not our core focus.
>
> If we can figure out a good business model and user experience around
> it, though, that could change.
>
> Yours,
>
> Mike
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blip-users@yahoogroups.com [mailto:blip-users@yahoogroups.com]
On
> Behalf Of Jeff Kopp
> Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 1:46 PM
> To: blip-users@yahoogroups.com
>
> Subject: [blip-users] Re: Community & Groups Feature?
>
> This would be great, because we too have a Ning community!
>
> The GaragePunk Podcasts are all stored on Blip (each of our
podcasters
> joins Blip individually and uploads their show MP3s there), and we
> have a great, growing community called The Hideout on Ning! PERFECT!
>
> Please keep me posted.
>
> kopper
> GaragePunk Podcast
>
> P.S. I still wish Blip would use verbage about "media" (which
> obviously includes audio as well as video) rather than "video" on
> their site. I realize video is your bread 'n' butter, but audio
> podcasters need to know they can also use your site. I often have to
> explain this to people because both your site and your Myspace page
> only focus on the video aspect.
>
> --- In blip-users@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Hudack" <mike@...> wrote:
> >
> > Hey Eric,
> >
> > We have indeed spent a lot of time talking to Ning about this kind
> of thing. I think we'll definitely support some kind of integration
> with Ning, and probably also with platforms like SquareSpace and
> KickApps. But we'll still want to offer some level of social features
> on blip itself for the masses...
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: blip-users@yahoogroups.com on behalf of eric gunnar rochow
> > Sent: Sat 11/17/2007 7:33 AM
> > To: blip
> > Subject: [blip-users] Re: Community & Groups Feature?
> >
> > i've just built a community site, The Greenhouse, for Gardenfork.tv
> > and RealWorldGreen.com that runs on top of Ning.
> >
> > The Greenhouse is in its nascent stages, but the site is full of
> > features. http://thegreenhouse.gardenfork.tv
> >
> > I'm wondering if, instead of blip reinventing the wheel, could
there
> > be some integration between blip and ning. much like you can cross
> > post to wordpress, you could cross post to your ning site, or some
> > ning technology could be integrated into blip. ning could run under
a
>
> > blip branded platform, something like that.
> >
> > mike, i know david sklar at ning if you don't already know them.
but
>
> > then, you guys know everyone. thx, eri c
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>



--
Roxanne Darling
beachwalks@...
808-384-5554
http://www.beachwalks.tv
http://www.twitter.com/roxannedarling

Skype the conch: roxannedarling
Call the conch: +1-949-544-1456
Email Lexi: lexi@...



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