Hey, this is Madalyn Sklar and Suze Cooper and you're listening to all things audio.

Madalyn Sklar 0:11

Some of you may have noticed in the last few weeks spaces as has moved the navigation bar a little bit on mobile, you may be wondering what happened to the spaces tab, the audio tab, where did it go? Seems like there's been a lot of confusion Suze because people have been we have been talking about it the last several weeks.

Suze Cooper 0:31

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's still it's still there along the lower bar. But certainly, there's been some discussion, Andrea Conway tweeted, just over a week ago now talking about cleaning up the navigation bar, and kind of simplifying that lower bar for us, because there's a lot of stuff in there. I mean, when they introduced the audio tab and the spaces tab into that lower bar, we did talk about how crowded it was down there. And it would appear that Yep, that they're removing it from from that general lower bar. What are your first thoughts on this? Madalyn?

Madalyn Sklar 1:06

Yeah, well, I have Twitter blue. And so if you have Twitter blue, one of the cool features as a subscriber is you can customise your mobile navigation that bottom bar, you have the ability to do that. So from the start with Twitter, blue, and I've been Twitter blue subscriber for like a year and a half, because it's been available in the US for quite some time now. So I've able been able to customise it and I've had the audio tab in my main navigation. And with all of these newer changes and seeing the moving it shifting it back over for most users. I'm able to control it, and so I can keep it where I want it. But it's interesting in this tweet, I have an over the nest that Andrea Conway is saying that yeah, if your Twitter blue subscriber, you can put that tab in, but it sounds like a lot of users they've been talking to are not really utilising the spaces feature and don't want that as part of their main navigation. Do you find that interesting? I mean, here, we think spaces are so popular, everybody's using it, everybody wants it. But then when Twitter makes this change, they're like, well, as quoted in this tweet, the majority of people don't use spaces, like you or I might, usage is too low to warrant such prominent placement.

Suze Cooper 2:26

Yeah, I mean, maybe that explains why it hasn't moved from my bar, because I've got Twitter blue as well. So potentially, I've got it so that it's there. And on that lower navigation bar, because it's selected that way. In terms of whether or not it's a good idea for it to disappear from the bar. Hmm I'm not sure. I mean, I think it was great to have it there. Because I don't know people kind of mis-tap and discover what it is and fall into spaces without really understanding, you know, that social audios a thing and is going on, then it's almost its own discoverability tool, isn't it? You know, through through kind of mis-tapping, which can be helpful, as we've said, like, the discoverability on Spaces has never been great. So the potential for someone to accidentally jump into this world was there with it always on that lower bar? And perhaps you'll have less people discovering spaces and what they are, if it's not permanently down there for everybody. I guess that's one of my fears for it. On the other hand, I completely see what they're saying. And for anyone who is perhaps a power user, and you know, really interspaces perhaps we are the people that are signing up to Twitter blue, and we'll be able to choose what we have on our menus. And therefore for us it will stay there anyway. But yeah, I do kind of think that as, as that kind of stumble upon content moment. I think we might miss out. Somehow with that. I think you know, we'll miss out in terms of people stumbling into what we're doing and what other hosts are doing here on here on spaces, which is a shame.

Madalyn Sklar 4:11

Yeah, most definitely. I mean, the good thing is is still available, you just have to tap on your profile picture at the top to go to that left sidebar navigation and according to the screenshot is in there with the top articles with communities with lists so is there is just not as easy to find and which in turn makes that discoverability better when you're in the Twitter platform. However, there's always spaces dashboard, which we're always talking about. No, they're not a sponsor, not official sponsor. We just love this free website where we can easily discover different things going on in spaces whether it's upcoming live, or just checking a replay. So big shout out to Andrew and his awesome site. We definitely recommend spacesdashboard.com

Suze Cooper 5:00

I can see that our speaker has joined us Madalyn.

Madalyn Sklar 5:03

Our speaker has arrived. We've got Gregarious from Zealous here with us. We didn't have an All Things Audio last week, we were both unavailable. So we've got two weeks worth of news to catch up on. And one thing that really caught our attention was your Audiogram Friday that you did back on March 10. I got that tweet in the nest. And you shared a lot of cool things that you have launched with us and we would just love for you to talk about it share with us, I can put more tweets in the nest from this thread, but tell us what's going on. Because if you're utilising spaces for all of our listeners yearly utilising spaces you're hosting, you should be using solace. So tell us a little bit about Zealous. What all you're doing and then dive into these new features.

Gregarious 5:49

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. So yeah, the very short, easy summary of what Zealous does is we help you repurpose any of your live or recorded content. And we do that by blending both real time interaction data from spaces and soon other sources, as well as AI to find the best moments. And then we provide a platform that allows you to generate audiograms in any size or format for any platform at any way.

Madalyn Sklar 6:21

Great, thank you for sharing that. So tell us about these new features you have available.

