Podcasting buzz doubles in five days

I wrote last Friday about how podcasting is spreading round the internet at warp speed. I did a follow up today, and the number of hits on Google has doubled in five days, from 66,000 hits on Friday, October 15 to 118,000 today on Wednesday, October 20. And it’s not just talk (!), some are actually trying it out. Swedish blog pioneer Steffanie Müller has started audioblogging on her blog “logblogwhatever“.

Footnote: Googling “podcasting” got 15-20 hits a month ago. On October 8 it gave you 13,000 hits. On October 15 you got 66,000 hits.

(This is “google journalism” at its finest…)

Exploitation of grief

An 8-year old boy and a 56-year old woman yesterday were tragically stabbed to death in the Swedish town Linköping. There is just no way you can imagine the grief and the sorrow that has struck these individuals’ families and close friends. When the two Swedish tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet today had a photo of the boy on their posters, it is a hideous and extremely unnecessary exploitation of a tragic incident. This is stepping so far over the line that I can’t even express what I’m feeling. Why the boy and not the woman? Why a photo at all? These are the victims, not the perpetrator (who of course hasn’t been caught yet). As a father of two small children I urge media to protect our children and I wish no-one would buy these papers today.

New PR knowledge portal

One of the weirdest things about being in PR and having a blog, is to be on the receiving end of a PR pitch. I get emails now and then from PR people who want me to blog about a new book or a service. It is actually very rewarding for someone like me who make a living out of pitching others, to see what it feels like to get a pitch that is not personalized, misspelled or with a Word-file with “track changes” still in it (see Tom Murphy’s comment on that pitch).

Up till now I haven’t really found any of the pitches to be worth commenting on but today I got an email from John Gerstner about the launch of a new knowledge portal for communications, PR and marketing professionals called Communitelligence.com. It could actually be worth checking out in the near future. And I won’t even say a word about how he sent me a press release today that was out on PRweb.com on October 8…

Closet iPod user

What happens when the rebel becomes market leader? Author Seth Godin‘s reaction to the success of the iPod is that he has become a “closet iPod user”. He doesn’t use the white earbuds because he doesn’t want to be recognized as an iPod owner.

“Apple is at a critical fork in the road when it comes to the iPod,” said ad man Drew Neisser. “You can already begin to see the initial iPod pioneers, who embraced the value of individuality, shunning the storm of homogeneity that’s growing with each new purchase.”

Godin tells a story about a friend who got a pair of black earbuds.

“He gets on the subway, being very independent and a maverick, which is what New Yorkers like to do, and he sees another guy across the car wearing black headphones. And this guy pulls out an iPod to adjust the volume. My friend catches himself giving this guy the look, the I’ve-got-an-iPod-too wink. It proves people like it when they find other people like them. People who don’t like being part of the main tribe still like being part of a smaller tribe.”

Wired has the complete story.