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PodClass - online course startup or wiki platform?

Podclass is another startup in the online course/learning space. Like video upstarts SuTree or 5min, Podclass aims to be a community oriented clearing house of online courses; unlike other options, however, Podclass goes beyond video, and wraps a paid-content model around it all:

Podclass has been designed to enable multiple users to collaborate on any topic and create course content for group learning. The course content can later be sold as a paid online course or distributed freely. “The option to sell content makes Podclass unique,” says Gil. “It’s just one more reason for people to contribute.” [from Press Release]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like a multimedia wiki with an optional pay wall. And that’s not a bad thing.

At the moment, Podclass is pretty quiet with a limited number of courses and communities. Founder Gary Gil is working hard to capitalize on some hype, however, starting with a collaboratively built course about monetizing Facebook - certainly a topic of interest as of late. See the press release for more.

A recommendation for Podclass after reading the press release: back off the hype train. That press release hits on every buzz word - social media, 2.0, digg, facebook, crowdsourcing, etc. Hyped keywords, however, are by definition a flash in the pan - and most of those mentioned have flashed and gone already. If you’re serious about building the business in the long run, focus on communicating the core value proposition, not on trying to piggyback pageviews on buzzwords.

Which brings us to that core proposition. As with any content startup, Podclass faces the chicken/egg conundrum - without compelling content, there’s no community; without community there’s no compelling content. Differentiating in this space and attracting content and community are not easy task - but not impossible either.

My suggestion? Follow the Apple example. Apple entered into a crowded DAP market by creating an offering that was overpoweringly superior in a few key points (synch simplicity, design), and had parity in all others. Podclass needs to pick two relevant service differentiation points, build the crap out of them, and then communicate & evangelize them.

Second Suggestion: Compelling seed content. Monetizing Facebook sounds like a good start, but there’s a couple of other perennial winners that will get traffic and backlinks: SEO springs to mind as a natural. Contact some pop-blogger SEO gurus and get some interviews on camera, and throw them up - a series of half-hour webcam interviews would be a popular resource.

Anyway: Bottom line is that Podclass looks to be a solid, if not overly differentiated offering in a crowded field. A focus on the differentiating essentials and building out an attractive content library IMHO would position Podclass for solid growth.

5min, course, learning, podclass, sutree tutorials

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Why I Don’t Like Video - My Brain is a Mini-Google, Yours is Too

I finally figured out why I don’t like any serious application on online video, vlogging, etc., and why I think I’ve only watched one of Scoble’s video interviews since he went to the video side from MS. I always found it a bit recidivistic - to want to emulate TV on the net, but never took the time to figure out why - until now.

Its one part learning theory, one part reading mechanics, and one part personal preference. What prompted this thinking was the Gabe Riviera (TechMeme guy) Interview by 1938 Media. I’m sure its full of interesting, useful insights - but what has prevented me from watching it is the fact that I’m busy like crazy, and video is just unparseable.

Here’s the mini-Google theory: A text blog post I can skim and pick out the parts that are interesting to me for a more detailed read - essentially my brain functions as a mini-Google, crawling the post, getting a superficial understanding of its contents, assigning a PageRank to each paragraph and subsection, identifying relationships between them, and flagging certain parts (or the whole thing) for further review.

With video and voice, this is impossible: there’s no way to crawl at high speed, get the gestalt, and the dive deeper - its an all or nothing, real-time proposition that to me makes sponging and organizaing massive amounts of information (the joy of the internet!) slow and cumbersome. So I don’t bother.

At the end of the day, I’m guessing I might be at the extreme end of the spectrum of skimmer vs. detailed reader, but for better or for worse, that’s how I am. What about you?

Tagging and ratings might add an element of filtering, but before video is any use to me, I really want a transcription-based indexing search engine that break up a 20 minute PodTech video into Q&A subsections indexed by keyword, viewable individually. Does this exist already? I’m not sure - I seem to recall some buzz around video markup and timeline chopping sites a while back - a topic for further research.

In the meantime, the secrets of Gabe’s success will remain unavailable to me, locked in the ultra-low-bandwidth, forced agenda, passive medium of video.

1938media, blogging, google, learning, reading, sponging, techmeme, video youtube

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