WordPress Launches Phone in Your Blog
Our host today is Suzanne Vara. If you're interested in getting in front of the readers of Site Sketch 101, check out our guest posting invitation here.
WordPress has teamed up with Twilio, a communications and voice application, to create Phone In Your Blog. This new feature gives WordPress.com users yet another means of posting a blog.
Previously, users were able to submit their blogs via their WP dashboard, email and of course your phone app. Earlier this week, Automattic, creators of WordPress.com acquired Plinky, an app that seeks to end writer’s block forever by prompting users with a question, a request, or a challenge daily. Users then respond with text, photos and/or multimedia that appears on their WordPress blog.
Phone In Your Blog
Phone in your blog, which has not yet been termed Phlog, is simple to setup from your WP dashboard by clicking “My Blogs” tab and enable “Post By Voice.” Users will be given a special number and code to call and record a blog. The audio file will be posted to your blog. The recording time is 60 minutes.
The free recording time of 60 minutes appears to be an introductory offer as according to Matt at WordPress.com, ”… that limit may go down without a paid upgrade in the future.”
The Phone In Your Blog is a wonderful feature for those that are more comfortable with voice as opposed to video or creating a typed post. On the flip side, we may be treated to some wild blogs in the wee hours of the night after a few cocktails.
This is only being offered for WordPress.com blogs so if you are interested in trying this out and have a self hosted blog, you will have to create a new free blog or wait for this to catch on and become intergrated to the self hosted side of the WordPress family.
What do you think? Will you use this?
Rob said:
I love how Sitesketch101 has turned into a replica of Mashable. I’m sorry, but I want to learn more of blogging tips instead of seeing reposts of Mashable.
(Wrong email, last one)
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Aminul Islam Sajib said:
This is kind of true. But publishing only blogging tips and tricks will make any site less active as it takes time to come up with a tips rather then news which happens almost everyday.
I don’t have problem with news, though. But I know that majority of sitesketch audience are here to learn blogging tips. So I think Nick should be careful about losing readers.
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Rob said:
Well, certainly. But look at the tagline of Sitesketch101 “Teaching you to blog with passion and power” updating me about me with something like this doesn’t fall in either category, especially when the SAME article can be found on Mashable. (Which I saw it)
Also take a look at Blogussion, blog is updated regularly with amazing well written content and continued to grow with a great community.
Keith said:
Rob!
Ok, let’s attack these one at a time:
I don’t care if Mashable posted about this, I don’t read Mashable so I didn’t know about it until I saw this post.
Second, this post IS about blogging! From your phone, but it has to do with blogging and WordPress, which to me IS a blog tip.
Third, I think Blogussion isn’t that great of a site, and I know you and Alex are all buddy buddy, but the last few posts I read there were crap, and were just trying to bait people with controversy. (especially the one about “don’t blog about blogging”)
Fourth, who are you to tell Nick what his readers want? Worry about your own readers.
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Alex | Blogussion.com said:
Sorry you think that Keith, but I would love to hear a more well thought-out reason for why my site is crap. Anything I can do to make it better.
I think both posts made valid points, and they were posted for more than “baiting people with controversy.” I mean, if you think you can make some arguments, I’d love to have you over there joining in the discussions. Or you can just give a reason for why you hated the articles so much, I’d appreciate it.
(Sorry to get off-topic Nick & Suzanne)
Nicholas Cardot said:
I don’t mind, Alex. You know my opinion of your site. You’ve got a great site in my opinion.
Keith said:
First Alex, I never said you “site” was crap, it is a great looking site. The last few posts I read didn’t impress me, but unfortunately they didn’t come from you.
One was about marketing being king (which I wrote a post to say my feelings about it) and the last one I read there was about people blogging about blogging. Which is what I do, it’s what Nick does, it’s what YOU do as well.
And finally, it was completely out of line for Rob to leave a comment suggesting another reader come to your site because it has better content and community. So, maybe I got frustrated due to that as well.
I don’t have anything against Blogussion, and occasionally I pop in (when time allows)to see what’s going on. And like I said, the posts I was referring to weren’t written by you, but they are on your site.
