Do people really just want summaries? There are
times when just the highlights are fine. If I
miss the Yankee game, for example, I'm not going
to watch the entire 2 -3 hour game. The excitement
for me is watching it play out live before there's
an outcome to know. If the game is over, I'm
happy to watch the highlights. On rare occasion,
there's a movie I'm tangentially interested in,
but don't feel like watching. So I might just
read the summary to know what happens. Many people
will think this is blasphemy, but I did that
with Breaking Bad. I did not care about that
show until I just read how it ended. But most
of the time when we consume content, we're doing
it for more than just the dry regurgitation of
facts. This is why I hate services like Blinkist.
You're not reading a book. You are listening
to a book report. But let's put a pin in that
for a minute. Because I read a few months ago
about a new app that I thought I would just kind
of ignore. And then I started hearing more people
talk about it and the idea of feeding long form
content into things like Google LM. so that they
could just get the summaries. So first, what
is Sonar? Sonar is an iOS app I learned about
a couple months ago that claims to do something
fairly impressive. You give it a prompt on the
type of content you're interested in listening
to and then it clips a bunch of podcasts and
seamlessly, seamlessly in heavy quotes here,
edits them together. The idea is that you don't
have to listen to an entire podcast, just the
highlights. The problem is it promises what Blinkist
promises, a dry regurgitation of facts from the
content. And most of us don't consume content
just for facts. And as a quick sidebar here,
I did try this and it was really, at least when
I tried it, only for sports. Basically. And so
I thought, all right, well, let's let's get a
Yankees. I'm a Yankee. I'm a Yankee fan. And
it gave me so you can get an idea of when I actually
tried this. It gave me a bunch of like really
douchey broey podcasters talking about how happy
they were that Garrett Cole needed Tommy John
surgery, which even if you don't like the Yankees,
Being happy that somebody is getting surgery
that will put them out of their job for a year
or more is just like a gross, like you're a gross
human being if you are happy about that. So like.
This is part of the problem, right? I don't know
if that guy or those guys were joking. They probably
weren't, but I don't have any of their personality
and we do it. We consume content for the personality
that goes along with the facts. We could just
Google facts or ask ChatGPT facts. But an author's
personality is what makes a book worth reading.
A host's personality is what makes the show worth
listening to. One of my new favorite podcasts
is The Rest is History. New to me, not new in
the course of podcasts. But one of my favorite
podcasts is The Rest is History. They'll do deep
dives on all sorts of historical events. They
actually did America in the 1960s last year leading
up to the U .S. election. And it was fascinating.
I could have just read the Wikipedia page on
the 1960s. But what fun is that? I got to listen
to, I think it was a six part series. with two
history buffs, both British, so like that was
also a really interesting perspective, talking
about this and adding their personality and perspective
to it. Sonar threatens to do what AI writ large
threatens to do to content. Remove the personality
in the service of spitting out facts. But it
also highlights a much bigger problem in the
content creation world. And that's that most
content doesn't strike the right balance. There
is a reason Blinkist is popular and that Sonar
might take off. Very few content creators, authors,
writers, whatever, strike the right balance between
facts and personality. My friend Justin Moore
does this exceedingly well in his book Sponsor
Magnet. The Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast
and How We Made Your Mother both do this very
well in audio form. But most business books are
fluff and most podcasts are meandering unstructured
messes. This Is Strategy by Seth Godin, considered
one of the greatest marketers of our time. His
latest book This Is Strategy is literally just
blog posts. It's just blog posts. Fake Doctors
Real Friends, a Scrubs Rewatch podcast, which
I was really excited about because Scrubs is
one of my favorite shows, spent little time,
very little time on the actual episodes. And
so I stopped listening to that. Maybe it's gotten
better, but I stopped listening to it. The main
difference between Sponsor Magnet and Lonely
Island and Seth Meyers podcast versus this is
strategy and fake doctors real friends, is the
former ads personality while delivering on their
promise. The latter do not. So what can you do?
Well, you can make content for your audience.
This sounds simple, but something I've learned
both from podcasting for over a decade and from
coaching podcasters. is we don't do a good job
of defining our audience. I am convinced Seth
Godin could tell me that this is not true to
my face, but I am still convinced Seth Godin
put together this strategy as a way to monetize
his blog and nothing else. Zach Braff and Donald
Faison, two guys who I think are great, I love
their work, but they basically treated the podcast
as a public way to catch up with each other and
their friends. The best thing you can do is have
a great answer to the question, who am I talking
to? My friend Seth Silvers says that you should
act as if you're talking to one person. Picture
them and create content just for them. Make them
a promise and deliver. So I realize I've formed
this opinion by putting in very little time with
Sonar. But my concerns about the direction of
content creation started with AI when it began.
And I'm worried that it's just kind of starting
to sound generic as a whole. So perhaps it's
time for me to revisit Sonar. Maybe I'll like
the format. Or even better, perhaps I'll discover
some more podcasts to actually listen to. That's
it for this episode of Streamline Podcaster.
I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think
about this or any topic, how AI is affecting
content creation. You can write in over at streamlinedfeedback
.com. That's streamlined with a D feedback .com.
Thanks so much for listening and until next time,
I hope you find some space in your week.