Waxxi - Social Podcasting

There’s a lot of experimentation going on right now, applying a “social spin” to new and existing technologies to generate new uses.  Frank Gruber has an interesting post on a new company, Waxxi, which is launching an interactive podcasting capability. 

The basic concept is that Waxxi will host a scheduled interactive podcasting event, where participants can call in and participate.  The audio portion will be augmented by an IM stream as well.

Waxxi’s first interactive podcast will occur May 20, 2006 at 10:30 am PST / 1:30 EST.  The podcast will feature Robert Scoble (Microsoft’s best known blogger) and consultant Shel Israel, co-authors of the business blogging book Naked Conversations.  You can register for the podcast at the Waxxi site.

As Michael Arrington points out, there could be a few hiccups in this podcast, depending upon the number of participants and the level and methods of moderation.

That being said, this could be an interesting vehicle for content providers and conference companies.  Today’s webinars tend to be uni-directional – just a talking head clicking through PowerPoint slides.  If you can leverage your community of users to create an interactive dialog, that could be very compelling.  And, since the end results are captured as a podcast, you can develop a collection of interesting audio content for your users.