Aaron Strout:             

I’d like to introduce today’s special guest, founder and CEO of Utterz, Michael Bayer – Michael, welcome. 

Michael Bayer:           

Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Strout:             

So Michael, you have created a product called Utterz that has been very well received in the social media circles.  You and I actually met I think five or six months ago, just as you were launching Utterz.  It was an exciting tool.  I tried it out a little bit.  I played with it a little bit since then and I think subsequently it’s seen a lot of pickup, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you today.  Do me a favor and tell me a little bit about yourself, what you did prior to founding Utterz, and then we’ll go through a series of questions and ask a little bit about the product. 

Michael Bayer:           

Sure.  Thanks for giving me the time to chat today.  My background is in technology – several companies in technology, actually – in various elements of it starting out in consumer telecoms many years ago.  I had an internet e-tailer that I helped start called mothernature.com, went to another company called SoundBite, which was in the voice messaging space, and that’s actually where I met my cofounders Randy Corke and Paul Gagne.  Then went on to, of all things, an optical networking company, and then a storage software company, and now here I am back into a consumer business, a consumer telecom, and internet technology is coming together with Utterz. 

Aaron Strout:             

Great, interesting background, particularly the mothernature.com.  I remember mothernature.com, actually.  I date myself a little bit.  Tell us a little bit about the product.  I know I’ve used it to do some podcasting, but I know that there are more dimensions to it.  What prompted you to develop it and talk a little bit about what it is and how people are using it?

Michael Bayer:           

Sure.  We’ve been thinking about ways to leverage these really cool devices that people have in their hands for quite some time, applying what we know about group communications, and telephony, and internet technologies, and trying to come up with services that we could offer that would really allow people to make full use of the phone they have in their hand.  Utterz is the easiest way to instantly share your thoughts and experiences with your friends and followers from wherever you are, and what we’ve done is created a service that’s all about user empowerment.  We let you the user, decide how, when, and where you wanna communicate. 

We will take in voice, video, pictures, text, however you want, in any combination, and then we let your friends and followers choose how they wanna consume your content, and then let them reply from wherever they are however they want.  So what we’ve done is woven together the mobile phone experience, the mobile web experience, and then the online PC experience to enable online conversations, and we do all of this using any mobile phone, or any PC without any special clients or software that goes on it.  It really gets back to the roots of all the founders; again, in voice telephony, and group communications, and messaging as a way to leverage today’s technologies, which are having mobile voice, mobile web, and PC, and digital media all converging, and we’ve launched a service to enable all those to come together. 

Aaron Strout:             

So Utterz has been out for several months now.  What has surprised you most about – is it how rapidly people are adopting it?  Are they using it in different ways than you originally expected?  Give us a little bit of insight into that.

Michael Bayer:           

Sure.  I guess I’m always most impressed by the power of communities, I guess that’s what we call a Web 2.0, to come up with unique and interesting things to do with every service that’s coming out.  We had envisioned lots of use cases and certainly when we went out and did our venture pitch, and put the whole company together, we thought we knew what our users would do with our service.  It turns out they find new things to do with it every single day that range from the things that we thought they would be doing, like on the spot reporting and reporting from conferences, and political rallies, and things like that, to having conversations about current events and things that are going on in society, and then unique, everyday moments. 

When we launched, I would not have thought that a mother would be announcing her new baby right from the delivery room.  I would not have thought of the story of a young lady who was stuck on an elevator for a couple of hours, and she was going back and forth with her friends just so she could keep in touch while she was stuck, and also amazed that she had cell phone service while she was stuck in the elevator, but that’s an extra side.  I guess it’s the breadth of experiences that we’ve seen people share on Utterz that surprises us most.

Aaron Strout:             

Now Michael, every product has its tipping point, to reiterate a term that Malcolm Gladwell coined.  I believe you mentioned that you’ve got some major traction at PodCamp Boston.  Was that your tipping point?  If not, what really pushed you guys over the edge to start to get some traction in the social media space?

Michael Bayer:           

I think there were two events that happened in rapid succession.  PodCamp Boston was one, and certainly a quick shout out to Chris Bogan and all the folks that organized that for helping create awareness for others at that time, and then right around the same time we were at Blog World, which was the first show of its kind, Blog World Expo, and at both of those, we were able to create some awareness with a service which was pretty new, pretty exciting, and gave bloggers a new set of capabilities that they haven’t had all in one place before, and so those two events really were the start of building out the Utterz community, and we’ve continued to grow since then. 

