I have a pet peeve about fascinating discussions taking place in e-mail that belong on this blog. So let's kick it out, ladies and gentlemen, and see if we can get This Week on IAOCblog.com up and running again with a discussion of Online Communications in Investor Relations.

Don Dunnington broached the subject because he is giving a presentation at the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) meeting in Philadelphia on Thursday. The focus of the program is IR and blogging, v-blogging, and podcasting -- something like that.

Online IR was given a big boost by the Security & Exchange Commission's Regulation FD, requiring full disclosure of material financial information to all investors simultaneously. Webcasting earnings reports is one of the few ways to stay on the right side of Regulation FD.

My take on this was that IR folks are going to need to learn online video if they want their earnings reports to spread far and wide (of course, sometimes you don't want earnings reports spreading at all). I've been working with online video for four years now and I can tell you it is tough sledding. In some ways, Apple has made it easier for us because there are only two formats of digital video that play on iPods and cell phones. When you realize that there are hundreds of compression settings you can use with online video, narrowing the number down to 2 is a great relief. I'm thinking if you're broadcasting earnings reports, you'll want them to go onto handhelds.

Don found some interesting stats about subscribers to IR casts and then Dee Rambeau dished some info about how it's relatively easy to syndicate earnings reports through RSS. I hope those gentlement will post on this topic in the coming days and that you, dear reader, will chime in, too, and then This Week on IAOCblog.com will be back in business!