Various bits of news

Odeo is for sale. See our "Audio on the Desktop is Doomed" post to understand why.

Sirius and XM are merging. They're merging because they're scared of Foneshow. We move them to the top of the competitors list in the slide deck, and less than a month later they're consolidating to fight us. :-)

Content Snacking

Since Candice asked about content snacking in the comments we'll tackle content snacking first.

Content snacking is not about displacing or changing your current media habits. Content snacking is the consumption of additional media in time periods when you have not previously been consuming media. It is media consumption between your larger media meals.

The type and form of media consumed in content snacking is different from media consumed through traditional channels. It tends to be "bite sized" in scope and scale. It needs to be micro-chunked, one topic per chunk. It needs to be easy to share with your friends. It needs to require little or no commitment on the side of the consumer.

Mobile is all about content snacking. Mobile media consumption will not cannibalize the channels through which media is currently consumed. Mobile opens up additional channels.

Friction

What is friction? Friction is "user hassle".

When I first came up with the concept for Yahoo! Games back in 1997, the guiding principle of the product was that it required the user to install no software. Lack of friction in user adoption drove everything about the product, from the selection of classicgames.com to the games we chose to implement. It was this lack of friction that allowed us to go from launch to number one gaming site (where it's been ever since) in less than four months.

There is a very real danger that friction will kill podcasting. There's no question that it is greatly slowing growth. Where is the friction? RSS subscription is not as straightforward to the naive (mainstream) user as it should be. Sharing and forwarding podcasts is a big hassle (there goes viral growth). The iPod is only a connected device via a wire. Getting feedback to the author is a hassle. Keeping a portable device filled with timely content is a hassle. Notifying a listener of new content requires work on the listener's part. It's even worse on the phone -- add software handset installs and data plans into the mix, and growth is totally mired.

At Foneshow we've worked hard to eliminate these friction points. I think we've succeeded.