Redefining and Retooling Secondcast

Over a year ago, myself, Johnny Ming, Cristiano Midnight, and Walker Spaight launched Secondcast , one of the first podcasts about Second Life. A few episodes later, we added on Torrid Midnight. The rest is podcast history. Thus far we’ve recorded over 60 episodes, and average tens thousands of downloads a week.

When we started, Second Life was much, much different. There were less than 50,000 active users of SL (compared to 1.75 million now), almost no podcasts about it, and only 2000 signups a day. The community was still small enough that not enough news was generated to make it a staple of every podcast. Corporations weren’t really moving into SL, save for a few stragglers (Wells Fargo, for instance). We all had different jobs.

Today, 4 out of the 5 original hosts work either directly or indirectly for metaverse development companies. There are podcasts about SL everywhere, including daily news roundups. The 8500+ sims of SL simulate an area of land larger than metropolitan Orlando, Florida. There are over 250 blogs about SL that people can read.
If you’re a longtime listener of Secondcast, you know that quality has been… let’s say iffy at best lately. Missed deadlines, lowered frequency of episodes, the departure of Torrid (come back Torrid!), boring subject matter.

The fact of the matter is, we’re kinda stuck in neutral. Most of us log into SL now to work, not to screw around. We’re too busy to see what the community is really up to, minus corporate press releases and the occasional fluffy guest. Fluffy guests and press releases make for a stifingly boring podcast.
I won’t lie; some of us are getting bored. I still love doing Secondcast, but getting everyone to agree to a time to do it is becoming difficult, doubly so because we never know what we’re doing for the show. Secondcast has always been about fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants journalism/entertainment, but if we don’t have a solid recording plan, things go south (unless we’re very fortunate). If it’s a show about some new corporation/project done by one of the metaverse development companies, I pretty much tune out. Yes, during recording. You know I’m bored of the subject matter if you don’t hear me make any sort of joke or counter-argument for a while: chances are I’m surfing the ‘net while everyone else asks the questions.

So what I’m asking is, what would you guys, the longtime listeners of Secondcast, like for us to become? Be as creative as you’d like; more guests, less hosts (firing some of us), new hosts (replacing some of us), new format (video, call-in, audience-based, blog based) ?

I still love Secondcast; it’s generally one of the highlights of an otherwise very busy week. I want to continue doing it, but it doesn’t mean much if nobody’s around to listen to us ramble on about Radio Shacks and Chuckie Cheeses.

What should we do? We’re listening.

imo secondcast is very dry and boring, with too much focus on corporate this and that.
id find it more appealing if it was confrontational, although not sensationalist. perhaps having some purpose such as driving change and so on, rather than harping on about some unheard of corporations meta vision and such.
as it is, secondcast is as exciting as church service.

I think it's awesome that you're asking...

First: I find the long format prohibitive. I'd be a lot more likely to re-engage with shorter interviews for starters. Also, I never hear about new podcasts coming up so I (honestly) forgot about Secondcast for a long time. But that's probably because I wasn't looking for it - although in theory, I shouldn't have to I guess.

Second: In my opinion, being "too busy to know what the community is really up to" is probably your biggest issue. Same thing that happens to the corporates in SL...and same thing that keeps their islands nearly empty after the initial launch, save a few.

Sounds like you need to hire some fresh blood - particularly people who don't work for development companies; get a new marketing strategy (again, I meet a lot of new residents and this could be something interesting for them); shorten the length up some.

All just my $0.02.

Add a Role Playing gossip columnist to the lineup. Let them chatter about the latest scandals on the scads of RP sims that have grown through the years. Talk about netting a wide and varied audience *grin*

Put together a voxpop segment - pose a question and let others send you their short replies (:10 sec or less) in the format of your choice. Edit them together as a package.

And since griefing continues to be, and will always be, a problem in SL...perhaps a regular focus on dealing with *sshats you encounter in-world.

I have never heard of it or if I did I had no clue what it.
I bet there tons of others in similar shoes.

I enjoy your current format of discussing recent news items - these certainly come up on the forums and blogs, but being able to come to a clear presentation of the facts from all angles has been one of the main reasons why I prefer to listen to your podcast and haven't quit in search of others.

I've also enjoyed your interviews and field trips a lot - you bring up a lot of interesting topics that I don't think would ever have thought about had I not listened.

