I love a good analogy and this one is about the best I’ve seen for social media. I don’t have any commentary for this, just watch and learn. Video was produced by Engage ORM

I am a big supporter of indie media of all forms. It is the primary reason I started my podcast Rock and Roll Jew Show; to highlight and support indie music, especially from Israel. I have also been a supporter of another new form of indie media called Podiobooks. Podiobooks are independent authors who podcast their books in audio form in order to build an audience. After they have build a dedicated listenership the goal is to convert a certain percentage of those listeners into real book buyers. This is right along the lines of what Chris Anderson has outlined in his new book Free: The Future of a radical price. Several authors have been able to land major publishing deals due to their podcasts as well. The model was pioneered by Scott Sigler who is also currently the most successful podiobook author. Scott was able to hit the New York Times best seller list with his second hardcover release Contagious. This from an unknown author literally coming out of nowhere just a few years ago.

I want to highlight here two other of my favorite podiobook authors who currently have books out. JC Hutchins began his podiobook career with the wildly successful 7th Son novel series. 7th Son: Decent, the first in the series, will be coming out this October in hardcover. JC’s first in print release is Personal Effects: Dark Art which I featured on Connected World TV #1. This is a scary horror/psychological thriller. It’s a very unique book because of the tangible items that come as part of the book. These items directly relate to what is going on in the book and include additional clues to the mystery in the form of phone numbers and websites you can visit. It’s being called a trans-media experience and it is certainly like nothing else I have ever seen.

Seth Harwood is a classically trained author who began his writing career with somewhat high brow short stories. Seth finally gave in to his real passions of crime drama, high action and kick butt characters and created Jack Wakes Up, the first novel in the Jack Palms Crime series. Seth also took the podcasting route to promote Jack Wakes Up and has developed a devoted following of “Palms Mamas and Palms Daddies”. Jack wakes up is now out in trade paperback form from Three Rivers Press. I have never been a crime fiction fan but this isn’t your fathers crime drama. Combining the best of Pulp Fiction, The Wire and The Sopranos, Jack Wakes Up is a completely modern crime drama complete with guns, drugs, car chases, and Czechs.

Fortunately both these authors have made available special previews of these books which I have included for you. Read the first couple of chapters and see if you don’t get hooked. If you do, both books are available at major bookstores or at Amazon.com

UPDATE: Phil Rossi, yet another great podiobook author is having his Amazon.com “rush” tomorrow, July 9 2009 to support his new release Crescent. This theory, which has been used successfully before and in fact helped launch Scott Sigler’s career is to get as many people as possible to buy the book on Amazon.com on a single day. This causes the book to attain a very high place on the Amazon.com rankings which brings notoriety to the book and it’s author. More than one author has used this technique to land a major publishing deal. This is new media gorilla marketing at it’s finest. Crescent is also available as a free preview so check it out. I listened to Crescent as a podiobook and I can tell you it is one of the scariest stories I have ever experienced. It’s Blade Runner crossed with Outland crossed with Alien.

Download Personal Effects: Dark Art Preview

Download Jack Wakes Up Preview

Download Crescent Preview

Interesting video as President Bush asks that the cameras be turned off and then makes some remarks we have to assume he didn’t want recorded. Unfortunately these days, especially when you are a public figure, the cameras are never off. Somebody out there has a cell phone with video or some other kind of pocket recording device. We live in a time of constant recording. To many people are carrying devices capable of recording and distributing that recording to millions via the Internet is also so easy now. One camera I saw yesterday specifically records video in YouTube compatible format, a feature that was highlighted prominently on the box. Remember when America’s Funniest Home Videos was a top TV show? Now YouTube is America’s Funniest Home Videos. Watch yourself out there in public because the camera is never off. Neither is the audio recorder or the snapshot.

Seesmic is already an interesting video platform but this new WordPress plugin takes things to the next level. {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/YDCHJRXiqP_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Seesmic Video WordPress Plugin ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/53MaznvsaV”}}}

A few weeks ago, an application called Twitterposter made a splash in the Twitter community. Twitterposter is an interesting Twitter API application that purports to display the relative influence of Twitter users. The problem is that it uses the number of followers as it’s measure of influence.

We need to stop getting caught up in raw numbers as the measure of anything significant. How many followers do you have on Twitter, how many friends on Facebook? Those numbers are not what really matters. It’s not how many people are following you, but more who is following you. What is the real influence power of those following you and are you even saying anything interesting or worthwhile?

Technorati Tags: Influence, Twitter

There has been lots of talk lately about social media burnout and people reaching their breaking point with Facebook. In the midst of all this angst, its funny to read reports of Yahoo working on a new social network. The barrier to entry is higher than ever because even those who have not burned out are starting to say, enough already. Unless the Yahoo service is mind blowing fantastic, I don’t think they have a chance to make a real impact.

Much smarter is what Google is working on and sponsoring via Carnegie Mellon univeristy. Socialstream aggregates social network and hopefully social media into one cohesive place. Depending on when they can release it for use, Socialstream could be the perfect solution at the perfect time. Once again Google wins. Will anything stop these guys?

Technorati Tags: google, socialstream, Socialnetworks, yahoo

The MPAA, RIAA, take your pick; these guys never learn. The latest in the saga of stupid anti-piracy tricks is a fake bittorrent website supposedly loaded with first run movies for download. Actually an MPAA front run by a company called Media Defender, the site was designed to trap and bust people trying to download copyrighted content. What happened next should surprise no one. The website ZeroPaid found out, ran an article which hit digg.com among other sites and in a matter of hours, everyone was the wiser. You can’t sneak around the web playing dirty tricks on people. Someone is going to find out and the word will get out, fast. So the MPAA accomplishes nothing and looks like idiots in the process. I can’t believe the MPAA is going to walk through the same meat grinder the RIAA is waking through already.

Technorati Tags: MPAA, Piracy, Bittorrent, RIAA

It’s exausting to keep up with, the flood of new apps and services pouring out of the tech world these days. I’ve never seen such fast moving and creative innovation. It’s a great time be around. One new service I learned about today via Twitter, a place I learn so many new things these days, is Kyte.tv. Kyte is an online video site for user generated content. Somewhat like YouTube but with a better user interface, one feature that grabbed my attention is the ability to open a channel and allow anyone or a selected group of people to upload videos. It’s almost like comments on a blog but in video. With all the notebooks with built in video cameras, we’re going to see more and more user generated video.

It’s already a much better social network, technology and otherwise, than myspace, but now Facebook is taking it to another level. Announced today was the Facebook “platform” which will allow third party application developers to create mini apps that will run on a Facebook profile. Amazon, Microsoft and Digg among 65 others are already on board. It’s an exciting announcement and if they can pull it off, it could re-define the nature of social networks.

The smart guys who brought us Kazza and Skype are in beta tests for their latest venture called Joost. It’s an online video service but it’s not YouTube. It is not clear how much, if any, user generated content will be available on Joost, but the service has had success signing commercial content from National Geographic and others. And right in the wake of the announcement of Viacom signing a big content deal with Joost comes news that CBS and Google can’t make a deal on CBS content for YouTube. If the major content owners see Joost as a better deal than YouTube, Google could be in for a long road. All of a sudden Google isn’t the fast, small disrupter anymore. Now they are the big giant and there is another fast, small company disrupting them.