Aaron Strout:             

Now you and I were able to attend Bryan Person’s Social Media Breakfast this morning, and the main focus of it was how Twitter has changed my life, and there was a little bit of a tongue in cheek attitude towards having that, but a lot of the folks that do attend the Social Media Breakfast in Boston are folks that are active on Twitter.  I would think that there’s been some element of success beyond the other items that you mentioned, both Seesmic, which is I’ll say the video equivalent to what you do, as well as Utterz, have really benefited from people using the multichannel of not just text, but voice and video.  You talk a little bit about your experience with Twitter, and was that unexpected that you got picked up as quickly as you did through that tool?

Michael Bayer:           

Sure, I think the value of Twitter has been around awareness within the social media community because we offer our users a connection out to whatever social network or networks they’re already part of, and help enhance that existing relationship that they have.  We’ve been able to leverage many of our users, leveraging their Twitter connections to create awareness for Utterz, so whenever I Utter, I automatically have a tweak done by Utterz that I have just Uttered, and my followers can see that, and they can come back and see it on utterz.com, and likewise, it can go out onto many other networks, by blog on WordPress, by blog on TypePad, by LiveJournal, and so on, so by being this agnostic technology that allows people to publish on Utterz, but also in the social networks they’re already part of, we help enhance the value of those existing social networks.  You ask what’s the power of creating awareness in Twitter, well, a lot of the folks in the social media committee watch Twitter very carefully, and when they see many of our users whom they follow in turn starting to Utter, it’s created awareness, and quite a draw onto Utterz to start using it as a publishing platform as well. 

Aaron Strout:             

So you brought up an interesting point in your answer, and that is that you’ve gone the agnostic route, one that I think a lot of smart companies are seeking out, because you get almost instantaneous mass distribution, you’re building on the backs of well established platforms like Facebook, blogging tools, things like Twitter.  How does that work when you’re monetizing it, so obviously as you build a business plan, I think you’ve said it’s worked a little bit differently than you originally thought.  How do you monetize that?  How can you take advantage, and I ask this for a very specific reason, because I think there are a lot of companies that love the concept of widgetizing, but you do run the risk of being disintermediated a little bit from your end users by piggybacking on some of these other services.

Michael Bayer:           

I guess we combine the benefits of enhancing existing social network connections with creating an environment where there is a community that creates Utterz as a destination on its own, so I don’t wanna suggest that people don’t come to Utterz for Utterz sake.  Quite the contrary, there’s a vibrant community on Utterz.  We’re not asking people to give up their existing connections.  We want to enhance those, and over time I think it’s seen that there’s a nice community on Utterz as well. 

I think today we are entirely focused on building our customer base, so we’re offering Utterz as a free service, but you’re right, companies have to make money, and it’s important that we have built Utterz knowingly transitioning to commoditization at some point in the future.  We will later on be capitalizing on incoming texts, advertising both online and over the phone, because we have a number of touch points with our users, also offering premium services, for example, tiered storage and capacity, customizable and personalizable interfaces, widgets, and so on, and then as we move towards additional group communications and collaboration capabilities as we move forward, there are enterprise applications that we can leverage where it’s not just a consumer communication platform, but a more professional business oriented one.  All of those are ways that we look at monetizing in the future.

Aaron Strout:             

Great, so my last business question was around that.  What’s next?  It sounds like you’ve talked about some of the ways that you see Utterz growing in the future.  Anything in addition to those particular items you’ve got on your road map that you’ve like to share with folks listening in?

Michael Bayer:           

Well sure.  I think you’re aware of our most recent release, but just to make sure that we’ve touched all of those, Utterz has for quite some time been able to take any media off of a mobile phone and upload various types from a PC.  What we’ve done in our recent release is add onto that to enable Utterz to import from webcam, provided support for PC mic, again, with our focus on anytime, anywhere, anyhow you wanna do it, you make the choice of how you wanna communicate and we’ll make that work for you.  Along with this, we’ve added this capability to have threaded conversations, enabling people to engage in a dialogue over the web.  You mentioned a few point solutions for different media types a little earlier, and lots of those are evolving. 

There are times when I wanna use a 140 character message to communicate.  There are times I wanna use a video, times I wanna use a picture.  Sometimes audio’s best, sometimes the combination of these types.  We’re not gonna presume to choose how our users wanna communicate. 

