Talkr
Talkr is a new subscription service that takes the textual content of a blog and creates a podcasts from it. But…what’s the use of that?
I don’t really get podcasting. While I understand the benefits of downloading, say, political debates or stand-up comedy in audio form, I’m not at all convinced of its benefits in everyday blogging. A podcast of a regular blog post or article loses the ability to easily link to elsewhere, which is one of the most obvious strengths of writing on the internet (plus it’s harder to both refer to and to quote from). A podcast loses the ability to be easily and quickly edited; once it’s recorded, how do you modify information that later may out to be erroneous? How do you add to a paragraph in the middle of the article? Worst of all, a podcast becomes less accessible; the author of a podcast is restricting their audience to those who have decent internet connections, unfettered access, decent hardware and the time to listen. Furthermore, until search engines starts indexing audio content, the podcast will have no place in search engine rankings unless accompanied by an equivalent text version of some kind.
In the Olden Days, a blogger would write an article, and occasionally you would get in the comments section somebody saying “I agree” and a link to the commentator’s agreeing article — it’s a quick and easy way of getting yourself a bit more exposure. These days, more and more, I see people voicing their agreement (or disagreement) and then inviting the reader to go and listen to their podcast on the topic. Well…no. While I might have clicked through to have a quick read of what had been written, am I going to click an audio file link, wait for it to download, open it on my PC, switch off my music and then sit quietly, staring into space, while somebody reads to me? No, I’m not (particularly as I can’t download audio files while at work, so I’d have to note down the details and do it all later from home). Unless the author is a great orator (and most of us are not) there strikes me as being very little advantage of podcasting the article instead of having it on screen to be read. So, I don’t get podcasting. Or vidcasting, now I think about it, for much the same reasoning.
I can just about see that some people might like to listen to these things during their commute time in place of music or reading, and that listening to the original author’s voice could be beneficial, if there’s a rhythm or tone that would be lost in the transcript. But Talkr? Download and listen to an article read by an artificial, computer-generated voice? I get that even less. So, while we’re on this ever-descending journey of me not getting things, let’s look at Zeldman.
The Zeldman?
I don’t mean to single Zeldman out in particular — this isn’t an attempt to get extra exposure by having a go at one of the big guns, it’s simply that his was the first website that I noticed using Talkr, so; Zeldman has begun offering a Talkr-produced recording of every article posted on zeldman.com. Why? I don’t know. They just appeared recently with little fanfare. So, instead of reading a two- or three-line post about a new website, a new member of Happy Cog or a new CSS job in Seattle, you can download the MP3 and then listen to it. But…why? Why would anybody want to do this? These are not speeches, they’re snippets; brief asides that can be glanced over and absorbed in a fraction of a moment. What’s to be gained here by having them available as audio files? They don’t even have the celebrity value of having Zeldman himself reading aloud — you may as well just use a screen reader.
(It’s also interesting that Zeldman has chosen to use this service, because — at least, it strikes me as being the case — this seems to be quite a faddish service, of limited use with a low shelf-life but with a high novelty value, and Zeldman recently poured scorn upon tag clouds for being similarly faddish. But then, fads are all a matter of opinion.)
Or, perhaps I’m just looking at this the wrong way. Nobody has to use this service, it’s not harming anybody and there may be some people — visually-impaired users with long commute times? — that get some use out of it.
I just don’t really get it.
Podcasts appear to be aimed at people who cannot be bothered to read anything anymore. Rather than having to parse and understand a complex sentence structure, possibly with many attendant sub-clauses, explanations and sundry other informational nuances, most people, and indeed the media themselves, seem to crave a small snippet of audio, the quintessential sound-bite, which they hope will accurately precis the whole argument and allow them to nod knowingly at the company watercooler or the lunch-time pint.
Good afternoon,
Thank you for the thoughtful post on Talkr. Please take everything I’m about to say with a grain of salt — I am Talkr’s founder.
I agree with your general point — podcasting is not blogging. There’s no give and take. There’s no link structure that allows you to follow a topic in non-linear fashion. Updating a podcast requires substantially more effort than editing a text post. Using a podcast as a mechanism to comment on a blog post offers a poor user experience to someone trying to follow the thread.
But there are many communication forms that fill a valid need which are not blogging. A novel is almost exactly unlike a blog in the same way as as a podcast is unlike a blog — it’s linear, only the author gets to talk, and once you print the darned thing you’re unlikely to want to change the text around.
Podcasting is radio, not blogging. It is informative and (hopefully) entertaining — but generally speaking, you only use it when you’re doing something else (like driving or exercising).
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you agree with everything I’ve said so far. Podcasting fills a valid need for commuters and folks that get bored when they exercise. That still doesn’t mean that a computer synthesized voice reading a blog fills a valid need.
So let me make a pitch for why Talkr fills a need. Talkr allows you to listen to a radio show on ANY topic that interests you. Want to listen to a show that talks about the current adoption rate for the Klingon language? No problem. Interested in the latest trends in the search engine industry? No problem. Want a show that covers both? Still not a problem.
No human can put that podcast together — they cannot predict what combination of topics their listeners will want to hear. You have to solve this problem with technology.
Thank you for your time.
-Chris
I have to say, I agree with both sides of this – I have never and probably will never listen to or create podcasts – for the reasons Paul said above. I don’t want to listen to my voice, so I’m almost certain other poeple won’t either. I also don’t much fancy having someone read to me when I can read perfectly well myself.
That said, after reading Chris’ comment I can see why this stuff would benefit people. I say fair play to Talkr for doing this.
Chris: Fair enough, then. A disgracefully reasonable and well-argued comment. I’ll be interested to see if the service is successful.
I think Talkr is a good idea in theory. it has bugs: the text to speech doesn’t correctly translate, and if your blog is not in english then forget about it. it IS pretty funny hearing the irregular speech pattern of the computer voice though.