The BlogTalkRadio Blog

Yes, I know, I tinkered with the famous phrase just a bit.

Back in 1969, when the Apollo landed on the moon, our well respected NASA officials either must have only had men working in the Houston control center OR they believed that only men were listening to and watching history get made. Hey, what gives!!

Nevertheless, we at Blogtalkradio certainly do not share the same view towards gender equality in the Blogosphere. In honor of Jaime’s participation at the Blogher conference this past weekend in San Jose and our launch of the Women in the Blogosphere series, one of our objectives is to help level the playing field in the blogosphere. See Jaime’s post earlier today.

The phrase “we have lift off” couldn’t be more appropriate for the launch of Blogtalkradio. In less than one week, “on air”, we have over 475 shows programmed, originating from more than 20 countries (including such landmark countries sucsh as Chad and Swaziland), covering more than 20 seperate genre’s. Truly incredible!!

This past past weekend, while we were sweltering in the heat in the northeast along with the rest of the country, our friends at the Los Angeles Fire Department hosted their first blogshow. Although we did have some technical problems, namely an unanticipated number of inbound calls hitting our platform, the folks at the LAFD were quite pleased with the experience.

Not only do we appreciate their patience and their loyalty to this new medium, they had nice things to say to the LA Times. As you can see on the following link, and I quote

“The thing is really to empower the public,” said spokesman Brian Humphrey, after his first show from the department operations control division four floors below City Hall East. “It’s obvious to me that there’s interest and a potential need.”

The article in today’s LA Times, goes on to say,

“Humphrey also foresees “LAFD TalkRadio” as a resource in times of duress, such as the response and recovery phase of a disaster. The department could rely on its own broadcast to inform people and let them know they’re not alone.

The key word here is “empowerment.” Over time, my posts will explore this concept in great detail.

Brian, once again I want to thank you and the LAFD for using Blogtalkradio and helping us to improve and promote this new and exciting experience.

Alan

As I mentioned in one of my early posts, I am pretty much a “have-not” when it comes to blogging. I must admit however that given the positive feedback and excitement we have seen this past week as we launched Blogtalkradio, our status in the blogging community is rising just a tad.

So the question I pose this morning, “Is Blogtalkradio a Web 2.0 company?” So where else but wikipedia could we find a definition. So here is the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

For those of you that do not want to read 8 pages of information related to the definition of Web 2.0, i took the liberty to extract one paragraph as follows:

General Characteristics
While the definition of a Web 2.0 application is still hotly debated, it is generally accepted that a Web 2.0 website would exhibit some basic characteristics. These include:
The site should not act as a walled garden - it should be easy to get data in and out of the system.
Users usually own their data on the site and can modify it at their convenience.
Mainly web-based - most successful Web 2.0 applications can be used almost entirely through a web browser: this is commonly referred to by the phrase “network as platform.”

Data returns should be dynamic, not static, changing depending on variables associated with the user’s query (e.g. keywords, location).
An architecture of participation that allows users to add value to the application as they use it.
Some social networking aspects.

As I read through this definition, it became clear to me that Blogtalkradio is in fact a Web 2.0 company. We meet all of these criteria and more. I encourage you to check out Blogtalkradio and see for yourself. All of our content is user generated, the data can be modified at any time, there are significant social networking aspects, and our data is easy to get and out of the platform. So what if we are a Web 2.0. company? Actually I dont know the answer to this question.

Briefly, as of today, we have 375 shows found in our program guide, created by over 135 hosts, originated from 18 countries and covering 18 seperate genre’s. Exciting stuff!!

As I indicated yesterday, in each of my blog posts I will feature one of our hosts. In honor of our coming out party (well actually Jaime is attending the cocktail party) this evening at the Blogher conference in Santa Clara, today I highlight the Blogshow - “Business Women Roar.”

This blogshow which will air on 8/3/06 at 11:30 is described by the host Mandie Crawford as “Interviews with Business Women covering tips, tricks, successes, disappointments and lessons learned while building their businesses. Also covering new services, books to read etc.”

Her host channel can be accessed as follows:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=263

We welcome Mandie to BTR and hope that Mandie and all of our hosts enjoy the experience.

Alan

Dear BlogTalkRadio hosts, callers and listeners,

We continue to be excited by what’s happening at BTR. Our represented country totals are approaching twenty. Since yesterday we added shows from Argentina, Chad, Brazil, Turkey and Swaziland. Yes, that’s right Swaziland. It’s incredible to me that in less than 2 full days of “going live”, we have attracted a host from Swaziland, a country the size of New Jersey, with a population of just over 1 million.

We are still working on the archive streaming feature. We have identified the issue and we are close to a fix. Hey, that’s why we have the word “beta” in our logo.

As you will see in coming posts, I will be using this platform to promote certain shows that have caught my attention on Blogtalkradio. I hope you will listen in these shows and perhaps IM a question to the host or give them a shout using the dial in number located on the host channel.

On July 30th, at 9:00 est, their will be a Blogshow hosted by “Podpoet” discussing the effects on Hurricane Katrina. You can find the show details below, including a link to the host’s blog.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=502

Finally, don’t forget to use the email reminder tool which is located on the Host Channel. I will be hosting a blogshow this evening at 6:00pm est. I encourage you to go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=477, and set yourself an email reminder to my next show and listen in, drop me a note at alanlevy@blogtalkradio.com or call (347)-677-06490 with a question.

Until the next time,

Alan

We all of have heard the phrase from the Kevin Costner movie, “Field of Dreams”. You remember, Costner takes a working field of corn and turns it into a baseball field. He hears a message from his dad, that if he builds the field, the 1908 White sox will come back and use the field.

Well, we must have heard simliar voices. From the outset, as we concieved of this idea, we knew that if we built it they would come…and come they have.

As of this morning, over 270 shows have been scheduled to air. In just one day “live”, we have shows originating from many countries, including France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, UK, Canada, Japan, Korea and the Mauritias Islands. We have also been surprised at the variety of genre’s being represented at this early stage of our evolution.

We have also heard from many of you via email sent to: feedback@blogtalkradio.com. Be patient and we will get back to you ASAP. We have gotten lots of feedback and I am happy to say that most of it has been good.

I just wanted to go over a few things we are working on as we speak. As many of you know, the archive stream and podcast is not yet operational. I am hopeful we can get this done later today or tomorrow. Even though you can’t listen to your archived shows today, all of our shows are stored and will be uploaded as soon as the archive streaming feature is complete.

Also, after seeing the activity in our program guide we are working on a few things like, limiting the number of posts by a single host, track the number of listeners per show which will allow our audience to search for the most popular shows, etc.

We are listening to shows, calling into shows, chatting with hosts, etc. Just so you know we will always look to enhance the site to insure that we air informative, interesting and exciting content.

Finally, I will be hosting a live blogshow today at noon to discuss BTR. I welcome all calls and listeners!!

Until the next time,

Alan

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.