Gregarious 6:26

Yeah. So it is part of a journey. We are not done yet. But we just released. So previously, when we the earlier version of Zealous, had 10 predefined templates, basically, they were different layouts with a certain colour palette applied to each. The big change, one of a number of changes we made, I guess, in the in the most recent push is we changed a few things. So AI is great, we use AI for transcription, but it's not perfect. And so oftentimes what would happen is, you would get some words that were like spelled weird, or maybe it was like repeated twice, you know, not because maybe someone said a word twice, you know, and so you couldn't edit the text. And so that obviously meant that a lot of people are like, well, you know, I like to quote, but the words are wrong, so I'm not going to share it. So we added our very first pass, letting you edit the words and the that are presented in the audiogram itself, that was the first piece. The second piece was that when we render an audiogram, a variety of our templates have sort of an avatar for the user present in it. But if you'd selected some audio that had maybe two people speaking in it, what end up happening was, it just showed that one person's avatars, we added dynamic switching for the avatar. So you'll if you take a look at any of our examples, you'll see like there's someone speaking but if like two people or three people were speaking, that avatar now changes because that person speaks. So it's lined up to know who's speaking at the right time. The next thing we did was we we abstracted away the layouts. And so we gave you 10 new layouts that you can choose from. And so now you can choose from one of 10 different layouts. And then in addition, we launched 10 new themes. So now you have 10 by 10, that's 100. And then you have three formats. And so all of our stuff is available automatically, you don't have to choose ahead of time I go, I need to have a square one or whatever it may be, you know, you can have the portrait landscape or square at any time. So essentially just out of the box 300 variations of audiogram templates that you can choose from, but in the paid plans, which basically you can start using Zealous for free. But for 10 bucks, you get a whole bunch of other features. And at that $10 price point, you also have access to choosing your own colours now. And so you can customise those colours to choose like the appropriate, something, maybe it was a little bit more on brand. So that was the push. It was a bunch of features. Like we've already had these things behind the scenes. That was a couple of weeks ago, we have a couple more things coming out. So actually, last week, we shipped our new admin. And so if you haven't seen that yet, I didn't really talk about it yet, because we have a we have a session next week actually, where we're going to walk folks through it if you want to see and learn about the news that was happening. But the the new approach we're taking is sort of more like WordPress, where historically, you kind of worked in the view side, like you know, the publish side of it, like where you republishing your stuff. But a lot we found that, you know, folks were like sometimes they don't want to publish it, maybe they just want to have it private etcetera. So, the news was actually has an admin now kind of like the WordPress admin, where you manage your recordings, and then you can choose to publish those recordings out to different channels if it makes sense for you. But the more important part about that new admin is the base the foundation for a number of new features that are coming out. So I'll just give you a little bit Alpha for what's coming next week, it may be this week, I anticipate it will be next week. But we have a brand new transcript editor actually. And so the transcript editor actually just turned your entire transcript into like a Word doc, basically kind of like automate. And you can just go in and delete things, hit linebreaks, redesigned speakers, all that stuff. So you can actually arrange your transcript in a way that is very logical and makes sense to read better. But also that new transcript brings with it some new features. For example, like you can now highlight specific sentences or paragraphs in there that you want to maybe feature for people to read, those become parts of your highlight reel. But also, whenever you make a highlight, you can automatically turn what you highlighted into an audiogram. So you don't have to actually use our audio clipper, which we provide in the browser for finding the right words, you can actually highlight the words now. And to instantly turn those into an audio grammar, download the audio clip for the words that you've highlighted, etc. So a bunch of those features should be there next week. In addition, hopefully next week, we should have live the ability for you to save your own theme, so that you can reuse that theme across audiograms that you choose to create going forward. And then shortly after that will be your own templates a little bit more complicated for us to get through but not fully, like customizable layouts, but personalisable where you can upload and change your branding, override all the colours etc. So at that point, then you will be able to auto publish zealous because you can say like use this template to generate my top highlights and automatically share them, for example out to my Twitter or YouTube or whatever it may be.

Suze Cooper 11:40

Wow, you're really becoming like a one stop shop then for for everything live audios. Yeah. Incredible. I mean, I'm really interested in the the dynamic audiograms that kind of flick between the avatars and things what's what's the feedback been so far? I mean, obviously, it's not been out a lot, but a long time. But what's feedback so far?

Gregarious 12:02

It's been great. I mean, I think, you know, look, we get it is just, you know, it's hard with a small team to get all the things out. So, but, you know, a lot of people, you know, look, this is your brand, this is your personal brand, your business's brand, you want it to reflect you. And I think getting to those custom colours, it was the biggest unlock. A lot of folks were doing single user sort of quotes. So that wasn't that harmful, I guess, or you know, further usage. But we do see that now, because you can highlight to people etc. Like it does improve some of that we are working on a new set of templates, by the way that will like have multiple speakers visible at the same time. Because we do know, some, you know, it's just very common design pattern in the audiogram side of things where maybe you want to show that there's two people in that quote, and right now we only have a single avatar approach, but we're working on we have several sets of new templates coming some with multiple avatars in place, some with no avatars, like minimalistic ones, so that you can actually just set the background image or design and things like that. So yeah, quite a bit more to come on the, on the audiogram front.

