One of the biggest names in video shows, Robert Scoble announced he’s leaving PodTech, while on stage at LeWeb3. Actually TechCrunch posted first stating he was leaving for Fast Company. Speculation is he’ll be starting FC’s online TV channel.

Scoble was actually on stage when he saw the story and since his laptop was hooked to the projected screen, the crowd quickly found out.

Scoble left Microsoft as their “unofficial voice” to join PodTech and hosted The Scoble Show underwritten by sponsor Seagate for over a year. Here’s a quick exceprt from Scoble’s very detailed announcement.

Now that PodTech is getting some focus I found that my show needed a new home in order for it to get to the next level, too…

Why not stay at PodTech? PodTech went through a lot of managerial chaos earlier this year and I was trying to help PodTech get to profitability and help it get some focus, business wise. You’ve seen some of those moves already as PodTech has moved away from an editorial focus and toward an corporate media development one, which is where much of PodTech’s revenues (which are in the millions per year now) are coming from. That’s a decision I helped PodTech make and I think they are good ones and will help it avoid the TechCrunch Dead Pool. Companies need a lot of help creating media, so PodTech has a pretty good future opportunity ahead of it, which is why its investors continue to support it.

Flickr photo credit: jdlasica

Posted by Todd Earwood | No Comments »

Many companies talk about customer service and caring about their community, but few walk the walk. Yesterday, Blip had an issue with their upload feature causing frustration with many users.

Rather than hide behind the typical message of “please be patient as we’re experiencing unusually large amounts of support requests”, instead their CEO, Mike Hudack (pictured at left) posted this message.

Our database servers are having a little bit of a temper tantrum right now. As a result we’ve had to temporarily disable uploading. Our database servers are having a little bit of a temper tantrum right now. As a result we’ve had to temporarily disable uploading.

Please call me (my office line is XXX-XXX-XXXX x—-, my cell is XXX-XXX-XXXX) if you have any questions or want to yell at us.

We’ll sound the all-clear ASAP.
UPDATE: We’re almost there guys.
UPDATE 6:35PM: Everything’s restored. Sorry about that!

Have you ever seen a CEO give out his direct line much less his cell phone?!? And how did these angry customers respond? With praise not pressuring complaints! Other companies need to take note on how to handle a crisis. Check out these great comments on Blip’s outage.

A great example of how the best-in-class are only truly revealed when things go wrong. - Craig

When you have to disable uploading, you probably expect to hear complaints… That’s why I thought I’d take this opportunity to say that Blip.tv rocks. You guys are awesome and you’re offering an awesome service. - Tommy

Flickr photo credit: redgibbo

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I briefly met David Dundas, founder of YouAre.tv at last year’s SXSW. His pitch was quality indie video creators need a better distribution channel. Watch his pitch at the January 2007 NY Video 2.0 Meetup  for a deeper explanation.

In theory, the quality community sounded great, but obviously a few things didn’t go as planned. With a short blog post today, they announced the site it is up for sale. Their post title “It’s Not You… It’s Us” explained they want the community to continue, but feel another group can extend its growth.

We started YouAreTV as a platform top help Indie content creators get their stuff out there. That’s why it was especially difficult to put the company up for sale today. In short we’ve put the company up for sale because we believe that there is a company that can more aptly sustain and grow the community.

The starting bid is $25,000 and the eBay listing claims they’ve had a $100,000 offer from a major media company just for the name (bet that looks pretty good now). For anyone interested, here are a few traffic metrics from their previous month.

• 19K Uniques (Mostly New Visitors)
• 23k Flash Streams not remote downloads from other sites.
• 56k Page Views

Posted by Todd Earwood | No Comments »

Oh no, not another million dollar pixel site you say? But Million Dollar Web TV has video in its name, so this one will work, right? Wrong. As if we didn’t know, their post today shows(see below) they’re not so sure a million is in its future. Kudos for the transparency, but please find a new idea!

As you can well imagine, we are in the process of reassessing the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. Rev-up social bookmarking? Use direct visitor acquisition? Guerilla marketing? Advertise in MediaPost? A contest for affiliates? We’ll evaluate these and other venues this month to find the best mix.

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