That said, I find that it's very easy for so many cast members and cohosts to lose interest during the podcast because perhaps they don't have much to say. I may be wrong, but over the last few episodes, I've been finding guest cohosts do add to the conversation, but don't really take an active 'hosting' role to a major degree. To that end, I'm not really sure what the goal is except to add to the existing cast where you (in the collective sense) might feel you are lacking. Why not truly let a guest host be a host?

I don't mean to belittle anyone's role here - I am simply coming at it from a time management point of view. Your intro/news item/interview format seems to be a good one, in my opinion. Formalizing it and having guest hosts prepare their content based on it could probably help lessen the load and freshen the content.

Beyond that, I think the length of most of your episodes is good - in some cases, I even find them a bit short. 50-60 mins seems to really turn out some great, well rounded debate, and coming from a listener's point of view, it really helps to stay concentrated on a major topic of debate rather than having to track down every little tidbit or opinion on the various forums or blogs.

We've had a voice line for about 6 months now -- people can call toll free to a voicemail line that we then pipe into the recordings post-production. Almost nobody uses it.

Been listening since I came to SL back in v1.06

First Podcast I ever listened to. Come to think of it.... it's the only one I listen to.

What about doing less "Corporate" stuff & doing more about other places on the Grid?

(and I miss Torid's lovely voice too!)

** Had to correct the version. I knew something was bugging me **

When I first heard of Second Cast, and the hosts that were putting it on, I thought to myself "Wow, what a neat idea."

That said, I have yet to catch an actual Second Cast episode. Call it a little bit of lazyness on my part, and perhaps you could chalk a little bit up to ignorance too... but in general, I've never really been motivated to listen because I was under the impression that the content was not such that interested me directly. Of course, without actually checking it out - how could I really know that for sure?

If I haven't checked it out for those silly reasons, perhaps others haven't either.

So... what could you do differently, that would perk my interest, and make me want to check it out? (And I'm using 'differently' very loosely here - cause its very possible you're already doing these things)

-Do a forum roundup segment. Nearly every week, there's some sort of issue the community is talking about, with heavy post activity. I call it the 'Drama of the Week'. Why not scan the major SL forums, look for what's being talked about, and discuss it on the show? Bonus points if you can either take a neutral stance on the issue - or have opposing views to share & discuss.

-Define your target audience. If its 'all of SL', you really need to cover topics the average SL resident would be interested in, rather than (as Tod69 put it..) 'Corparate Interests'. It doesn't neccesarily need to be something low-brow... but I have a feeling that the cumulative hosts of Second Cast represent a specific, and narrow slice of the SL community. If you intend your target audience to be narrow, there's nothing wrong with that - but you should set your expectations accordingly as well.

-A "Torley Circa 2005" on your crew couldn't hurt. I have no idea who that'd be.. but someone who floats around the grid looking for the new and interesting, and bringing it back to the panel at Second Cast for discussion.


Overall - if you take away nothing else... I think defining your audience is key. *If* you want that target to be really broad, what I quoted you on above probably isn't helping, unfortunately.

Hope the comments are useful & keep up the good work, LF!

That's at least 20% of the reason I listen Very lovely indeed.

I don't care so much for the corporate talk, I'm just not terribly interested. But I love the humorous segments, and I was particularly entertained by the chaos and spontaneity of the Samurai Island episode, for instance.

I'd love to see more of the "this is where we are and what we're trying out today" episodes, though I understand that is not easy to do consistently.

Another thing that would be kind of fun for some, is sound bites for gestures and the like... On the Samurai Island one, there was a part where Esprite was saying "I've seen some cases where we have someone get like 1,000 kills in a month because they are really good at this and have absolutely no lives", which was cut into a sound bite and passed along to many of the SI regulars. There were other great ones in that broadcast as well, like where one of you was asking if he could kill Twilight Portola. Out of context quotes and soundbites could be grabbed during post-production that might be kind of interesting for some of us Just a thought, we can always do that ourselves too.

Going to RP sims and the like is good for advertising as well, since the "regulars" start a buzz going about a podcast "in progress", and then pass the SecondCast URL around, and those regulars keep checking back over and over till you post it. It helps them feel involved ("Look ma! I'm on teh intarwebz", and of course it obviously has relevance with something they are already interested in

Keep up the good work!

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