Reflections on SL Podcasting
July 3, 2008As I took a moment to put in a boomerang boardwalk on tiny beach on podcaster island, I listened to the end of Crap Mariner’s latest “Podcasting in SL” episode with Dave Peck. A couple things struck me about the interview.
The first thing was that Dave naturally saw the Adam Curry days as the heyday of podcasting in SL. I disagree. It was the heyday of podcasters in SL, maybe, but not podcasting. I’d wager most of those guys didn’t get SL, only came in because of Adam Curry, and bailed in short order. They’re gone. Good riddance. If we needed simply a 3d chat room for people to talk about what they do outside, in RL, without really utilizing the environment they were in, then those people would be perfect. But that’s not what SL is, so they got lost and got out in short order.
This view was reinforced by the fact that he felt a lot of them got out because of twitter. Twitter lets them market, make contact, etc, without going in world. If they can’t see the difference between the two, then.. yeah. They don’t grok SL. Period.
Secondly, when asked about advice for podcasters in SL, he pretty much assumed they all wanted to monetize… which is really not necessarily the case with the people that I call the SL podcasters. Sure, a couple of us have an ad here and there, but clearly if we really were serious about monetizing, things would be different. That’s not what it’s really about.
I don’t really miss the old days. Some of those podcasters were nice enough people, but they never did figure out what to do with SL besides preach to the choir about their podcasts. Very few of them figured out how to really do much in terms of content creation or collaboration that really impacted or became part of the second life culture at all. I can see in the current crop of podcasters that podcast about SL that they’re a totally different breed.
Those old timers? Nah. They didn’t get it. The Golden Age of Podcasting in SL is now. So instead of wasting any more thought on that, I think I’ll wander off and work on a script I should have had done a long time ago.
Amen... it's rather like the RL companies that thought all
Melissa Yeuxdoux | July 4, 2008Amen… it’s rather like the RL companies that thought all they needed to do was appear in SL and wait for the adulation and customers.
Thanks, Radar, for being one who does get it. As Carly Simon sang, “These are the good old days.”