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In checking out the other sponsors for Thursday’s TECH Cocktail DC, I was introduced to Wine Library TV. I’m not a huge wine drinker (I’m more of a scotch guy), but I find myself very intrigued by the show, which is done extremely well; the host, Gary Vaynerchuck, shows great enthusiasm and really makes a topic I wouldn’t normally be interested in compelling. There’s even a whole episode devoted to kosher wines!

And today I noticed that Cork’d, a niche social network for wine-lovers, was acquired by Wine Library TV. The combination of original content, user-generated content, social networking and, most importantly, high-end products that cater to high-income demographics, seems like a good combination. I’d bet that something like this would work for scotch, cigars, maybe even beer (putting aside the issues with selling this stuff online, which can be tricky). It’s nice to see a business model that doesn’t rely on advertising.

A few weeks back I was meandering around the Baltimore Craigslist gigs board and came across a posting for a Ruby on Rails position for “a newly funded startup in the Audio/Video Podcasting Arena,” which piqued my interest. The ad states that the startup “will be acquiring a very large presence in the Audio Podcasting space,” and many of the details seemed to point to Odeo, so I was suspicious that Odeo had found a new home. After reading today’s announcement of Odeo’s sale to SonicMountain, it was confirmed.

As for the future plans for Odeo, the ad mentions:

We are going to be enhancing the site with video podcasting and podcast hosting features as well as a patent-pending search system for audio, video and podcast content. The search development is being performed by a company under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and we have used offshore development for the video conversion engine (.mp3, .mp4, .mov, etc) into Flash (.flv), a custom flash player and the CC billing module for hosting and the podcast hosting / management engine.

Sounds interesting; I think there’s definitely room for a more complete solution for podcast hosting and metrics; I currently use a combination of Ourmedia.org, FeedBurner, Podtrac and Performancing Metrics; if there were a way to tie some or all of that together, it would be very interesting.

And very interesting to me is that the contact listed on the ad is based in Baltimore; the question is: Is Odeo coming to Maryland?

Meanwhile, Odeo itself has been stagnating for a while; I use their podcast player widget for a podcast I do with my wife, and despite my best efforts (pinging, etc.), Odeo hasn’t updated in about two months. Hopefully the new owners can revive the site.

Got back from PubCon on Friday. Overall, it was a really good conference. I’ve been focused so much on blogs and social media over the past few years, in some ways I forgot that there is a whole other part of the web that doesn’t care about buzz words or hip technology, but about dollars and cents. It’s been really interesting talking to people who run their own businesses online and hear some of the issues they deal with in making real money online.

The Sessions:

A typical pattern for me at conferences: I begin by going to lots of sessions, then taper off and spend most of my time in the hallways talking to people, and towards the end go back to the sessions. I was a bit disappointed by the sessions at PubCon, I really didn’t find that they were giving me any information I didn’t already know (this includes sessions on topics I know really little about, like things like PPC and SEO). A few of the sessions I attended and my thoughts:

Feeds, Blogs, News and Search: This session was pretty good. Niall Kennedy gave a good overview of some of the technical details behind syndication formats. Rick Klau gave a good overview of some of the applications that consume feeds beyond basic aggregators. Owen Byrne gave an overview of digg, including an interesting tidbit about how many servers they have (about 90, not all for production. I always find it interesting to find out how many servers services are using, as well as their architechture, ‘cuz I think about scalability quite a lot, and love getting hints at how much iron it takes to serve various levels of traffic. We’re doing about 500K searches a day on 3 servers). Chris Tolles gave an overview of Topix. I would have liked to have had more discussion on the basics of syndication, aggregators, etc. I also think it would have been helpful to discuss the role that blogs and feeds play in helping with rankings in the major search engines (like it or not, 90% of your traffic is going to come from Google, not from feed-consuming applications). There’s been a lot of rumors and misinformation about how Google handles feeds, and if they help in optimizing search rankings. Also, based on comments from the folks from the major search engines, a blog sounds like the ideal type of site for getting ranked. Some discussion of this would have been helpful to convey the value of having a blog or feed.

Podcasting and Net Radio 101: A good session. While the session provided some good information, I thought it focused too much on podcasting from a business perspective, overlooking podcasting as content. I’m going to post more about podcasting in the future based on some of my experiences over the last two months, but I will say that, from my experience, promoting a podcast is completely different from promoting a web site. There wasn’t much discussion of iTunes or other community building techniques that work very well for podcasts.

Interactive Site Reivews and SERP Quality Control Forum: This was really cool. The panel included folks from the major search engines (Matt Cutts from Google, Tim Mayer from Yahoo) as well as Danny Sullivan and other search experts. Basically, people from the audience submit their sites to the panel for review, and the panelists tear them a new one (not in a bad way…they are really helpful). It was really informative, and amazing to me how many of these sites were suffering from so many problems that a decent content management system such as Wordpress could take care of in a snap (it’s not just for blogs). Most of the panelists stressed the importance of unique content (this is a big deal for e-commerce sites that post just snippets from databases, and all the sites use the same database), and offered starting a blog as a good way to build unique content. Many other really good tips, some obvious, some based on inside information from Google or Yahoo. Very informative.

All in all, it was a good conference, and I learned a lot, and had a good time (oh, and the Yahoo party, that was fun). If you’re looking for more coverage, check out Search Engine Roundtable for a good summary of the sessions. As for a general overview of the conference, and why I went, Chris Tolles said it best.

On my last trip out west, after the StartupCamp, I had the privilege to be interviewed by Vic from HotfromSiliconValley.com. Vic did a great job getting me to divulge my thoughts on Blogdigger and the general state of web search in general. Take a listen, I’ve even gone into some detail on what is underway here (you didn’t thinkwe’ve been sitting around doing nothing now, did you?).

HotFromSiliconValley is a great podcast, I’ve got it in iTunes; they’ve got great coverage of DemoFall as well as interviews with just about everyone who’s doing something interesting on the web (like the guys from Boompa, a site I like very much). Check it out. Thanks Vic!

Now is a good time to be getting into podcasting. You’re market is going to get a whole lot bigger.

Will you be able to purchase an iPod at the Ford dealership? There’s two demographics that just totally clash. Why are you buying a Ford to begin with?
I can’t figure out why the auto companies aren’t developing WiFi-enabled stereos that sync with your home computer when you pull into your driveway.
Please, for the love of all that is sacred and good in this world, let this be done in an open fashion, so that other MP3 players can hook in as well. Is that too much to ask? Have we learned nothing? Probably.
Meanwhile, iTunes is still completely unusable.

Congrats to PodTech.

I would like to point out that NPR is already, and will likely continue to be, the NPR of podcasting. That doesn’t mean there’s not room for more content companies, but NPR has so openly embraced online distribution of content, that calling someone else the NPR of podcasting is just not right. I would bet that in five to ten years, NPR will be almost if not completely online, and will have significantly changed how they relate with partner stations (I have some inside insight here, based on a conversation I had with someone who works there, I would want to get permission before saying more).