Brad Stone pens a good article in Newsweek, ‘How new podcasts like ‘JapanesePod101’ are changing the way people learn a foreign language’. Peter Galante at JapanesePod101 is an old friend of ourrs and he deserves the credit he gets in the article. I think it’s also great that Peter talks about us in his interviews as the originators of the model.
Once again, however, no link from the Newsweek article back to CPod! I guess the mainstream media, or msm, don’t yet see the importance of the old hyperlink. I’m sure Brad Stone does. Perhaps it’s the editors. I say this not just because it would be good for us - it would - but it would give the article more currency throughout the blogosphere.
Ken Carroll
NO LINK - Ken, it’s not that these sites don’t understand the importance of the link, actually it’s the very opposite. They do not want to drive traffic away from their sites and as large sites they realize the weighting that a link from them will give other sites in search engines like Google who base a significant part of their page rank algorithms and search results on these links. The larger websites are very competitive and in general the News sites will not provide the actual hyperlink. Users of course are free to go look up a site, but a hyperlink is almost like gold and these big businesses are not so altruistic. You’ve been doing a lot of media, you might want to almost make it a ‘condition’ of an interview that they then include a link. A one-way link from a reputable, highly-ranked, site that is related to Chinese, podcasting or news will significantly improve Cpod’s ranking.
Lantian,
I’ve heard both arguments, but I still don’t think these are the major issues. There is very clear evidence that sites that link prodigiously receive very high traffic in return. I don’t see it as a lack of altruism, but more a case of not realizing that there is an entire blogosphere out there that could generate tons of more links and traffic. Newsweek actually has links to Technorati, but my take mis that they may not appreciate the full power of what this can do.
I’ll post on Brad Stone’s blog and ask why!
The net is sush a wonder ful thing.
Ken Carroll
good stuff indeed - Newsweek is a huge name.
The new Newsweek (International Edition ) has a big section on the worlds most “global” universities. Pretty strong bias towards US schools - 8 of the top 10, and none from China, but the piece does talk about western universities partnering with Chinese schools, and also about research partnerships.
Hi Ken, we’re in violent agreement but I would like to parse it out just a little bit more. What I’m talking about is the effect of inbound links on obtaining a higher ranking in Google/search engine results. The assumption is that this then does create more traffic as people lookup keywords, look for info, and more easily find your site due to it’s higher ranking in results.
The other strategy is what you’ve mentioned of linking up with other sites, in effect creating a bigger pie for all and traffic for all; absolutely.
I may be much much more cynical than you about media giants, book publishers, and the policies around how they manage ‘news’. I think there is definite fear that simple tools like one’s own RSS newsreader and local, authoritative and non-commercial blog news that strikes fear in many a media mogal or at least their underlings. They spend millions on their websites with none of them making money, tell me again why they would like to hyperlink and more empower the blogosphere–a competitive space? I can only lament that the only reason e-books have never gained traction is the superglue hold that publishers have on content. Cpod’s content is free model is absolutely-stupendously-radical! Just think if schools picked up that model. Forget Chinese, we’re talking about educating the world!
NEWS - okay, I really need to focus on getting myself out the door and to dinner…but one other comment. If you look at WSJ, total lockdown on content. If you look at the NYT, they don’t allow real-time comments, you send in a comment, they edit and maybe publish it. MSNBC, Fox, all have policies of not providing links online. They want to push readers back to print, and/or keep them within their massive websites. Why is this? It’s their business model, which means advertising, which is priced according to volume. There is no incentive for them to have reader’s clicking on links and going away, even if it’s just for a little while.
Cpod currently doesn’t have an advertising business model so you’re not nearly as concerned about wandering eyes. You actually do believe the added value will keep people around and your main desire is to get the word out to more people. I just wouldn’t expect the big boys to think of it that way.
A newspaper might publish a story about your shop winning a local business award, but it won’t publish the shop’s phone number, that would be advertising. If they did publish phone numbers whenever they got a good story, the person they employ full time to weed out the self-promotion from the genuine news stories would have to be replaced by a small army of people. Spurious press releases are a major annoyance and cost for these people. It’s amazing what some people (claim to) do purely for a little publicity, so anything that might increase their numbers is avoided.
I suspect something similar is going on when articles don’t link to the sites they discuss. If they did so, they’d be so overwhelmed with “my great news story” that it would be too hard to pick out the genuinely newsworthy items.
Ken-san,
Thank you for the mention above and for the post on our blog. It was really great hearing from you. As for talking about ChinesePod, I am not one to soon forget. Your e-mail, the plug by Aric and Steve when we first started back in December, and corresponding with Hank really meant a lot to me, and I make it a point to let people know this. I am still looking forward to visiting when we make it to Shanghai.
我将会带着百酒去。
Ken,
This weekend’s Financial Times includes this article, “A Case for Linguistic Discernment,” which talks about the Japanese people’s difficulty with the English language. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7b2b84.....e2340.html
Don’t worry about the lack of links. I read that Newsweek article just yesterday and found Chinese Pod on my own (easy to Google it). Those who are truly interested will find a way.