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Aminul Islam Sajib said:
Keith, I also agree with what you told here. This particular post is somehow related to blogging. But I’m replying you just because I don’t think your fourth point is fair. You’re asking who he is to tell Nick what Nick’s readers want. Come on man, he IS (as you capitalized) one of the readers. He IS a reader. So he has his rights and it is totally fair to express what he wants and what he doesn’t; no matter if that has lots of supporters or not.
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Keith said:
Actually I know Rob, and he has been way to busy to be reading ANY blogs lately. But I have a good feeling I know why he came over here and suddenly lashed out at Nick, who I “thought” was also his friend.
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Suzanne Vara said:
Rob
The good thing about news is that it appears on a lot of blogs as each blog has a different audience.
Not only as a contributor but also as a reader of this blog, I find that news stories are useful and they relate to social media and bloggig. It is not only important to cover blogging tips but also to speak about the user experience as well as the SM platforms they are shared on.
And thank you for the comparison to Mashable. That is a high honor.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
1. Rob, I’m not sure why you’re having trouble making the connection between blogging and a new feature being announced for the WordPress.com platform. It seems like this news and blogging go hand in hand and if you were to take a glance back through the news that we’ve been posting, it’s all relevant to blogging not just social media like Mashable.
2. I really enjoy a lot of the material that I find at Mashable so if this blog becomes in some small way a little bit more like Mashabl…I don’t mind at all. This blog is a reflection of its author…me. If that’s what I like…that’s what I post. If you don’t like it then you are welcome to go back and read the top notch material being produced over at Rob’s Web Tips.
3. I agree that Blogussion is a terrific website. Alex is a terrific guy who does an absolutely terrific job. With that being said, who are you to demand that I sculpt my content pattern after them rather than after the pattern that I as the creator of this site prefer.
The bottom line is that if you don’t care for the content, you know how to remove us from your reader. I hope that doesn’t happen but you’ve made it pretty clear that you have something against me or my site and I’m very sorry that it has to be that way.
Aminul Islam Sajib said:
These WordPress folks are taking over the world. I love them.
Amit Sodha - The Power Of Choice said:
Sounds interesting. When it does become a self hosted option I’ll definitely look into it. I see this and something that would probably go better with micro blogging rather than full scale blogging.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
I agree. This might be a terrific way to create a podcast for a blog or something like that as well. It would also be great for people who wanted to created recordings away from their computer. Maybe a gardener could be walking through his garden teaching a lesson about Tomatoes or something like that. I think that it definitely has some positive potential especially when/if it comes to self hosted blogs.
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:
OK un-confuse me if you would.
All sorts of things hitting WP.com; huh??
Are there THAT many more .com users over .org self hosted, or is it just a case of “try it on the free first”?
Any ideas?
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Suzanne Vara said:
Dennis
I am not sure of the ratio of the .com vs the .org but my thought would be that the .com is on their server and the .org is on various others. I am not sure how this would affect their decision to only have it on .com.
It could be that posterous is doing the 15 day challenge to get users to go over there.
Nonetheless, it seems as if they are really tying to make this platform much more interactive and user friendly.
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Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:
Then perhaps they should lighten up a bit. Their TOS is starting to rival Googles. LOL
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Anne Moss said:
Hmmmm. Now, if they had a way to create a transcript of the voice…
I never bother going through video or voice posts myself, so no chance of me making any.
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Reza Winandar said:
Wow! This feature is very cool! But I think phone blogging will be an expensive things to do in my country due the high tariffs of phone activities
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Thomas Frank said:
This seems like a pretty cool product, but if the dictation technology isn’t loads better than the other offerings on the market, I feel like I’d be going into every posts and editing the heck out of it. However, my blog isn’t terribly personal, so maybe I just craft my content more carefully than I would if it were personal rambling. I’m sure you’d agree with this, Nick – you probably wouldn’t use this to post on Site Sketch without doing heavy editing.
However, one idea that DOES excite me is the prospect of something like this being able to post to my Post Ideas plugin. This would eliminate the need for me to record my ideas into Evernote and then transfer them over myself.
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