2013: YouTubeization of Video Podcasting

0:00 This is episode six of my Digital Life show for June twenty fifth, twenty thirteen. I'm Rob Greenley and thank you for downloading or just clicking play from my website from all over the world. My focus this week is YouTube content, good video podcast content? Or are we seeing the youtubeization of video podcasting? Is this a good or bad trend? Or is it all good? I'll get into that later in the show. The other topic this week is the birth of an animal pet podcasting star is happening this week and I will dive into that as well. And the other last two things. I'm going to follow up on my backyard aquaponics project as I go back into the greenhouse for a report later in the show.

0:49 And lastly we'll hear some show comments from Sean and Jim So. I can be reached at Rob at Rob Greenley dot com or on Twitter at Rob Greenley. We're in iTunes, the Windows Phone podcast Area, and Stitcher the show can be found, and I also manage the podcasts content area for a Windows Phone and Zoom at Microsoft. And if you have a podcast and you'd like to get that added to the catalog, please send me an email to Podcasts and that's with an s at Microsoft dot com. Well, let's dive into the topics that I have for this week. We are seeing the birth of an animal pet podcasting superstar. That's happening. The launch of a Little Bub show series from Revision three in Discovery was launched this past week. The first episode was only about a minute and forty four seconds long, but it was definitely awe inspiring. There's no question about it. You should definitely go check it out. The name of the show is Lil Bub and that's l Il Space Bub.

1:58 It's basically a Catually, it's had some great success on YouTube. And what Revision III decided to do since this cat is so cute and cuddly and has an army of loyal fans, that they figured they would create a show on their network that focused on the life of this cat. And I guess this cat won the Best Cat on the Internet award. I guess it was through some friskies or a whiskas contest online. I guess the first version of this show, it was basically like a preview episode. It wasn't even a full show. Garnered about two hundred and twelve thousand views and four days on YouTube, and his page on YouTube already has thirty four thousand followers.

2:44 This cat is a little unusual. I guess it has quite a few birth defects. I mean, you should definitely go to the about this cat and read up. He has shorter than normal legs and kind of a shorter jaw than what's normal, and he's just kind of like a very tiny cat that looks really really cute and has his tongue is always sticking out. So anyway, I think this is kind of a unique moment in the podcast area, and I just wanted to let you all know about it because it definitely got my attention when I watched this first episode. We may be seeing the birth of an animal pet podcasting superstar here, so definitely go check it out. Then, I also wanted to do a follow up update on my episode one of this show.

3:34 My aquaponic system is up and fully operational, and I wanted to give a little greenhouse report from in the greenhouse of the status of this It won't be too long, but I just wanted to give you an update from inside the greenhouse. So let's go ahead and play that well as you can hear. That is the sound of bubbling water and flowing water. And I have the aquaponics system that is set up in my backyard up and operational, and things are happening, and I do have some produce starting to grow in here. But over the last week I was able to get water into the system and get it up and running. I actually gave a report a couple of weeks ago on the status of the aquaponic system in my backyard and just wanted to do a follow up with it. Actually, I'm standing inside of the greenhouse right now, and things are flowing. I have two what's called media grow beds, which are comprised of basically little pummus shaped balls, and the water just flows through those rips down into what's called deep water culture raft beds, which are basically two So I have two

5:08 media grow beds that are about three feet long, each one of them by maybe almost two feet wide. And then I have a fish tank that sits underneath those grow beds that's about five feet long by about three feet tall, and that's where the fish actually live and they poop and do their thing and live their lives inside of that tank and create fertilizer or the complete system that will grow lettuces and tomatoes and whatever we want to grow in here. It's basically a dirtless a dirt less growing system that just uses flowing water and waste that's generated by fish. It's a complete natural process.

5:58 And so the water runs up into these media grow beds that sits on top of the fish tank, and water flows through those and falls down into these what's called these deep water rafts, which I started to mention there. They're basically long, basically tanks that are about a foot tall. They're about five feet long by a foot tall, and they have like a piece of foam that actually sits on top with holes grilled in the foam, and that's where the plants grow and their roots just dangle into the water. So the water provides all of the nutrients and oxygen that the plant needs to grow and thrive.

