Test 4

It’s true, and I think that we, you know, we’re lucky that we get to see these things happen and we can like, we have more, maybe a little more ability to make choices for what we want to happen, but it actually makes me think of what, I did want to bring up podcasting because that’s like a very clear, adjacent, if you have a few more minutes, I don’t want to, of course, of course we, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been a similar thing, I feel like except because, except the podcasting really takes attention.

So, but that’s what makes it more valuable as a podcaster, if people are willing to listen to your podcast is much, much different game than when they subscribe to your newsletter.

And I wonder, do you have, well, you still have a podcast, right?

With Brett Terpstra.

With Brett Terpstra, yeah, and, and, and Jeff Suffren’s Guns Will Overtire, yeah.

But no, I mean, I did a podcast for, for nine years, Rocket, which was a great run.

And I think what we did notice, like, I think some podcasts, you notice the same thing kind of with newsletters, like you can get overload, right?

Like, you know, how many, how many podcasts do you regularly listen to?

And, and I meet people, you know, all the time who would say to me, and I want to be very honest, never offended, be like, oh, I used to listen to your podcast, you know?

And like, and I get it, right?

Because I, I understand there are things I used to listen to as well, but it’s one of those things, it’s kind of like blogging or anything else, like if you, to do it and to maintain it, like you have to care.

And with the podcast, I think even it’s, takes much more, at least I think if you want to do it well, of staying interested in staying, you know, focused on it versus, okay, my blog that I post to, you know, once a year or once a month or once a day, right?

Like, because to your point, you know, you know, that, that there is a much higher level of commitment involved.

Like if I’m listening to this podcast, like shows that I listen to, you know, religiously, like week after week after week, it’s like, okay, this is my appointment time for this.

I’m giving up something else potentially to do this.

And so part of the implicit contract with that is as a podcaster, you have to know somebody else is giving up their time to listen to this.

So I need to be willing to give up, you know, my time and my focus to put, put something good into it.

Which is interesting.

It’s, it’s, I don’t feel like we have that same feeling with the right, with the written word that you have.

And frankly, even with video to a certain extent, I feel like audio is, is almost unique in that regard.

And that like, you are very much taking someone’s attention.

And I think at least as a creator, like you’re aware of that.

And so you have to, you have to put in the work to, to hopefully make it worth it for them.

Cause if it’s not, you know, people will, will stop listening.

Yeah.

And I think it’s one of those things that it looks harder than it is.

I mean, quality wise, it depends, you know, there’s a range, but we’ve had a lot of folks on micro.blog, start podcasts who had not done them before because we made podcasting part of the platform.

And when you realize it’s just like a, it’s a file that gets uploaded to the internet and goes into an RSS feed, like, of course, there’s still the question, which I haven’t been able to get people to understand what is RSS, you know, that is, you know, for that as it is, you know, it, it is the basis of everything we’re talking about, but I think the average person still isn’t quite, they don’t quite get it.

No, but you’re right though.

The barrier to entry interestingly with podcasting, I think is, is the one area where it’s actually lower than, than where we were, you know, 20 years ago, right?

Like it’s, it’s much easier to start a podcast now with lots of different services.

I think the harder thing with the podcast and this is, this is, and to me, this is a completely fair trade off is just like maintaining that, right?

Like keeping up the commitment, keeping up whatnot, it’s, it’s easier than ever to get a good sounding microphone and, and to put in the work and to be able to upload it to, you know, Spotify or, or, or Apple or whatever, and, and have it live there.

And it’s, it can be, you know, technologies have, you know, companies have made that a very simple process the, the, the, so, which I love because, you know, people can start them up and, and you can have really great conversations and hear things.

In some ways podcasts kind of are probably to me, maybe the most reminiscent, even more than newsletters of the old school blogging thing, because you really can see a lot of different voices appear and then people decide, am I going to do this?

Or is this just something that I want to, you know, dip in and dip out of, which is okay.

Right.

Not everybody has to do everything forever, but I, but I feel like, yeah, that, that’s a great point.

I, I actually, yeah, I think that the podcasting is, it goes against my other point about how much comp, how much more complex things are.

Podcasting is an area where it’s actually significantly easier than it was two decades ago.

And that’s honestly probably one of the reasons why, I mean, some of the, the current ad momentum stuff notwithstanding why we’ve had such a boom in podcasting over the last decade, whereas we haven’t had a blogging boom, we haven’t had, you know, some of these other things haven’t taken off, but podcasting, you know, which is like kind of in people’s own voices and own spaces has taken off in ways that, that, that separate from, you know like commercial entity run.

Like obviously you still have those sorts of networks and whatnot, but like that hasn’t stopped the number of individuals who still create podcasts.

Yeah.

The tools are just way better than when you had to like hand roll your RSS feed and figure out your audio format.

So all that sort of thing.

The tools are way better.

And, and I think the tool, the tools, you don’t really call them tools, but like social media posting the user experience is also better and, but that hasn’t gotten to blogging like old school blogging, like those usability improvements haven’t quite, you know, trickled down to everyone.

