On the most recent “The Social Nerdia Show!” I had a conversation with  Angela Natividad and Bill Green, the podcasters behind AdVerve.

Angela’s Twitter profile tells us that she is “VP-Marketing, hypios. Ad scribe, Culture Buzz. Hostess, AdVerve. And yes, still the wholesale purveyor of The Sass™.” Bill Green blogs at MTLB (Make the Logo Bigger), a personal favorite, and  has worked with lots of great brands. You might also know them from their work with AdRants and their appearances on The BeanCast.

Listen to the entire conversation with A &B on the Flash player below. Please subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming LIVE shows on blogtalkradio.

Angela and Bill told me that they started AdVerve because they wanted to take ad podcasting in a new direction, to a place where every topic is welcome. “Every topic is about advertising. Advertising surrounds everything, all of the nuances from our culture,” Angela told me. Bill added that they wanted to have a “conversational (podcast) and see where things go, the way ad agencies are, the way creatives actually talk about situations.”

While the show is quite open-ended, both of them emphasized the importance of honesty and respect. “We’re careful about what we talk about on the show. We’re honest but respectful of anything that is confidential,” Bill explained. He told me a story that reflects just how much some advertisers and marketers are still not sure what do do with bloggers and podcasters: “There was an incident on the BeanCast where one of the guests on the show was fired, even though he didn’t say anything incendiary.. It was just a very nervous employer.”

Angela and Bill met through AdRants, a blog and email newsletter that provides “marketing and advertising news with attitude,” published by Steve Hall. “I knew Angela had a style that could transform into a different form,” Bill explained. Today, AdVerve already has 15 shows and its first episode was downloaded over 2,400 times. Regarding the future of the show, Angela told me that they “do see an opportunity for AdVerve to expand.” (more…)

Bob Knorpp is the host of The BeanCast, a weekly round table podcast that gathers advertising and marketing thought leaders (aka actual ad experts) to discuss industry issues and current events. After many years in the ad industry, he started The Cool Beans Group, a marketing consultancy that provides B2B and B2C expertise in branding, strategic thinking, social media, and more. I had a great time talking to Bob on The Social Nerdia Show! and you can about our conversation, including 7 social media insights, below.

You can listen to the show in its unedited greatness using the BlogTalkRadio player, subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and/or streaming it on your mobile phone using Stitcher.

Podcasts are now everywhere and there is one for everything. Bob explained that “the competition (in podcasting) is really steep and there are so many choices… the chances of getting noticed are minuscule.” And yet, The BeanCast has made quite an impression on a lot of people in the ad industry. The show’s forward-looking slogan “The Best Marketing Podcast Anywhere,” is becoming a reality with every weekly show. With only a year and a half of being on the online airwaves, the show has gone from a water cooler experiment to an influential conversation that is a must-listen for anyone even remotely interested in marketing. As Bob told me, “you don’t need to build a huge audience to have impact, you just need to reach the right people.”

Reaching the right people is not enough though. To truly create an impact on a growing audience, Bob makes sure that The BeanCast is entertaining. “As much as I try to present a forum for smart people to present their ideas, my primary objective is to have an entertaining program.. that stimulates conversations.” The payoff of the show is a combination of information, entertainment and relevancy. And that’s probably why The BeanCast is one of my favorite podcasts: it showcases the thought-provoking views of experienced people in the ad industry, without being boring. (more…)

I had the great pleasure of talking with Loic Le Meur, a French blogger, serial entrepreneur, and founder / CEO of Seesmic for The Social Nerdia Show! last night. 

I didn’t only get to ask Loic a few questions, but I also got to do it on his 37th birthday and Le Quatorze Juillet so I am very grateful for the time he took to chat with me. I had no idea that it was Loic’s birthday (or Bastille Day for that matter), but I quickly found out through Twitter.

If you’ve ever used Twitter, chances are that you’ve heard of Seesmic and its very popular Seesmic Desktop (or its Twhirl predecessor), which is not only a fantastic Twitter and Facebook client/app, but also “a tool to manage your community,” as Loic explained to me. Seesmic has been working hard to launch a brand new web-based in-browser app called Seesmic Web that is not yet as good as its Adobe Air brother, but is catching up (in terms of features) and will do so probably sooner than later.

Loic told me about the importance of “not rushing things” and the value of Team Seesmic, a group of 52,000 members that provides Seesmic with feedback. “We build as much as we can, obviously based on demand.. but we have a lot of surprises coming that no one suggested.” 

A Seesmic iPhone app is coming soon (and Loic said it has surprises as well) so I asked him about a potential Palm Pre app. Loic didn’t give me a clear yes or no, but he did say they are “doing other platforms.”

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Cali Lewis is the producer, writer and host of GeekBrief.TV, a video podcast about tech, consumer electronics, and web 2.0. An influential person in the tech community, Cali is also quite down to earth and recently did an awesome job as an organizer of WordCamp Dallas 2009, where I was able to ask her some questions.

In the two videos below, you’ll learn about Cali’s real (but not very googleable) name, her geeky roots, and her transition from self-storage manager to full-time video podcaster.

Cali also told me about having friends not “fans” (with one exception), the exciting future of AR and 4G networks, and the threat that bloggers pose to journalists. Cali is aware that “the internet is not going to wipe out TV, just like TV didn’t wipe out the radio, and the radio didn’t wipe out the newspaper“, but it’s clear that online productions of high quality like GeekBrief.TV are  transforming the way we watch and think of content on the web.

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Netvibes allows anyone to assemble the best of the web in one place. By providing private and public digital dashboards for individuals, personalized pages for brands, and personalized intranet pages for enterprises, it may just be the best personalized start page out there.

CEO Freddy Mini told us about his role in expanding Netvibes, the importance of personalization, and his view on the current stage of the social web.

After you’re done reading, make sure to send Freddy a tweet and add the Social Nerdia Netvibes widget.

 1. Netvibes pioneered the personalized start page, but there are several options these days. What makes Netvibes the best?

Netvibes is the only personalization platform. With Netvibes you don’t customize someone else’s page you’re invited to, you really own the page. entirely. An example: Netvibes doesn’t have a big logo on the upper left corner to remind you you’re at some eelse’s place; at Netvibes you can get rid of the search engine if you’re rather use it separately from your personal page. In addition, Netvibes offers the largest widget gallery with 180,000+ widgets to really find what you are looking for to build your very own page. And finally, Netvibes offers you 2 pages: one private and one public. On the public page, your own URL will welcome all the widgets you’d like to share, like a super profile page. Who can match all this?  

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