6:45 And it's actually a system that will grow produce a lot faster than growing in dirt because it gives the plant all the nutrients that it needs to thrive. And it's inside of a greenhouse. I have, you know, fairly controlled temperature. It's warmer in here, it's protected from the elements, and I'll actually post a photograph of this system as part of this blog post and this podcast, so you can actually see what it looks like. Actually, I'll probably even try and get up a video as well so you can actually see how it works as well. But it's actually pretty neat. I have grill lights that are above, and I also have a fish tank heater that keeps the temperature of the fish tank at a fairly constant temperature, though it's summertime in the Northwest and it can get a little warm up here. But I just wanted to give a little report from inside of the greenhouse again, an update, and I appreciate you listening to my podcast.

7:52 So I'm going to go out with the sound of water. Well, it's always fun to take this show out into the real world and hear the sounds of the real world life out there. And it's always soothing to hear the sound of flowing water and bubbling things. So the acoponic system is in the process of cycling. From a biology perspective, I'm basically doing a what's called a fishless cycling of the biofiltration in the system, so I can add fish later and not have a possibility of killing off any fish in the cycling process. Basically, every aquarium or tank that you have, you know that you would buy or have fish in, has to go through this process. And this is just on a much bigger scale. I've got probably three or four hundred gallons of water in this whole system, so it takes a little bit of a process to go through. And I'm going through and doing water tests and testing the chemistry of the water. And then we're also in the process of trying to figure out what plants we want to grow in the in the acaponic system. We're leaning towards pretty much starting out with like a romine and fancy lettuces and things like that, but we may branch out and get into egg plant

9:26 and do other types of things. And I'll definitely bring a quick update to that here, and I also I'll post a video to my blog of the visual portion of a tour. My next concern with the acoponic system is my tank water levels and having a pump shut off system, so if I ever have a pump failure or a water overflow situation that the system will automatically shut down. I don't currently have that right now. And then also I wanted to add sometional kind of insulation in the greenhouse for the winter up here in the Northwest, it gets a little cold. So and definitely go look for my video tour that I'll post on my website at Rob Greenley dot com. So definitely check that out if you have an interest in a backyard aquaponics system, which is cool but pretty complex to actually deploy in the real world. So let's dive into my main topic of this week, and it really does get back to this topic with a little bubb and is a YouTube video series going to be successful as a podcast? And I think it is an interesting question. It's one that I've posed before and it really, I guess maybe gets back to and this bigger discussion about podcasting is just another form of distribution for any kind of media, right, So if you create a show, it can be a minute long, or two minutes long, or five minutes long,

10:57 or an hour and a half long, like my last week's podcast episode was an hour and a half long. I think that there's different expectations in the YouTube area versus video podcasting, or at least it has been in the past, and we may be seeing kind of a transition happening right now, though I do have to say that on the video podcasting side, short form videos have been around for a long time in the video podcasting area, but I do think that the video podcast side has tended to, at least from the past anyway, has tended towards being a little bit more TV like, a little longer form content. It caters to a little bit older audience than what you typically see on YouTube from a a serialized show type of thing, which tends to be a lot shorter. It tends to be, you know, a person that's sitting in front of a webcam and just talking to their audience and doing that kind of thing, where video podcasts have tended to be more TV like content, a little bit longer form. So I think you have this view that a Revision III is looking at this a little bub series as being you know, we're making it really for YouTube, because that's the YouTube consumption paradigm, is short form personality driven content, and they're just putting it out as a video podcast to build on that success.

12:18 I guess that may not be entirely the case, So that that's the impression that I'm getting, is that the programming that I'm seeing from video podcasters out there are tending to cater a little more to the YouTube distribution. But I think that this podcast and many others that are being put out by kind of just content creators, can be successful in both areas. But I think that keeping it short, like a minute and a half, maybe too short for success in the video podcast area. I just think that the expectation is that the viewers want a little more value for the commitment that they have to make to get a video podcast, as opposed to YouTube, where it really doesn't take a lot of commitment to consume content. On YouTube, you just click a play button.

13:03 Or we're on the video podcasting side, you typically have you know, you subscribe and you it's a little more difficult to find the content and that kind of stuff. The target audiences for I wanted to draw a little bit more of a demographic kind of profile here. The video podcast audiences tend to skew towards thirty plus around age. The YouTube tends to be less than thirty, and I do think that that drives some expectations, though I think depending on the content, it can certainly appeal to a very wide range of ages, though I think I have to couch this by saying that video podcasts are being consumed more and more on mobile devices, which tends to be a little shorter form content, so you know, it may be okay for short form YouTube type content to make it over to video podcasting as another distribution method for those shows. So I think that it's very possible for those shows to be success full in both size.