Suze Cooper 13:12

And I think what's so great about this is that, you know, almost, I mean, I'm not saying creating content, whether it's pre recorded, live, whatever is easy, I'm definitely not saying that, but I think that's half it's only half the work and maybe even just a quarter of the work, there's a whole heck of a lot of work in Marketing, and making sure people discover that content that you've put your heart and soul into creating. So what I like about Zealous is that it it kind of takes that heavy lift, and helps you to create those bits of content that you can then push out to let people know that you've made something brilliant. And you know, as I say that I really believe that's more than half the work of creating some some of the content you know, is making sure people hear it.

Gregarious 13:57

I think it's like more than half right? Like it's easy for us usually to show up and chat right but if you start to multiply out the effort; so OK great I want this on Twitter and I want this on TikTok and I want this one to be on YouTube and I want a full length version for my YouTube channel but I want some shorts and reels and etc. Yeah, it gets really hairy and you know, my experience being a creator getting to here is what really informed the product right? I just never made any of the repurposed content because I was just too busy. And so, you know, as a part time endeavour and running a startup it just never got to the point where I was like, Okay, I had all the tools you know, had Otter, Descript, you know, Streamyard etc. I think I generated like five, you know, in over across 100 episodes, like five 30-second clips.

Suze Cooper 14:47

Yeah, and it's not you know, it's not an unusual story at all. It's you know, something I hear from creators an awful lot like they just want that process streamlined and actually once they put their heart and soul into writing the content and put that, you know, banked that time for doing that, to find more time to push it out there and to create decent content that's going to catch people's attention and be the right clip and all of that, you know, it's it's just a lot more time and effort to go into isn't it?

Gregarious 15:17

So I forgot to mention one important feature. There is a ability for the host to give the 100 reaction live during the space and will automatically highlight what was being said, when they do.

Suze Cooper 15:30

Oh, nice. So that that sort of picks up on on almost user generated content in a way doesn't it highlights the bit that caught someone's imagination? Nice.

Gregarious 15:39

Yeah. Now you may want to adjust it, you know, obviously, there's delays with Twitter and then you know, when you hit it, versus when the word start, etc. So, but what it does is at least gives you sort of the ability to kind of real time bookmark interesting moments so that when you do go in your highlight reel is kind of pre populated with things that at least you thought were relevant as you were hearing them instead of having to like remember, what was that? Who's saying it? Where was it, etcetera.

Madalyn Sklar 16:06

Also, George is asking - Will editing the transcript also edit the audio like Descript does?

Gregarious 16:11

It won't yet. We're looking at doing that. We know it is becoming more prominent. I think right now, we're probably closer to Otter, right? Where you edit the transcript, but you don't actually edit the underlying media, but we, we know how to edit the underlying media just has a lot of implications, right? Because highlights audiograms clips, all the derivatives that come from it, have to be adjusted and we have to figure out how we want to accommodate that everywhere else.

Madalyn Sklar 16:43

Gotcha. If our listeners want to check out Zealous where should they go?

Gregarious 16:47

Yeah, you can go over to zealous.one is where you can sign up. But if you want to learn more, zealous.app, is our official website, it will also link you over to where we sign up, I should mention actually, just one last thing, we have a promotion just till the end of the month, where we're not metering like any of the usage. So for example, we've had some podcasters come and sign up for our you know, our Creator plan, but basically, they you can now provide us your RSS feed will ingest it automatically. But we also then will transcribe all of your episodes. So but it only lasts until the end of the month. So like if you want to do it. But it's a really great bargain. If you've never actually transcribed me your stuff, you can actually feed it to us. And we'll index all of it for you, we'll pull as much as we can find any RSS feed as well.

Madalyn Sklar 17:38

So it's zealous.one. So check it out, listeners, because this is a really cool tool. Well, thank you for spending time with us. And breaking all this down. We were quite impressed with all the things you are adding to Zealous right now.

Gregarious 17:56

We appreciate thanks so much. And there's a lot coming. I'll send you a note when the next big one comes out.

Madalyn Sklar 18:02

That would be great. And we'll probably have you back on again some other time just to you know, keep us because you are making so many amazing changes and just making it better and better. And we sure love hearing about it.

Gregarious 18:12

Appreciate it. Thanks so much all.

Madalyn Sklar 18:14

Well, we still got lots of news to zip through here. Still continuing with Twitter, with Twitter news. Andrea Conway, who we were discussing earlier, she's one of the Twitter employees and she's been well, I've been watching her tweets a lot Suze because she is always asking questions like, What do you think of this? We'll put up a screenshot. So she did this screenshot saying, looking to improve account notifications. What else would you want to see here? And she's encouraging people to answer these questions. And I noticed she replies to pretty much everybody. She is listening for feedback. And what I thought was really interesting with this particular tweet you put out is what kind of notifications would you want? And it shows some interesting options - spaces host and spaces speaker, what do you think of that? Like being able to get a pop up notification in Twitter when you say yes, I want to be notified when somebody is hosting a space where I want to be notified when they're speaking. Like, I want to know when Susan Cooper is hosting, I want to know if she's speaking. What do you think of that?

