MOBILE PODCASTING FOR EMPLOYEES

Microsoft employ­ees can use an “inter­nal YouTube” plat­form to cre­ate pod­casts, lis­ten to oth­er pod­casts that are cre­at­ed by fel­low employ­ees, and even rate and com­ment on the dig­i­tal files using Web 2.0 technology.

Three years ago, Microsoft launched Acad­e­my Mobile, which is now host­ing thou­sands of employ­ee-gen­er­at­ed pod­casts. The idea behind the plat­form is that any one of Microsoft’s 90,000 employ­ees can share exper­tise with each oth­er. Pao­lo Tosoli­ni, a social video con­sul­tant who launched the ini­tia­tive for Microsoft, was one of the speak­ers at the recent Writ­er­sUA conference.

Here are some of the highlights:

Employ­ees gen­er­ate the con­tent. Any Microsoft employ­ee can share exper­tise on a giv­en sub­ject and upload it to the secure plat­form. Employ­ees have cre­at­ed 19,000 pod­casts to date, there are 800 new uploads each month, and 90,000 down­loads on a month­ly basis.

Pod­cast­ing tools are sup­plied. Microsoft pro­vides each employ­ee with all the audio and video tools need­ed for free as long as the employ­ee agrees to cre­ate three pod­casts per month.

Rewards pro­gram. Each employ­ee earns “points” for each pod­cast pub­lished and addi­tion­al points when anoth­er employ­ee views it. Points can be used to redeem gifts.

Plat­form takes advan­tage of Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies. Acad­e­my Mobile is built on Microsoft Share­Point but the user inter­face looks dis­tinct from Microsoft’s oth­er cor­po­rate sites. Pao­lo referred to the site as an “inter­nal YouTube” site. Employ­ees can take advan­tage of Real­ly Sim­ple Syn­di­ca­tion (RSS), com­ments, and peer rat­ing of each podcast.

Employ­ees can down­load the pod­casts to a vari­ety of devices. Being Microsoft, you might expect that employ­ees would only be able to down­load con­tent to devices like Microsoft’s own Zune MP3 play­er. But Pao­lo not­ed that Acad­e­my Mobile con­vinced man­age­ment that pod­casts should be com­pat­i­ble with all sorts of devices—including iPhones—so that employ­ees can eas­i­ly lis­ten to the content.

Microsoft’s Acad­e­my Mobile appears to be one inno­v­a­tive way that orga­ni­za­tions can har­ness the exper­tise of their peo­ple. If I was dri­ving to work, I’d def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast and tak­ing advan­tage of Acad­e­my Mobile.