Let them choose the media type and combination that’s right for them at that moment, and then let their friends and followers choose how they wanna consume it, whether over the phone, whether in front of the PC, or some combination of the two.  We also extended our platform to provide international support.  We started out with about 20 countries worldwide where there are now local dial ins for others, and we’re starting to see some pick up by global users, which is just great to see, and we’ll be expanding that footprint, and as we move forward, we’ll be extending these capabilities more towards group and collaboration capabilities, allowing groups of people to engage in dialogue, in multimedia dialogue conversation more easily, leveraging Utterz.

Aaron Strout:             

So that sounds great and I like that philosophy of the multichannel.  I’m a big believer in what I’ll call right channeling.  I actually stole that term from a friend of mine, Ron Shevlin, who worked at Forrester for a while, Forrester Research, and then moved over to Epsilon, but I think it’s essential, and I think that’s the beauty of all the channels that are erupting now, is that you just have so many choices, and it allows you to express yourself the way you want to.  I do have two final questions for you, and I guess the first is one that I try to ask all the guests to impart. 

At the Twitter speech this morning at the Social Media Breakfast, one of the things that Jim Storer, one of my colleagues, brought up was the fact that in a lot of ways, Twitter is just another community and so a lot of the best practices around community apply.  I would argue that Utterz is the same paradigm.  If you have a couple of tips that you can share that you have learned yourself, and that you see other good Utterz community members using that you can impart to customers that are trying to foster their communities, or trying to learn how they can work better in communities themselves. 

Michael Bayer:           

Sure.  I think it’s all about exposing yourself as a person in your communications.  I think the folks that have built up the most vibrant followings within the Utterz community have been the ones who have shared the most along the way, who have combined sharing professional analysis and insight with some of their casual moments.  I think as all of our social graphs expand very rapidly across the boundaries of space where we’re no longer able to shake hands with all the folks that we meet in our day to day lives, getting that personal touch, hearing someone’s voice, seeing their face just enables a level of personality to come to the interaction. 

It makes it much more vibrant and friendly as we expand our networks to encompass these folks, so I would really encourage everyone to add a bit of personality to what they communicate.  What that means for me is I’ll share some things that are going on in the business on Utterz and I’ll also share some shots from a restaurant or a basketball game.  It’s just a way to communicate with people. 

Aaron Strout:             

So great message.  My final question, which I’m actually gonna have as a two part question because of the fact that your unique role – I usually like to ask guests for the last question, what is your favorite blog, and the way I ask it is if you could only read one blog for the rest of your life, whose blog would it be, and I’m gonna ask you that question.  I’d also like to know who your favorite Utterer is, because you obviously have the opportunity to see and listen to a lot of these folks, so maybe there’s someone that imparts a lot of wisdom that you would recommend that some of our listeners check out. 

Michael Bayer:           

You’ve set a trap for me.  Look, it’s hard to pick a single page or a single blog.  There are just so many.  Of course my favorite bloggers are the ones that use utterz.com, and many of our Utterz users have blogs that I surf through regularly, Pizano and Tobiazon, its pod Jordan and Robert, and there’s so many others.  I’m not gonna miss someone and offend anyone, so I’m not gonna try and list them all here. 

There are a lot of folks who I just enjoy listening to what’s going on.  We’ve got folks that’ll Utter from their commute in.  We’ve got folks that will wait until late at night just to share some thoughts on the news that day.  There are just so many.  I guess what’s really cool about the web today though is that it doesn’t have to be just one blog. 

I’m not gonna be stuck reading just one blog for the rest of my life.  Everything is cross linked and cross referenced so I can always find interesting things to read.  I’ll watch or listen to the news in the morning and something will catch my attention, and I’ll hop off on a hyperlinking journey through 15 different blogs and news sources, and just get a bunch of opinions on something that are interesting to me, and enabling me to think about things in a way that I couldn’t just five or ten years ago, to get the multitude of opinions on something so quickly.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with all the information and opinion that’s out there, and I feel fortunate to be in a business where I’m allowed to call surfing around and reading people’s blogs’ work.

Aaron Strout:             

Well, a great non-answer for your answer, and I think you actually were very telling in how you answered that, so I appreciate it, and I would like to thank you for joining us today.  I wanna be respectfully of your time and the others listening in.  It’s been a real pleasure for those listening to this podcast.  Michael Bayer, the founder and CEO of Utterz, thanks for joining us, Michael. 

Michael Bayer:           

Thanks so much, Aaron.  I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you all on Utterz.  That’s utterz.com.  Please join us and anytime you want, call in 712–432–6666, and you can hear what other people are saying.

Aaron Strout:             

Great.  Thank you, Michael.

Michael Bayer:           

Thank you.