Suze Cooper 19:20

Yeah, I mean, did we not have this on the on the bell at one point where we could...

Madalyn Sklar 19:24

...briefly but not everybody had it? Because what happened was, it was sometime last year. Well, first of all, let's back up for a moment when I was a beta host two years ago. One of the first things Twitter asked me to do was to DM them a wish list. And one of the things I had very high on my list would be the ability to get this this exact notification because what happens is if you go to any profile, so I'm just gonna go into your profile here, Suze on my phone, and if I tap the bell icon, what What I see right now is none. All tweets, only tweets with live video. I asked them to change, the only the only tweets with live video was back in the periscope days. And we know that Periscope is no more. But we also know that spaces is running on the old Periscope platform. So I said to them, and this was very high on my list of what I would love to have. I said, why don't your chair imagine this is an easy fix, like changes. So it would notify you like I can, because I don't want to get all notifications, tweets of people, it's too much. I have enough going on. I don't need a pop up notification. Every time people I follow tweet or even if I just select certain people, I would love to know, when this particular person that I specify is in spaces live. I would love that. So I requested this. And what was interesting is sometime last year, they were working on it and some people had it but it seemed to be brief. I never got it. I never saw that. But in the screenshots, it looks like they're taking another look at it. And they're actually expanding on it. Because it's showing like these options like I could say, okay, for Susan Cooper, I want to be notified of maybe just your quote, tweets. And when you're hosting spaces, like I can toggle to say yes, I want that. That would be really cool. I think people would really utilise this feature if they have that ability to really hone into very specific things they want to see.

Suze Cooper 21:26

Yeah, and I'd like to add co-host to that list. So you know, people might want to get an alert when you're co hosting in this space, Madalyn. You're not the host of this space, but you're the co host. So potentially spaces co host could be another toggle there?

Madalyn Sklar 21:42

That might be why they put spaces speaker though, because you have spaces hosts. So that would be if you're hosting, but you host this not me, I totally get it. But they would have to do the toggle below there where it says spaces speaker. So that would just mean if I'm a speaker on anybody, whether I'm a co host or just a speaker.

Suze Cooper 21:59

Okay, I didn't read it that deeply. I just thought that meant, yeah, you've taken the mic and a speaker, I'm assuming that's what it means. Just because there's that different label within a space, you're either a host or co host, a speaker or a listener. So I guess I'd kind of differentiated speaker and co host as two different things. But you're right, that could be amalgamated under one. But would it be useful to have in there when someone schedules a space, so that you can actually set a reminder as opposed to just being alerted when they're going live? Maybe that might be useful as well. Because if you're alerted that they've scheduled the space, even if you're not going to be able to go to that space live, you can bookmark it, and then go back and listen to the replay if they're recording it. Whereas if you just got that kind of, I don't know, if I get a notification at two in the morning that someone's hosting a space that I want, then it's kind of been in Gone, isn't it? But by the morning? I don't know, maybe it's just a different mentality around when you get that notification.

Madalyn Sklar 22:55

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. And you know, right now they're just looking at, you know, what kind of interests do us users have towards this. And I'm really hoping that this is something we're going to see in the very near feet future. Interesting. I don't know if you notice, as soon as I noticed last week, there were some spaces where people couldn't get speakers up, they would like they'd see the request, they'd accept it, and the person couldn't speak the entire space. And then I saw this tweet from Morgan, along with Legion talking about something with an Android update that made it so that you cannot speak in spaces. So I pretty much figured it must have been just Android users, because it was very odd. I thought it was odd that like some people could speak, but others couldn't. And the people that couldn't were like racking their brains, why can't I get up here? Why can I get up here, they would close the app, they would restart the app, they would re-download them, they would be trying different things during a space yet they cannot get in. So I haven't seen anything official from Twitter about this. But Legion was mentioning about this latest Android update. And then I got another tweet here, where I asked if this had been fixed, because this goes back to last week. Had you notice any issues with this is that people were talking about?

Suze Cooper 24:17

Yeah, I'd seen people talking about it on the timeline. I haven't experienced it in a space. But I did see that it had been an issue for some people.

Madalyn Sklar 24:25

Because I'd been in spaces where that was happening. So you know, I just kind of threw a tweet out earlier today, to that group to see like, hasn't been fixed yet, because I have not heard anything since last week. Morgan says yes, in the beta version. But my thought is, Okay, how many people use the beta version versus everybody else that just uses the regular version? So so I don't know, I still trying to figure out what exactly is going on. But if you're an Android, well, I would like to know if you're an Android if you're listening to this right now. Whether it's live or replay Like if you're an Android user, and you've been able to speak in spaces since March, the 15th, or 14th, maybe started on 14th through now, which is March 22. If you've been able to without a problem and you're on Android, please send me a DM. I would like to try to investigate this a little bit more, because I would like to know exactly what's going on. And then I can report back next week.