You know what I think it is?

I think that it’s podcasting.

You kind of have, you have a centralized directory, you have a way to search.

Yeah.

And we never really had that for blogging, honestly.

Yeah.

That’s the whole, the whole thing too.

Just like Apple’s the way they’ve sort of just nicely curated directory for everyone without really having a part of their business at all.

It feels a little fragile, but, but yeah, so far so good wherever you find your podcasts search and heavily knocking on wood right now.

Yeah, no, you’re right though.

Yeah.

It’s easier to find.

You hear about something, you search, you find it, you click subscribe, you hit follow, you’re good.

The discovery, even though it’s a little bit even more disconnected than it, than it feels like it.

Yeah.

It works.

Yeah.

You’re talking about the, the, I think we’ll wrap up here like in a few minutes, I think.

But to kind of close out, I was thinking, well, you’re talking about like the, the time to create a podcast and like, you know, respecting your audience, like, you know, taking the time to do it right.

And it reminded me of something I wanted to ask about, and this might be more of a comment than a question, but like we are in the midst of a major upheaval with AI and a lot of things generated not by humans, not with care and attention, just like spewing out on the internet, everything.

And like, I think we’re all kind of have to wrestle with like, what does that mean?

And like, this is super useful.

So like, what kind of tools can we build, but also we like human created art and things.

And it reminded me, so I think it was Ben Thompson recently was talking about like, how do you compete with like infinite, you know, AI generated content.

And like, you know, one way is you have your brand, you have your own personal, like people respect and they, you know, whether you’re New York times or you’re just some blog that people love, they know you’re a human.

And it reminded me of the talk you gave at Singleton like 10 years ago about, I don’t know if you remember this, but it like, left a really big impact on me actually of like, like the idea that like, you can’t to frame it, your basic premise in this one little part of the talk was like, I can’t just take any work that people, I can’t write about like anything people want if they’re going to pay me, I need like, it’s my name out there.

Like I have to, you know, all I have is my name.

And I remember blogging about it because I was like, that’s it, right?

It’s like, you can’t compromise on who you are and like what you’re putting out there because it’s attached, you’re attached to it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it’s so, and so it just makes me think of with AI too, it’s like, if people feel overwhelmed with like, there’s going to be all this content, there’s going to be all these fake videos.

Well, the way to combat that maybe is like, you know, leaning into the personal voice and you know, this is my blog, this is my name, this is the thing, this is what I’m talking about.

Yeah.

No, I think you’re exactly right.

And I think what will, you know, there are going to be very real technical problems that I think will more than likely be ironically probably solved in some ways by AI and, and by technology.

Like, I think almost like the AI overrun of, of content will be solved in some ways by AI and other things, because they’ll be able to recognize those tools and they will rank them as lower quality as others will.

And I think there’s also a big difference and you, you, you, you made this clear, but I’ll just say it anyway.

I think like being like using AI to assist in, in doing something versus just having it generated itself.

Right.

Like, I think there’s like a different quality difference, but yeah, no, you’re right.

And thank you for bringing that talk up.

That was one of my favorite talks I’ve ever given and, and yeah, I think about that a lot.

Like all I have is my name and I think you’re right.

I think for all of us, for what we put out there, like that’s what we kind of have to lean into.

Like, this is who I am and this is what I’ve done and it’s as much fun as it is and it’s great as it is to automate all the things again, going back to like why I still don’t have a newsletter.

I know I could automate some scripts together and be like, Oh, put together all the things that I’ve done and, and, and put it in one digest and that’s, that’s fine.

But for me, I don’t know if that would be an experience that I would want to like put my name on.

Right.

Like if I, if I’m going to create something that I want it to actually be, you know, something that I, that I feel good with my name on and not, and not, and that’s going to be different for each person.

And, and I don’t want to like impugn anybody who, who has other types of setups and who likes those sorts of things at all.

But just, I think, I think you’re right.

That’s how we have to kind of lean in.

That’s how we get past all the other things that are out there is just knowing, okay, this is a real person.

This is a real thing and, and choosing to give our attention to the people who are willing to, you know, put their name on it or their pseudonym or whatever the case may be.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and it doesn’t, like you said, it’s different for everyone.

And also we don’t, that doesn’t mean we have to be like super proud of everything we create, but yeah, we all put stuff out on the internet.

That’s not the best thing, but so many bad blogs for me speaking, so many bad tweets, so many bad posts.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Right.

But it’s authentic probably.

Right.

It’s, it’s still, it’s still us.

Yeah.

Well, thank, thank you so much for being here.

Really enjoyed talking to you and catching up and yeah, best of luck with everything.

Likewise.

And thanks to you and thanks for doing, thanks for creating Microblog and again, like being like at the forefront of this and seeing this before anybody else did and, and creating such a great community and, and keeping that going.

Cause I know that that’s a lot of work and I know that it’s hard with all these things that are happening and, and I really appreciate what both of you do and, and we’ll continue to do.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And we’ll see you, see you around on the internet, Christina, as usual.

Okay.

Take care.

Thanks.

Bye.