Open or Closed

It’s not black and white but if it were, there would be ‘open’ people, and there would be ‘closed’ people with regard to behavior online.

Open: Yes, pay attention to my behavior so I don’t receive irrelevant ads. Oooh, horseback riding just a couple of miles away!
Closed: I do not want you to track anything I do online. And, stop sending me stupid ads! (?)

Open: Remember me. I’m terrible at remembering passwords and I sign up for a lot of stuff because I love the Internet.
Closed: Do not save or cookie any information of mine. Hey why do I have to fill out this form again! (?)

Open: Online privacy controls are fine, but allow me to hand the keys over to the Digital Advertising Alliance or FTC. Innocent until proven guilty. I have little to hide.
Closed: I demand online privacy controls, um I have no idea how to use them exactly, what does this lever do? (?)

My point is, smart people are making legislation in 2012 to give you closed people options, for your protection. But, you are wearing swimming earplugs to the fire hydrant party, it’s underkill.

You know how when a police car rides up behind you arbitrarily, though you are doing nothing wrong, he’s like a yellow jacket flying around your picnic sandwich, your heart rate increases, and you wish he’d leave? On the other hand, when the neighbors are fighting in the middle of the night and it sounds like are going to kill each other, when you see those red and blue flashing lights you feel safe and happy they are there?

That’s my policy. The government has every right (and responsibility) to protect you. You, as well, should have every right to opt out of that. Me? My policy is be careful with my money, and separate my spam from my important email, but other than that, I fall hard into the ‘open’ category. Here is a Klout.com list you can follow of others I find ‘open’ on Twitter:

My “open” list on Klout.

(…and by the way, I’m open to suggestions to that list. Because I’m open. You get it.)

Either way, as usual, expect growth in online ad spending in the upcoming years:

Because as web sites, blogs, magazines, promotions and more expand online, so does the advertising landscape:

The biggest activity (behavior) we take part in online (beside perhaps the one-handed 30-second rewind ~ meow!) is search. Here is where you’ll see most of the digital advertising:

I Hate Shopping

An estimated that 30% of online digital ads ($28.5 billion) in the U.S. use behavioral tracking, says AdAge. I want my advertisers to know me, what I like, and how I act. Maybe I’m lacking the old-fashioned gene that makes people drive to a store and walk around looking on the racks and shelves for supplies. It just feels a bit Little House on the Prairie to me.

Online recommendations (live or culled), stylists and catalogs with fun interactivity and social sharing sounds better. Webvan is gone but did you notice Safeway has taken it back up?

BlogTalkRadio

You are listening to Lisacast on BlogTalkRadio.

Hey welcome to the show the second one today. If you are a host on BlogTalkRadio, this is a new feature that not only can you do more than one show a day but also you can do longer shows. We have been responding to some future requests and we will continue to do so. It’s a big week for us. We just launched our revenue and sharing program for host which shares a piece of the advertising that runs on host profile and show pages. A big week for us and a big middle of the day for Lisacast. Today we have AirCongress gentleman Danny Glover is with us today. Danny, thanks for joining me.

Danny Glover: Thanks for having me on the show.

Lisa Padilla: And this is not your first time on BlogTalkRadio, right I didn’t bring you on first, right.

Danny Glover: No, I have actually been on Ed Morrissey’s show a couple of times, the most recent time was when we were talking about BlogTalkRadio’s partnership with AirCongress a few weeks ago.

Lisa Padilla: Okay very exciting for us and the BlogTalkRadio platform in general is very interesting to political talk-show hosts and listeners interested in that programing. As that as Ed Morrissey’s is well aware his sight Captain’s Quarters and headingright.com we also do headingleft.com and if you look under political categories on our website you will see hundreds of shows there on politics so these things seem to go together pretty well. So Danny, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the background of AirCongress and then with the present day state of poling and voting nomination, candidate races and so on and then we will ask you a couple of other questions.

Danny Glover: Okay sure. Well AirCongress is kind of an outgrowth of another blog that I started a few years ago called Beltway Blogroll for nationaljournal.com and when I was dealing with Beltway Blogroll I was tracking the impacts of blogs on politics and policy issues. And that was a big thing back in 2004. I started Beltway Blogroll in 2005. By 2006 the world was moving toward audio and video so it just seemed to me a natural outgrowth to start tracking audio and video and I decided to launch AirCongress this particular one is a private venture of my own I am doing in my spare time and it’s really just to track audio and video in the political and policy scene that includes videos by law makers who are producing them, our think tanks by campaigns by journalists and by bloggers who like it more. See anyone who is producing content out there I want to find it and create and views AirCongress as a portal for people who want to come to one spot and find all of the best audio and video. And I am trying to bring some of my journalistic instincts to bear there by basically saying I follow this kind of news for a long time now. Here is what I think is the most important.

Lisa Padilla: Right and by following this for a long time tell our listeners a little bit about your background in journalism and your experience in DC?