Suze Cooper 25:25

Yeah, absolutely do, do let us know. So our next piece of news is from Andrew at Spaces Dashboard. He's talking about this categorising by language and showing language leaderboards. I think we actually chatted to Andrew about a few weeks ago, didn't we?

Madalyn Sklar 25:44

I believe so. I just love that they're expanding more with these options for language. I mean, look, being able to have more people utilising this amazing website spacesdashboard.com I think just the more the better. And that will bring more people to our spaces when they're able to get that discoverability, which we know is lacking so much inside the app.

Suze Cooper 26:10

Right, let's move on and talk about Clubhouse. I'm aware we've got a whole tonne of stuff here, Madalyn. So perhaps we kind of zip through some of these here. The first one was a tweet from Morgan that was showing us some rather flashy screengrab here of clubbing over on clubhouse. This is so clever. Did you play the video to this one Madalyn?

Madalyn Sklar 26:30

No. I mean, I saw the tweet. I didn't really play the video it the visual looks really interesting. For sure. What are your thoughts on it?

Suze Cooper 26:37

So there's kind of one person I'm guessing that's hosting this, but they're using various different accounts. And I'm guessing on unmuting the mic at different times, the graphics are going in time with the music. I mean, it is just a complete tour de force of creativity, for social audio. If ever there was a clubbing version of social audio, this is it. I urge you all to press on this screenshare from from Morgan and see exactly what it is that we're talking about here because it's an experience. And I think it's incredible. I can't wait to see more of stuff like that. I know when you know, we first had musicians performing over there and making real use of the different audio features. They've got over on clubhouse That was incredible, and really incredible to listen to, particularly on headphones, a real sort of experience. And I think, you know, this is another way of doing it very quiet visual, but also really, really worked with the audio and just a great way of utilising it and creating that sort of community feel and a clubbing space or clubbing room, I guess. But yeah, it's very creative. It is it really is. Um, Alessandra Pelosi has been at it again, and has been doing a bit of his reverse engineering. We have some tweets here, talking about how clubhouse is working on the ability to schedule multiple events. I know when that came to Twitter, we all did a massive cheer all together. Because that really does take some heavy lifting out of being a host if you can schedule more than one space or room at a time. So I'm sure that people who are using clubhouse regularly are equally as happy at having that ability to do that. We're also seeing here on another one of his tweets clubhouse working on the ability to add a location to houses. I know we chatted through this one a few weeks ago about you know the pros and cons of whether or not that's a great idea. So yeah, do go back through the All Things audio archives, I think just a couple of episodes back, and you'll hear us talking about what we thought about that. Adding location to houses so that people can actually find out where you are in the world. When you're right there on on the clubhouse app. The next bit of news is from meta. This is the news that they are finally shelving the audio channels over on Facebook. I think channels were available for Facebook groups for a short time. I know we you know they said they were gonna go all in on audio. I think around this time last year Facebook was all in on audio. Everything was about you know, how could they add audio in all this stuff, then we suddenly had a pull the carpet from under this moment sort of later in the year. And now it's come to the point that by the end of this month, those audio channels that were added to groups are going to be removed. And that's the very last part of their social audio push. So this article in social media today that I shared in the tweet kind of goes into them. shelving that and talks about them pulling pulling that away. Spotify next and Matt Navara is reporting this piece on the Vert from the verge that Spotify is going large on video podcasts. This is all around the new UI change that happened on Spotify, which I think actually happened the day we went live so two weeks ago today They just started to roll it out. And I've definitely heard differing views on it since then it's supposed to be great for discoverability. It's offering a real sort of tick tock style preview of, of audio in there, including podcasts as well as music and audiobooks. Some people love it, some people aren't so sure about it. I mean, Madalyn, do you use Spotify? Have you got a view on it?

Madalyn Sklar 30:28

I really don't. I've never been a big fan of Spotify. So I just don't spend time over there. Is that bad to say?

Suze Cooper 30:36

No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, I've, I think from from my point of view, I use Spotify for, for music more than podcasts. Particularly, I like the idea that this might appeal to a younger audience. And younger people might find podcasts that perhaps they hadn't thought of listening to before. On the other hand, I think I still think this whole need for podcasters to feel like they have to create video to be found. Is doesn't sit well with me, you know, I feel like audio content has done quite well for itself up until now, there's a reason why we use audio. And we don't necessarily want to or need to use video. And I think, with Spotify and YouTube, you know, YouTube being a video platform that's trying to get in on audio and Spotify being an audio platform that's trying to tell you that it needs video. I think it it confuses people in terms of, they feel like they've got to have video. And that really isn't the case. You know, I could definitely sit here and wax lyrical for you on the pros of just creating audio content. But yeah, it's interesting to see Spotify go down that route and sort of switch allegiance in a way to the to the content medium that it's going to be focusing on most Patreon followed this up with a tweet about joining forces with Spotify to make it easier for podcasters. to monetize, basically, and you know, anything that's going to support that idea, I think is is a good one. Being able to rely on you know, those two big names, names that people will know as a partnership to have a go and try and do that, you know, is sure to encourage a lot of people and give people confidence to try it out. Yeah, so another bit of news, that will be good news for those who want to lean on Spotify, in terms of their podcast and their audio content over there. Reddit, Madalyn, we have covered Reddit a little bit Morgan, who I can see here in the space is most certainly been our Reddit correspondent for the past few months. I did hop over to Reddit talk talks when it first launched, I spent a little while over there, I found it quite difficult to find anything that I was really that interested in, which was surprising because Reddit is a platform that should be full of stuff that you know, you should be able to at least fall into something that you might be interested in. However, this tweet from Morgan has confirmed that the Reddit talks is no more they are shutting it down hosting ends March 21. So that's done and downloads will end June at the first they've decided not to take it any further. So yeah, Reddit talk is the latest social audio. They tried it, they decided not to continue with it, they gave it a go.

