Tag Archives: techcrunch

An Invitation for President-Elect Obama

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One reason Barack Obama may have won the election is because of his ability to reach people on the web. The United States’ first social media President reached out to the American people via Twitter and other social networking sites and he’s not stopping after the election. It was recently reported the President-Elect appointed a social media team to help him in his transition. No doubt, he’ll be using social media as a way to reach the masses throughout his tenure in office.

In his TechCrunch post entitled “Is Obama Ready to Be a Two Way President”, Brian Solis offered suggestions for President-Elect Obama to continue using social media tools to stay in touch with the American public including:

- Complement the Presidential radio show with a regular podcast or livecast on uStream.tv or BlogTalkRadio and also interact with the people online, in real time.

BlogTalkRadio would like to let President-Elect Obama and the American public know we’re up to the task. We invite our new President (and all politicians) to use our technology for interactive town hall meetings, fireside chats, debates and discussions using our call in and chat features.

Barack Obama understands how necessary it is to have an online presence to reach the Internet generation. BlogTalkRadio can help take his social media campaign to a whole new level.

Bob Cox of the Media Bloggers Association on Blog World Expo Radio

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Members of the blogosphere won’t want to miss out on today’s Blog World Expo Radio show. Hosts Jim Turner and Rick Calvert will be chatting with the president of the Media Blogger’s Association, Robert Cox.

Why is this a big deal?

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave or off Twitter for a while, there’s a big ‘ol storm brewing because of a funny little blog called The Drudge Retort which poked a bit of fun at the real deal Drudge Report. Not everyone has a sense of humor and the Associated Press went DMCA on The Drudge Retort’s butt. Backlash ensued.

Read Rick Calvert’s explanation at the BWE blog:

Very short version of the story, The AP sent several DMCA take down notices to The Drudge Retort. Some of those notices went beyond normal fair use standards. Rogers Cadenhead the publisher of The Drudge Retort complied with several of the notices and called the Media Bloggers Association for help.

Then all hell broke loose. The Blogosphere is railing against the AP. Jeff Jarvis has been very vocal. Sites like TechCrunch and Little Green Footballs are banning all AP content.

Mike Arrington and numerous others suspect a conspiracy between The AP, The NYT and The MBA.

Others are calling the MBA a flat out scam and even attacking the man at the center of this bruhaha Cadenhead.

Now some are coming to the MBA and Cox’ defense.

What is the real story? I don’t know and the truth is most folks in the Blogosphere don’t either but that doesn’t stop many from forming opinions and lynching parties.

To get the whole story and to find out how this will effect you as a blogger, tune in today at 3:00 p.m. EST to BWE Radio. You can call in at 646-716-7047 or add your views to the chat.

See you there.

‘AskTheHost’ Lets BTR Audiences Say Good-bye to Long-Distance Charges

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“This could lead to some very compelling discussion – imagine a talk show on international politics with input from around the world.”

That’s the thumbs-up verdict on BlogTalkRadio’s “AskTheHost” feature, from sway-holding weblog TechCrunch.

Launched today, AskTheHost makes it possible for BTR listeners to participate in any one of the network’s 450-plus live daily shows without wracking up long-distance calling charges – or even having a traditional landline or wireless phone.

Rather, the “one-click” Flash-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service lets them listen and call into shows directly from their Web browser. They only need to plug a microphone into their computer, log onto BTR and “dial in” via the AskTheHost widget.

BlogTalkRadio expects AskTheHost to spur a dramatic increase in its listenership and audience participation, both in the United States and abroad.

“Unlike other VoIP applications like Skype, no software downloads are needed to use AskTheHost,” says Alan Levy, CEO and co-founder of BlogTalkRadio. “Users can call into shows from anywhere in the world, from any computer that has an Internet connection.”

CrunchGear Launches BlogTalkRadio Show

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CrunchGear, part of the TechCrunch Network, launches a BlogTalkRadio show today.

CrunchGear is a blog covering gadgets, gear and computer hardware. Today they join the audio side of the online conversation as they unveil the new CrunchGear show on BlogTalkRadio. The inaugural show goes live at 1pm ET where the staff at CrunchGear.com analyzes this week’s biggest tech and gadget news on CrunchGear Friday.

If you’re a reader of CrunchGear or a geek interested in the latest gadgets and widgets – you will love this show.

CrunchGear is a part of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch Network.

Podcasts Showing Growth in Traffic, Revenue

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Some new figures released yesterday indicate podcast audiences – and revenue – are growing and that the future looks bright.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch pointed us to interesting post by eMarketer yesterday that shows that podcasts are (again) taking off in both traffic and revenue with a healthy outlook ahead. Riley reports:

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According to eMarketer, the total podcast audience in the United States was 18.5 million in 2007 and will rise to 65 million in 2012. “Active listeners” (defined as people who download more than one podcast) were 6.5 million in 2007 and expected to be 25 million in 2012.

At BlogTalkRadio, we’ve seen this growth in action. Our listener numbers continue to rise as more and more people see the benefit of a network as broad and deep as BlogTalkRadio. January saw over 2.4 million listeners tapping into our citizen broadcasts, a 40% increase in listeners since we came out of Beta.

Of course, we’re more than just an audio file shoved through an RSS feed. We are the Internet’s first live social talk radio network for citizen broadcasters. It’s our real-time audio and text interaction PLUS the social networking, asynchronous messaging and time-shifting options that makes us different and more appealing to the millions of BlogTalkRadio hosts and listeners.

The revenue figures are impressive, too as eMarketer indicates advertising in 2007 hit $165 million and is expected to grow to $435 million in 2012. This is great news for anyone enrolled in our Revenue Sharing Program who wants a piece of this action.

BlogTalkRadio is Live!!

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Well, I must say that we are realy excited that Blogtalkradio has gone live!!

We woke up this morning, quite early I might add, to find a nice piece on Techcrunch.

“Podcasts are fun to listen to, but they’d be even cooler if you could listen live and IM your feedback to the host in real time. The soon to launch service BlogTalkRadio will make that possible”

“Will a significant number of text bloggers want to go live by voice through a service like this? I’m not sure they will, but if they do BlogTalkRadio looks like a good service. It’s certainly trying to cross some barriers into easy multi-media self production – and make it live. In cases where the two media are integrated well this could be very cool.”

I must tell you, that we’re not sure either but we are beefing up our storage capacity just in case. Within a few hours of the Techcrunch piece, blogshows were set up in Germany, France, and the Mauritian Islands. We also have our first political candidate, the Democratic candidate of Hawaii scheduled on August 21. Personally, I think BTR will be a teriffic platform for political candidates.

I am sure we’ll have our share of bugs and mishaps along the way, so please bear with us. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc please drop me a line at alanlevy@blogtalkradio.com.