Specialization of Sites


Almost a year ago I decided to integrate my podcast sites into this single blog site. The thinking was that I would eliminate the other sites over time and have everything I do integrated into this site. I would provide an overview of the podcast episode and a widget for playing the podcast right on this site. I've been doing that but I didn't get rid on the other sites and ended up simply doing more work and perhaps not providing much value to you the readers/listeners of my stuff. I also observed the communities that interact with the two podcasts and on this site and determined that they are to some degree quite different. While the UXDesignCast podcast has listeners who are in the user experience design set of disciplines or planning to be, the Life Habits podcast has an amazingly diverse audience of listeners only a small portion of which overlap with the audience of the UXDesignCast one. Although I'm the common denominator, the two different audiences shouldn't necessarily hang out at the same place nor would they want to. It's like throwing a party and inviting all of your friends even though one subgroup of friends has very little in common with those in the other subgroup. I think we need to start to think about social sites like this not only with regard to the information they provide and the users consuming that information but also the community or communities who provide input and share their own information as well.

I'm now planning to back to reserving this blog for true blogging and keeping the podcast show notes sites for the specific communities who listen to those shows. So, the Life Habits podcast can be found at lifehabits.net as well as on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace. The UXDesignCast podcast can be found at uxdesigncast.com as well as on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace as well. In addition, we now also include the UXDesignCast podcast episodes on the ibm.com/design site as well in the resources section. In the end it may well be less work for me and simpler and more enjoyable for you. I also still have the UXDesignCast and Life Habits podcast latest episodes available on this site in the right column.

As always, I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts you may have on this.