Chapter 15
Safko, The Social Media Bible
Livecasting, the live broadcasting (streaming) of audio and/or video on the web, has been around since the early 1990s. It’s hard to imagine the experience for on-line audiences, given the slower connection speeds common in those days. Remember dial-up? Like much of the World Wide Web experience, however, livecasting has evolved from a passive experience of receiving information via the web to a truly interactive experience, with do-it-yourself technology such as BlogTalk radio commonly used now.
Safko mentions JenniCam, the webcam that followed a young woman as she went about her life. I remember watching Jenni occasionally for a couple months after she appeared on Late Night With David Letterman. A novel idea at the time, but perhaps not as lively as Letterman’s monkeycam.
At first impression, the business possibilities of livecasting seem more limited than some of the other social media in Safko’s book. Other social media simply seem better suited or more effective at doing what we want social media to do for us: finding audiences (who become prospects and customers); building relationships (and eventually trust), building community (establishing a relationship with customers and prospects). Maybe this is because some of the other social media have more users.
Livecasting seems more suited to communicating within an organization or business than for outside relationships. In my experience, participating in or conducting meetings with the help of Adobe Connect or other web-based technology (such as Polycom) has been the most common use of livecasting. Potential uses include meetings, training, and other similar internal communications. Anybody who has taken distance education classes from UNL probably has experienced livecasting.
But the potential is also there for using livecasting to interact with the world at large (in ways other than livecams or radio talk shows). Commercial users might be able to build some excitement or support their customers by setting up livecasts around products: introductory roll-outs, demonstrations, troubleshooting, Q&A, and so on. It could be an effective way to build community. Actually, it brings to mind an old-school type event, the live remote radio or television broadcast. The idea is to build excitement by stationing your DJ or anchor at the sponsor business, and originating programming from there with a healthy dose of promotion included in the news, music or whatever.
Then again, if livecasting has not generated the buzz that some other social media have, maybe it’s just because the right person hasn’t come along with an original idea and a bit of flair to carry it out.
Good assessment. I'm livecasting almost all of my news conferences now -- it's a way to get more media to "attend" and it then also lets in a whole new audience -- regular everyday folks, internal audience etc. Plus then we archive them online for future use. It used to be I had to hire IT people to do all this but I can pretty much do it myself. Have you heard of Ustream? That's what we were going to use (it's free). But then it's not on our website, so we went with something else (Livecast?) I can get you the name if you want to try it out. HUGE future potential in this area!
ReplyDeleteI have not heard of Ustream. I'd be interested to learn about what you're using, though. One of the challenges in dealing with the media in my district is the huge distances involved. Some of them are close to 200 miles away from Scottsbluff, and many of them are more than 50 miles away. Sounds like a useful idea.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you can get media to use Skype, at least there would be some visual interaction there.
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