Madalyn Sklar 33:39

It's really showing that the two biggest players are spaces and clubhouse at which we figured was going to be how this would all play out. I thought some of these bigger companies like meta and red it would stick around longer. But yeah, it just obviously didn't make sense to them. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Suze Cooper 34:00

Yeah, and I think you know, potentially all of the you know, the the shockwaves the different upheavals that have gone on in the tech world over the last few months, the you know, repercussions of COVID all of that kind of stuff, the layoffs that we've seen, you know, all of those teams being cut back, this was one of the newer things to be rolled out so it feels like it's one you know, last out the first to go almost, they just don't have the resources to put into it to continue it and push it forward. So actually at this point, if it really wasn't taking off, it's the thing that is going to disappear and that's how it kind of feels really but yeah, a shame to see another one go you know, as I say, I like all different flavours of social media. I liked the fact that they were all trying it out. And I really don't think any of the other ones existed long enough to really find their feet and find where they fitted into this world but equally it's you know No, it's definitely not over as we started this episode saying, because I feel like there's just so much more still to come, maybe even from these platforms, who might just re angle what they've been doing and take what they've learned from it and move on. So yeah.

Madalyn Sklar 35:15

And we would love to hear from our listeners, if you have any questions we would love from Morgan, if you're available to come chat with us and talk more about these new things with clubhouse and read it. So Suze while we're waiting on that you want to talk about our this thing you did where you moved all things, audio episodes across into a new podcast player, YouTube, it sounds super interesting.

Suze Cooper 35:38

So the YouTube for podcasters features that we've discussed here and there over the last few months are finally being rolled out this week. And so at the beginning of the week, I got the email as a, as a YouTube creator to say that if I've got a podcast, I can now upload it to its new podcast channel. All things audio has actually been on YouTube for quite a few months, actually. And I've said it, I'd set it up there kind of in readiness for the podcasting stuff to kick in. Initially, it was all only available in the US, it was a very limited rollout, no one saw anything of it, there was a lot of talk about it, but not a lot of action. And then this week, all of a sudden, they seem to have actually started moving and pushing things through is still a little bit unclear about how it's all gonna work. And you know, how it might appear in different places. But basically, I took the All Things audio playlist that I had created, because that was one of the things that they suggested that you did if you're uploading a podcast was to create it in its own playlist so that each episode is its own separate video. And that was actually being automated from headliner to create an episode full length, Episode video that was then being posted to YouTube each week as we went live on a on a Friday with our podcast edition. So essentially, what I had to do was logged back in to our channel. And they actually now have a dedicated tab that says podcast. And you can just click the Plus it's really intuitive. I could have uploaded a whole load of new episodes had I never uploaded a podcast there before. Or I could choose which videos I wanted to move across into this podcast playlists, which is what I did, I selected them all press the button. And there they are. It doesn't look any different to me, but I'm guessing that in the back end there that will start to do whatever it's going to do with podcasts, YouTube is saying you're gonna get your own podcast analytics, there's going to be different monetization, which, you know, is one of the reasons that podcasters have been so interested in being on YouTube is that, you know, the the monetization model over there, once you're creating content that's over 10 minutes long, over half an hour long, over 60 minutes long. You've obviously got that ability to plug into their monetization system and use the ads. So yeah, how that's gonna play out in this podcast channel. I'm still not too sure. I mean, YouTube have said that podcasts will appear in YouTube music. They will be on YouTube as the video platform as well, I would I would suggest, I mean, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere from there. But we'll wait and see. But yeah, we are there. We have our podcast playlist. I've been in touch with other podcasters, who said the same? Well, that was a click of a button and quite easy, wasn't it? So let's just hope that from here on in, it becomes kind of clear out and we get access to analytics and data that will really make it useful for us being over on the world's second largest search engine. So yeah, exciting stuff.

Madalyn Sklar 38:45

Now, if people want to learn more about all this new stuff happening at YouTube, is there like a place they can go? Is there like, you know, some guides and info What should people do?

