Thursday, November 15, 2012

Conference call with Helium CEO Mark Ranalli (Nov. 15, 2012)

(I listened to the conference call so you didn't have to)

Helium member Eszter Vajda interviewed CEO Mark Ranalli (she in her dining room, he in his office, via a Skype-like video system) with 15 people listening.

If you're familiar with Helium, there wasn't much in the call that you haven't heard before.  The main bit of news was that the new site design, long promised to be unrolled by the end of this year, will probably be delayed until next year.


Ranalli also said that they are "not promising" that writing for the helium.com portion of the site will "actually pay your mortgage."  (Someone should tell that to the cheerleaders on the forum, who still insist "the sky's the limit.") Any significant money to be made, he said, is in Content Source, the freelance assignment part of the site.

That's about it as far as news that is relevant to writers. The rest is mostly background information about the company. If you want to watch/hear the whole call for yourself, click on the viewer below:

(Editing to add 11/30/12 -- I just noticed that the broadcast is no longer available.  I don't how for how long it's been gone or why -- I don't know whether it's a temporary glitch, whether Spreecast only stores past broadcasts for a limited time, or whether Helium took the broadcast down for some reason. The conspiracy theorist in me likes the last explanation, but I really have no idea.)

(Editing to add 3/1/13 -- Just heard that the broadcast's disappearance is due to a technical glitch at Spreecast.)