Women's New Media

Tune in to Mom's Rising

Actually, tune in tonight to ABC's 20/20 and you will get a chance to see an interview with Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising.org. MomsRising is a terrific grassroots organization championing political, social and economic issues in support of families.

They've recently released a new film called The Motherhood Manifesto featuring facts, stories and humor about motherhood.

If you don't have time to watch the show tonight like many busy parents, you can watch a YouTube trailer for the film or buy a copy for yourself for only $6 from MomsRising.org.

momsrising motherhood parenting

 

Women's New Media & Tango Pix Launch New Podcast Series

Today Women’s New Media and our partner Tango Pix announced the launch of New Media Spotlight, a podcast series featuring best practices in the use of new media. New Media Spotlight features interviews with experts on the most innovative uses of new media including broadband video, podcasting, online communities, social media, mobile media, blogs, interactive web content, handheld devices, and more.

Featured podcasts include “Using the Power of Online Communities to Build Better Customer Relationships” and “Tools for Starting a Wildly Successful Podcast Series.” These podcasts and many more, available free at www.newmediaspotlight.com, feature interviews by Mary Beth Schoening of Women’s New Media with guests such as Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace and Gretchen Volgelzang, co-founder of Mommycast.

The podcasts provide solid advice based on hard-learned lessons as well as success stories from the best and brightest marketers, communicators and professionals. If you want to hear from a particular company, marketer or media leader in a future podcast, let us know.

Podcast Podcasting new media

social media blogging

Women Use The Web for Health, Fitness and Nutrition

Women are using the Internet in increasing numbers to visit top Health, Fitness and Nutrition sites.  The top 6 sites visited are WebMD, Weight Watchers, About Health and Fitness, drugstore.com, Walgreens and Yahoo!Health. Women make up a total of 57.3% of visitors to health and wellness sites. It's interesting to see the breakout of visitors by age bracket:

• 50% of them are 45+
• 37% are 35-49
• 25% are 55+
• 16% are 25-34

Not your typical internet user demograhic. 

See the MediaPost Report

Podcasting By the Numbers

According to an eMarketer report from March 2006, Ad spending in podcasts will grow to $300M by 2010 from $80M in 2005. While the dollar amount increase may not be that impressive to corporate execs, the audience size certainly is. The U.S. podcast audience should reach 50 million by 2010, 10 times the size of the current audience. For more information, see the complete article in MediaPost. 

In July, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that the number of people downloading podcasts is larger than those that publish blogs. The report says that 9.2 million people downloaded an audio podcast recently (presumably between June and July), compared to 6.7 million users who published blogs in that same time period.

For readers new to the concept of podcasting looking to understand what it’s all about, there are many sources to turn to for tips. One of our favorites is BusinessWeek Online. BWOnline provides it’s own impressive blog and podcasting content covering all types of businesses and issues. They also provide a podcast about podcasting to help you get started. It’s called Podcast 101.

Getting started with podcasting is easy but doing it well requires talent, patience and practice. Gregory Galant, CEO of RadioTail, did a nice job outlining several myths about podcasting in a recent article in iMediaConnection. My favorite myth is #4: Creating an effective podcast is cheap and easy. Podcasting can be both cheap and easy but, as in any worthwhile endeavour, you get what you pay for so it's worth investing both time and money to do it right.   

Gift Giving by Women

VoiceQuilt, a company that creates audio albums to share with friends and family, released a survey on Trends in Gift Giving, noting that:

• Fifty percent of women say they purchased one to five gifts online in the last year
• Thirteen percent say they purchased six to 10 gifts online in the last year
• Three percent say they purchased 11 to 19 gifts online in the last year
• Four percent say they purchased 20 or more gifts online in the last year

They also found that while women say it’s easier to buy gifts for children, they often save the ‘best gift’ for their spouse or significant other. For more interesting details on gift giving, you can download the survey summary at VoiceQuilt.

Is Good Journalism in Danger of Extinction?

The MediaDaily News from MediaPost pointed out an article that Dan Gilmour wrote for the BBC News on May 4th that seemed to contradict his well known support for citizen journalism. I don’t believe he’s changing his stance. Instead, I think he is issuing a loud warning to US media organizations and their readers that there is a price to pay when good journalism is tied to an archaic business model. With online sites like Craigslist and eBay sponging up the money once spent on classified ads, traditional newspapers that once supported deep investigative journalism can no longer afford to waste valuable space and time on much more than entertainment, sports and news summaries. Journalists are being fired at a rapid rate as newspapers see ad revenue decline and circulation decrease. Yet turning to blogs is not the answer.

How the Internet Helps During Tragedy

I'm completely blown away as I've discovered how some people are using the Internet to communicate after a tragic accident in our community.  One of our high school girls was in a very serious accident this week and was airlifted to a hospital after suffering burns on 70-90% of her body.  Our community is devastated as they wait to hear about this teen who is in critical condition.  So many kids, adults, friends, family members, coaches, teachers and community members just don't know what to do with thier grief and emotion around this horrible accident.  I heard the family had set up a "CarePages" site which is an online service offered by the hospital provided by a company called carepages.com.  The family has set up a CarePages website specifically for their daugher where they have posted updates, usually several times a day, with details of thier daughter's progress.  This information has comforted so many of us at home who are anxious to hear about her progress.  A person logging into CarePages can choose to receive email notification when the website gets updated. The constant communication from the family has also helped to quiet down rumors about her condition, which were upsetting to the family.  The other incredible aspect of this website is that it will let anyone post a message which can be read by the family members and the community at large.  The messages of love and support are so moving from these kids, teachers, coaches, and even the town librarian.  The parents have been incredibly moved by the support, stories, encouragement, and love that show up in these posted messages.   People feel that they are doing something constructive with their anxiety and using CarePages to send support and express thier feelings.  Within a few days almost 5,000 visits to the site have been made. Incredible.  Such a perfect use of the Internet.

New Media Trends & Tidbits 4-10-06

New media innovators are tapping into podcasts, broadband video, blogs, ringtones and websites to promote their brands and engage with new audiences. Below is a roundup of interesting articles on new media trends for the past week:

Podcasts

AdWeek’s IQ Interactive reported that interest in podcasts remains high but many users are frustrated with the difficulty of finding podcasts. Charline Li of Forrester believes that the introduction of podcast search engines from Yahoo! and the ability to access podcasts from Apple iTunes will spur fast growth. Forrester predicts that 12 million households will regularly listen to podcasts by 2010.

Online News

According to an article in Editor and Publisher, the demise of the newspaper industry may be premature. Newspaper reader ship online is soaring especially among younger audiences. A study by Scarborough Research shows that ‘newspaper franchises are very healthy indeed, and that readers still care deeply about them--but that increasingly those readers are connecting with papers online.’

The Scoop on Video Training

When I started my first real job as a counter waitress at Howard Johnson's a few years (decades?) back, the only training I received was a 2 minute show and tell around the counter. I knew where the ice cream and soda fountain were and where the bowls and glasses were but that's about it. The first customer that asked me for an ice cream float got a big surprise. The ice cream was floating but I'm not sure what it was floating in to this day. I am sure however, that the customer never came back to HoJo's looking for a float. Today, companies concerned about ramping up new employees faster are turning to online games rather than relying on other employees to do informal training.

Coldstone Creamery, Cisco and Canon are using video games to get more employees engaged in training programs. Business Week reports that the 'serious games' market makes up about 15% of the online gaming market and will grow to roughly $100 million in revenue in the next five years. A manager at Coldstone claimed that over 8,000 employees downloaded their ice cream scooping game in the first week it was available.

Real Estate & Social Computing

Charline Li has an in-depth post about her recent experiences with online real estate tools and the impact of social computing on traditional real estate business models. The post is worth reading just for the thorough review of real estate sites and tools, but she also makes several interesting points. The real estate industry is going through a major shift driven by social computing. The power is moving from the realtor to the consumer and surprise, surprise, many of them are women.