Suze Cooper 38:54

Yeah, there are and I did tweet it. But you know what my tweet has disappeared from my timeline. And I have no idea why. So in the next kind of minute or so I will try and put something together and pull those links together. And in fact, I know where it is going to be. It's going to be in my new sub stack this week. Stop rewind play. So what I might do is add a link to that if you're if you'll allow me to, and then you can sign up and get all of the links in there when it comes out on Friday as well.

Madalyn Sklar 39:24

Yeah, please do that. You will find all that I we got some speakers here. I do want to mention that I just put in the nest Morgan did confirm that with that whole Android issue in spaces, it has been fixed in the production version, not just the beta version. So that's good to know. Let's start with Michael. Hey, Michael, how's it going?

Michael Sterling 39:46

Hello, friends. Good to see you all and this has been interesting to listen to today. And I came up to the stage primarily to respond to what Suze had said earlier. We're about you know, this big push for video, you got to add video to all these podcasts and every podcast needs to be a video podcast and I'm, I'm with Suze like I, there is something to audio by itself, and something magical that you know, you can do. So and I know who's gonna agree with me, bravo. But like, I don't like I want to produce certain podcasts. But I don't want to make a video podcast, I don't want to be on camera for these things, right? Maybe I could show certain things on camera, but it wouldn't be me. And it's not a vanity thing. It's just, I know from having done video production, there's all the lighting and the things and angles, make sure the background looks good. And I don't want to fool with any of that.

Madalyn Sklar 40:47

And that's okay. And you know what, I think that's totally fine. You know, sometimes these platforms, you know, they do a little bit of a pivot, and it becomes like their big focus, and they're gonna give more attention to it. The algorithm favours it doesn't mean we all have to go jump into it. We don't have to drink the Kool Aid. I'm with you. I mean, yeah, video is cool. And I actually have some new live stream ideas with podcasting and stuff I might play around with. But for the most part, I think there's something so special about audio only podcast, so I'm with you.

George Silverman 41:21

Okay. Let me add something to what Michael said. In addition to what he said, audio is more intimate. Yes, it is more absolutely is more intense. I did a lot of experiments in the 70s with face to face versus telephone conferencing, versus video. And I can tell you, and, and basically cite the studies, that it is incredibly more intimate. And an intense video was kind of removed. So I mean, we can go on for hours. But just I just want to make that point.

Madalyn Sklar 41:56

That is a great point. Plus, you know, audio is something you can just be doing on the go. I have here's what's interesting. So I have the YouTube premium because I hate the ads. I cannot stand those ads in YouTube. And I actually, in the past year or so have used YouTube way more than I ever have before. But what I like to do is just listen. And I love that on my iPhone, I can have. There's like some live stream podcast that I really like. But I don't have to look at the person talking because it is really like a podcast. But they want it to be a live stream on video. And so I can just have it on my phone, press the side of my iPhone side screens not even on and I can just listen put in my pocket listen while I'm walking my dog. Listen, while I'm driving. Listen while I'm doing whatever. And I like that that and so I totally agree. There's something so special about audio. Morgan's next want to hear about all the clubhouse stuff. So Michael, if you have anything to add, just jump in. So hey, Morgan, how's it going?

Morgan Evetts 42:54

Well, there's one thing which Michael witnessed just an hour ago, which was we'll call it breaking news. But this is perhaps both the least exciting and the most exciting news of the week. For for us over there was clubhouse redid all of their emoji. So if you'd like your emoji reacts, there's a whole new fresh bat of pretty fun and Eddie ones, which includes which both of our excitement, the 100 emoji has has now is now on more than one platform. So it's the power of the 100 is spreading. There we go.

Michael Sterling 43:37

That's right. 100 on Clubhouse. Yeah.

Morgan Evetts 43:41

That probably won't be the most exciting thing to happen

Cyndilu 43:44

and spicy.

George Silverman 43:45

Be still my heart

Morgan Evetts 43:49

And a hug emoji, which is? Oh, yeah, that one's nice. What else on the Spotify thing I wanted to recommend is, if I can just quickly pin this is a podcast episode or decoder, which is one of the verge The Verge's podcast with Nilay Patel. He interviewed...I forget his name, but the CO head tap at Spotify. If you want to hear more about the thinking behind introducing this more video focused, TikTok like feed, it's really excellent at explaining the kind of higher level stuff about why this is important to Spotify as a company, and also how it might help the creators. Of course, he's out doing the talk at the moment because he needs to explain. A lot of Twitter has been up in arms about this feed. But I'd recommend listening to that as a really good like, high level view around the AI and the algorithm stuff and there's a key phrase in there where he says it's not just having a great algorithm everyone thinks that that's what TikTok has it having a kind of feed or a user interface that gifts that algorithm glasses. So what is this is supposed to do is helping Spotify and get really strong signal about what it is that you are interested in what it is, you're not interested in this whole point of Spotify saying that we have to do more than just being the place you go to play the stuff, we really need to be great at Discovery. And so this is this is what they're hoping this will do. Whether or not we worry about the video aspect of it. Yeah, that was good.