Danny Glover: I have been in Washington since 1991. I started Congressional Quarterly as a reporter. Congressional Quarterly coincidentally National Journal was started by people who used to work at CQ and they are direct competitor with Congressional Quarterly. So now I work for the competition. But I worked at CQ for about 6 and half years then I went over to an Internet publication that was kind of their op-ed page on the web it was IntellectualCapital.com. Worked there for about 3 years, 3 and a half years before it folded amongst the many dotcom folding in 2000 and then I came on at National Journal and I have been here at Technology Day ever since. I was the managing director at Tech Daily for about 6 years and then became the editor last fall.

Lisa Padilla: Okay and speaking of new media in Washington I have a clip from the last presidential radio address that I am going to play for us here.

Audio clip:

“The AMT was designed to ensure that the wealthy paid their first year of taxes. But when Congress passed the AMT decades ago, it was not indexed to for inflation. As a result the AMT’s higher tax burden is creeping up on more and more middle class families. To deal with this problem Congress has in recent years passed temporary legislation that prevented most middle class tax payers from having to pay the AMT. But this year Congress is yet to pass this legislation. A failure to do so would mean that 25 million Americans would be subject to the AMT, more than 6 times a number that faced the tax last year.”

Lisa Padilla: Okay and you know I played this quickly for two reasons. First is it’s interesting that the president is podcasting. Second because you can’t get the presidents radio address as a feed on the way out what say. But also secondly because we can talk about the democratization of media and I am sure you do often and the wide and less biased and more transparent distribution of news and opinion. But it’s a sweet and sour situation and so also is hoping that you would touch on some of the barriers, these conditions you know face now and in the future with regard to politics and the contribution of you know everyday job.

Danny Glover: It is interesting that the president’s podcasting, he is actually been doing a quite a while and the weekly radio address that you played a portion of that’s not the only thing he does. They have the White House Press Briefing, they put up as a podcast.

BlogTalkRadio is a platform, it’s an audio platform wrapped by a social network. That idea complexes many people. Mashable wrote an article today titled “BlogTalkRadio: Does it Have a Future“, evidently written by someone who hasn’t been following the rise of the company, it’s position in the market and the potential of the platform. Think of BlogTalkRadio like a multi-engine car, it can perform light and smart, or rich and heavy. You can detail it yourself, and drive it, it’s yours — or you can pay BlogTalkRadio to build a custom frame and paint it to your specs. Here’s what the new digs look like:

If you’re an author, or a business owner, of say a media or publishing company, or a non-profit person who wants to spread the word about your cause, or an individual with a particular prowess for prancing your personality by means of pr, then you’ll immediately see the potential from the business side to brand a whole station, not just one show. I do Lisacast, my show on BlogTalkRadio because it brings together a crowd of people I otherwise may not have ever met. (Thank you listeners, by the way!) That’s good for business, because I run a digital marketing agency and it’s one of the way I can show off what I do, who I know, etc. Lisacast has become one of the most popular shows on the BlogTalkRadio network with millions of listeners each month.

Here’s the official feature update:

Inline Listening

User can listen to shows right on the page in search results without leaving the page

All program guide pages Categories, Featured, Popular and Branded Networks

Reminders

Integration of episode reminder with Outlook and Google calendars

Inline Listening Flash based widget

Ability to syndicate any network content to the widget with Inline Listening
Based on Categories or Keywords
ex. http://beta.blogtalkradio.com/widget2.aspx?string=technology&siteid=1

Improved Search

Search search is pre-filtered into user experience styles
Shows – hosts that produce the episodes in the results
Episodes – the individual episodes that are results of the search
On Air/Upcoming – currently live or future shows that are results for the search topic

Ex. a search for “Gaza” – in the new site is a great departure from the ability to find shows and episodes quickly

Users can also perform advanced filtering without having to enter ‘advanced mode’ with the a tabbed navigation above search results

Keywords

We’ve opened our entire network to user choice by integrating keywords into
- RSS feeds: receive episode specific to the keyword topic
- Search
- Internal Taxonomy

We’ll be expanding this in the new year. Organic keyword integration helping BlogTalkRadio to increase our 1 million+ indexed pages at Google.

Learning Center and Community Forum

A renewed focus on engaging and making our platform more user friendly

iTunes

Fully compliant with iTunes podcasting spec and album art
New integrated one-click subscription to show, episode and keyword RSS feeds

Corporate Website

Distinguishes business content from listening site

Branded Private Networks

This addition opens BlogTalkRadio for the corporate client seeking a new media presence online with control over the interface, show aggregation and syndication of their media.

Social Network Profiles

In an effort to increase the sharing of work produced on the network we’ve added into host profiles such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Those are just a couple of examples. Here’s one in working action too, the Woman’s Day station on BlogTalkRadio.

The new home page looks much more Web 2.0 now, and has simple descriptions and content areas. It’s really easy to listen now. Easier. Really, it was pretty easy before. They’ve even got player buttons running in ads on other networks, so people can play shows directly with 1 click. Advertisers, listening?

Check out the new BlogTalkRadio web site, maybe start your own show. In the meantime, checkout previous Lisacast shows here on Lisacast.com. I have a show coming up today with the FlyLady, you won’t want to miss it. Call-in at 1 (646) 478-4956 to speak your mind about “energy efficiency.” The show airs today from 12 – 1 pm PST.