#093: Roundtable – Twitter’s Slow Dive and Facebook’s Face Plant
In the news, Facebook has caused quite a stir with privacy and policy changes that have left many looking for an alternative social network. Avid Twitter user John Mayer, a musician with over 3.2 million followers, decides that Twitter is . . .over. CD Baby launches its new singles program. In news of less concern, Kevin’s band gets a gig opening for Wang Chung! As always, the podcasters take your calls and discuss your thoughts and suggestions.
More roundtables? definitely! So long as you guys can think of things to talk about I’m willing to listen.
But as an idea of what to do in between interviews – how about asking a bunch of people a single question and compiling them for an episode e.g. “what was the single most memorable thing you’ve done to breakthrough as an artist” or (for publicists/label owners/managers) “what was the single most memorable thing you’ve you’ve seen a band do to breakthrough”
that’s just for illustration, the point is – you might get a lot more response for a single question than going after a whole interview….
I love the roundtables. I prefer 1 roundtable podcast to 0 interview podcast.
I wish Facebook, Twitter and MySpace would all die a quick death and some new amazing service would come into being that actually makes social networking make sense. I have accounts on all 3 services and pretty much hate them all. Twitter is the best in my opinion, but if communication is its goal, it lacks features. If micro-blogging without comments is its goal, it probably has too many features.
All the services need to work on making their user interfaces more usable. MySpace is all but unusable, and Facebook is better, but as you discussed in the podcast, still isn’t easy.
in my opinion any episode is better than none. i needs my fix!
hmmm…. round table topic:
— review of new musician geared sites (bandcamp.com, reviewartists.com, jango.com, etc…). there is a new one everyday it seems, so you should be able to throw this one together every few months if need be.
oh, just realized that some of those sites might be a conflict of interest ;p
I, too, prefer the roundtable episodes. Sometimes, I’ll skip certain interview episodes if the subject isn’t immediately interesting to me (like the one about the future of radio), but I have never missed a single roundtable episode.
As for social networks, even with the privacy issues I would say Facebook is in the lead as far as encouraging communication and discussions. The update wall is perfect for this. Myspace, as we all know, is useless but ubiquitous. And Twitter is almost as useless.
I don’t get why everyone thinks it’s such a great communication tool. For one on one communcation, maybe. But given its nature of being an ‘instant’ medium, it works best when you can reply immediately. I can’t check twitter until late in the afternoon, so if I reply to someone, they will have no idea what I’m talking about. Since I’m not seeing tweets in real-time, I’ve become just an observer and my twitter stream has become simply a 140 character RSS feed. What’s worse is that no one else can see the conservation (let alone join in) unless they go to my twitter page and click the ‘in reply to’ link for every tweet…which quickly leaves you lost (seriously, who follows conversations in reverse chronological order?). And I’ve also noticed that using a mobile app to reply usually won’t give people a link to the referenced tweet at all, making it impossible to follow a conversation. The fact that you can see threaded comments under every Facebook update is the reason I give it the advantage over other social networks.
I always welcome a roundtable episode. Matt’s idea is very good too.
Twitter is interesting. When I first got into it it seemed like people were recommending you follow as many interesting people as possible. But, as mentioned on the podcast, I’ve now got to the point where I’m losing track of who’s saying what.
I’ve used Tweet Deck to separate all the people I follow into groups: Friends, Music and Misc. My Friends group is people I actually know and see outside of cyberspace. Music is fairly obvious (that’s where you guys are) and Misc is just other stuff and cyberspace friends.
It’s still hard to keep up though. To be honest, the least interesting of all as my Friends group. At least they’re very interesting in real life! As for Facebook, in many ways it’s another version of MySpace – awful to use but still pretty essential.
Yes, do a roundtable if no interview is handy. I always learn something. Also, what is the deal with Wilco being a “soccer mom” band? Please discuss. I posted a similar vibe on Tom Jackson’s website, “what was the deal w/Taylor Swift? How could you micromanage every aspect of her stage presence and then not say ‘you’re out of tune. you have to breathe more, or have better monitoring, or something…” He’s probably hearing a lot about that, since he’s posted a facebook or tweet or two about it.
I love the roundtables, but wish they did more than rehash a previous episode. If you haven’t done a podcast to rehash, throw in some latest news, talk about it and go. There is also no set length. If its 5 or 50 minutes, Im good.
This is a great idea for a roundtable, and I think the subject of some of your recent discussions.
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/06/09/pay_to_play/
I wonder if there’s any movement to petition BMI or ASCAP to start a system whereby clubs only pay for the music they use. Pay a $15/month membership fee or something, and then just submit setlists w/publishing info. for every band that plays there (and then pays .09 per song, or whatever the mechanical rate is). I think a system like that is in place in other countries.
Some compelling reasons to implement such a policy can be found in the comments after the article. There are some pretty reactionary, uninformed opinions, but even the article seems slanted towards BMI and ASCAP being seen as mafia-esque strongmen bullying small businesses, which can seem like the case given the situations cited.
Add my voice to the clamor for roundtables! However, I do enjoy all the interviews, whether I think I will at the outset or not.
Here is my twist, however – please don’t do back-to-back interviews. Always put a roundtable discussion between them. This helps to cement the ideas presented in the interview into my head.
Second, please put the discussion of the interview directly after the interview (not a different roundtable discussion between them). You did that once recently with a listener feedback show, and when you did the roundtable the following week, I had forgotten what the interview was about…
Love the show! I’m currently going back and listening from the beginning. Keep up the good work!