Suze Cooper 45:40

Yeah, that's really interesting. I just think from from the creators point of view, it feels like what they need to create to get seen is what they're going to think about prior to whether you know, because ultimately, that algorithm, that discoverability mechanism is going to favour video because it's set up for visuals. So you've got to have something and you don't want to look naff and if you do look Nath, it's not going to pick it up anyway. So it you know, there's that real kind of antagonism between, well, this is a platform where I should be able to distribute my audio, but it's favouring video content, even in a preview, like 1010 second clip of it, I've got to look, somehow, you know, anyway, and I need that to represent me in a good way. So it picks up so people can find me, I just think there's such a clash between those two things. I'll be really interested to take a look at the tweet that you've just popped there in the in the nest, Morgan, thanks.

Morgan Evetts 46:40

Yeah, no, I agree with that. It's like, oh, do I have to put on my smart clothes and do my hair. Now that's it, there's even more work as a as a creator. Okay. One of the other interesting things in that is that he really stressed that the algorithm, so to speak, is not really looking at what had to pull us. It's looking at what you then go on to listen to long term. So something is considered to be a success, if they've shown it to you there. And then you play it many times later in your life, basically. So it's not engineering for showing you stuff right now that you're going to engage with, in the feed. That's TikTok's model. It's trying to get you to a point of satisfaction, where you've actually discovered something you really like. And I can tell that you've really liked it, because they're paying attention to what you do afterwards, not so much what you're doing in the moment on that feed.

Madalyn Sklar 47:39

And before we get to a few more speakers, Morgan thank you for checking back in the middle of this space. I shared in the nest the whole Android thing has been fixed with people speaking in spaces. Do we know what exactly happened? Why people on Android were not able to speak in spaces last week?

Morgan Evetts 47:59

It seems to have just been a bug that shipped - you could still host the space on Android. But you couldn't join as a speaker? I don't think. So. I don't know. I didn't see a huge outcry on Twitter about it, either. But it was more a case of 'Oh, fine. Okay, look, I'm sure it'll be fixed in the next update. This is a bit of an inconvenience.' And then as you said, a lot of people who were trying to speak in spaces couldn't work out what the cause was. But it's really good they fixed it quickly.

Madalyn Sklar 48:30

Right - I think, you know, when that spaces I was in, and people were not able to, we're not able to figure it out. Because you know, when you're in the moment, everybody's not going well, by the way, I'm on an Android. Is it working for you or not? And who is it working for on an iPhone? But it's interesting that there seem to have been some kind of bug and glad they got it fixed. And I didn't see I'm really you in Legion, were the only ones I really saw talking about it that seemed to know that it was Android. So I really appreciate you both noticing that and putting it out there. Because it just seems so odd last week when you know just all these people just were frustrated, not being able to join us speakers.

Morgan Evetts 49:10

Yeah, what is really leading actually he gave me the heads up. So Legion is really up on what's happening not just in the production release, but in the other like beta and alpha tester versions of Twitter. So he he flagged that and also flagged that the fix was included in the betas so we knew it was coming. So yeah, to to follow Legion if you want to.

Madalyn Sklar 49:33

Absolutely. I see legions here later. And thank you for all you do. We all appreciate you so much.

Suze Cooper 49:39

Cindilu Hello! I'm hoping you're gonna talk to me about the location stuff on Clubhouse because you've been clarifying it for us in the in the chat.

Cyndilu 49:47

Yes, I definitely wanted to chime in on that. The location you can literally put any location in to your app in your settings. and it will, eventually not right now, because locations not yet added to houses. But when location is added to houses, it will show you supposedly houses in that location. So you're not actually giving your location to anything but the app, you're not giving it to other people, they can't see where you are. It's only the app itself that can do it. And you can put any location in the world. And it doesn't matter where you are currently located.

Suze Cooper 50:30

Yeah, I actually remember I think when we spoke about this now, now you're saying it, I think Michael did clarify that for us when we spoke about it before. But yeah, it's a great reminder, isn't it? Because it's instantly you see about your location, and you think, oh, everyone's gonna know where I am. And, you know, is that a good thing or not? I mean, as a regular clubhouse, host and user Cindilu, what do you think about the location being added?

Cindilu 50:55

I'm loving it. Because as somebody who lives in New Zealand, in a very rural area, it would be nice to know if there were other people here on the app, who have decided to create a house. So I will definitely make sure that we have a house that has our location for like South Island of New Zealand. I also think that it's going to help people if they're going to go to a city to visit to be able to find out ahead of time, what might be there. Think of in the future, when this is even becomes more like Facebook, everybody's got to have an account, you would be able to as a business, like create a little house and have a place where people can find out what you're doing for business in a location.

Madalyn Sklar 51:46

Thank you to all of our speakers who came on and shared so much great stuff. And we're available in all of your favourite podcast apps. We're out there all things audio, you can also go to all things audio podcast.com as well.

Suze Cooper 52:00

You certainly can. And you can catch us here on Twitter and use the hashtag all things audio, and we'll pick that up throughout the week. So that's it for this week. But thank you so much to everyone that's been here in the space with us and those of you listening, and we'll catch up with you next week. Bye everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai