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Editor\'s Note: The audio podcast is now available

How often do you want to share with friends what you just heard in an audio news story or podcast? Would you want to send them a short snippet of the audio and a link where they could hear more?

Now, you can do just that with a recently introduced app called Clammr (clammr.com). There is an iPhone app ready and you can sign up to be notified when the Android app launches.

The concept is the brainchild of Parviz Parvizi and his partner David Silverman.

\\u201cWe created Clammr as a process of bridging audio into social media,\\u201d Parvizi said in an interview. \\u201cOne of the things that we observed is that social media is now where people find things to consume, it is the primary driver of traffic to websites, but audio really isn\\u2019t present on social media.\\u201d

One reason for that is that audio podcasts are usually 20 minutes in length, and are \\u201chard to penetrate,\\u201d Parvizi says.

\\u201cIf you actually shrink the unit size down, that makes it more appropriate for consumption and engagement on social media,\\u201d he says.

Parvizi and his Clammr co-founder David Silverman got the idea because both of them discovered they were auditory learners when they met in law school.

\\u201cWe were in the same small group, and we figured out pretty quickly that we were among the slowest readers in the history of our law school,\\u201d Parvizi recalled. \\u201cWe bonded very quickly over that.\\u201d

The pair began exchanging audio clips through shared folders, or text messages containing timestamps for particular audio excerpts.

It was Silverman, Parvizi says, who came up with the idea of being able to \\u201ctweet audio.\\u201d

You can record a Clammr from either the website or from the smartphone app. It can\\u2019t be longer than 24 seconds. When you share it via social media, the sound clip will have a link back to the original source, so if you send out a clip from a longer podcast, your followers can go back to the full program to listen.

You can look up podcasts in the Apple iTunes Store, and select portions of a program to convert into a Clammr. The Clammr app and website include a browser-based audio editor that can be manipulated with finger swipes on the phone to create the short clip.

\\u201cI think it\\u2019s very human to want to share with the community and get feedback from that community,\\u201d says Parvizi, noting that in the 200,000 years that modern humans have been around, only about five percent of that time has included the use of written text. \\u201cIn a lot of ways, we\\u2019re wired to speak and listen and do goofy things visually.

The ability to record a Clammr live from a smartphone also offers an additional way for citizen journalists to deliver live reports from the scene of an event. It\\u2019s a bit of a challenge to hold your commentary under 24 seconds, but it can be done.

The app lets you listen to Clammrs from people you follow as an unending stream, and it\\u2019s actually an interesting way of catching up quickly. I listened to the NPR stream of Clammrs, and it almost seemed like it was just a shorter version of the Morning Edition Show that was just reporting the headlines.

I\\u2019ve used Clammr to create short teasers for news stories I\\u2019m reporting on the commercial real estate news website GlobeSt.com, and picked up about 30 listeners for each short audio program. You can hear my efforts at http://www.clammr.com/app/podcaststeve.

With a bit of perseverance, it could be a great way for podcasters, journalists, and other content creators to promote their products.

What kinds of audio would you share with your friends? Email steve@compuschmooze.com. On Twitter, Clammr, or Periscope, follow @PodcastSteve. Also, listen to an audio podcast interview with Parviz Parvizi of Clammr at http://bit.ly/compuschmooze.

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