14:01 Though I do think that podcasts just in general is a domain that's starting to really be dominated by audio and on demand radio, and I think that will be the type of content that will continue and flourish in the podcast area, where a video side will always be kind of a sideline player. One other kind of twist of this too is c net TV has a show called It's The Always On Show with Molly Wood. This started out as a video podcast and a streaming show on c Net's website, but if you go watch it now, it's trying to become a real TV show. It has basically breaks that are perfect for the insertion of TV like ads, and I think it definitely mirrors the production model of a regular broadcast TV show, which may be where they're trying to go with that show, and it may wind up on a CBS affiliate or something like that, or on Saturdays or something here down the line. So that's a wrap on my main topic for the show.

15:04 This week, it's going to be a little bit shorter show than what we've had the last couple of weeks because I had conversations with other folks on the show. That's not going to be the case this week. But next week, I definitely want to dive a little deeper into the global podcasting topic and we'll be hopefully speaking with some other folks overseas, you know, about those trends what I'm seeing there to dive a little deeper into that topic. So let's move on to talk about the comments that I got from last week's show. Didn't get a lot of comments about last week's show, and I think we're kind of at the beginning of that topic discussion out there. But I did get a comment from Sean, who is associated with a website called no market dot org.

15:50 And Sean says, thanks for the information on the leaf, because I did talk about my niece on leaf in the last week's show. Yeah, he says, thanks for the information on the leaf. Rob, We're probably still a few years off from a new vehicle purchase, but my wife and I are seriously considering going with the electric car route for our next car. Thanks Sean for the comment. I think it's a that's a wise decision to consider your next car as being an electric car. I think it's a it's a smart way to go as you look into the future, and I think the increasing focus on climate change and and what's happening around our CO two emissions, I think it's an important move that all of us need to be to be considering in the future.

16:34 And I appreciate that comment and that consideration. I would love to hear more comments from listeners here about the whole topic of the globalization of podcasting. I think it be great, And if you do, go to the site and make a comment about that, I'll definitely talk about it on the show and we can keep that topic going. So anyway. I also got a audio comment last week from Jim Munchback from Imake Your Money Count dot com podcast, and let's play his audio message they sent me. He sent me on an MP three file, and let's listen to it right now. Hello Rob, Jim munchback here at imakeormoney count dot com.

17:16 It's a weekly podcast for students of personal finance. I'm a professor at the Bauer College of Business the University of Houston. I teach personal finance and I also have a weekly podcast. But I was just wanting to leave you this message to tell you how much I appreciate your podcast. I listened to all four of the first of the first four episodes when I went out on a walk this week in Houston, Texas, and I was I'm eager to hear the next episodes, and I hope we can connect some more offline and online. And thanks again. And I also got your email that my podcast was accepted in Microsoft, So that's cool, and it's good to know you. A lot of friends Cliff Ravenscraft and a lot of our friends in the podcast Mastermind know you and talk about you, and so anyway, I feel like I'm connected to a resource and a guy who knows a lot about a lot of things, mainly podcasting. So anyway, looking forward to getting to know you more. And thanks for your show and I'll talk to you soon.

18:22 Take care well, Jim, Thanks so much for the nice comments. Feel free to reach out to me anytime that you have a question or you want to make a comment, and as you can hear, I love getting your ideas and thoughts in audio on the show, So send your MP three file to me or just let me know. If you have topics that you want to hear about on the show, send them to Rob at Rob Greenley dot com and I would be more than happy to play them on the show. Well that's the whole show this week. I'm Rob Greenley and I'm the podcast guy for Windows Phone and Zoom, and I want to thank you for listening to my thoughts here today. I also co host the New Media Show on Saturday mornings at nine am Pacific Standard time noon Eastern Time with Todd Cochran, CEO of Raw Voice. We actually don't have a show coming up this coming Saturday, or actually the next two Saturdays.

19:19 It's kind of a holiday break for us. Please keep us in mind, and like I said, send me your thoughts to Rob Greenley dot com and if you are on Twitter, follow me and I will follow you back. I am at Rob Greenley in that the last name is spelled g r e E n l e E and if you're a podcaster, shoot me your feed if you want to get into the Windows Phone and Zoom podcast catalog. A's podcast at Microsoft dot com. I'm also on Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Facebook, so just look me up. Thanks so much for listening, talk to you next week.