It's tough times for the media business these days, but one small local startup is bucking the trend by helping clients create new revenue streams to help replace rapidly shrinking ones.

Voices Heard Media, launched about two years ago by Will Overstreet, former University of Tennessee defensive end who also played for the Atlanta Falcons, is seeing plenty of demand for its product, a tool that allows media and other customers - such as professional sports teams - to engage thousands of readers, listeners, watchers or fans in a way that's user-friendly for both sides.

"We're targeting this very traditional media that is really a one-to-many connection," said Chris Van Beke, a local business development consultant and fundraiser for high tech startups. Van Beke has recently joined Voices Heard fulltime as chief operations officer. The company endeavors to "turn that around," he said, "and have many-to-one connections."

Voices Heard's introductory product is a software tool that plugs into a media Web site and channels user input such as questions or comments into bite-sized chunks that a columnist, radio host or sports figure can respond to. This happens in real time, so that, for example, an interviewee on a call-in show or in a chat room Q&A session can immediately know and answer the most popular questions - no phone or Web screener is required.

The company has tapped local media and existing contacts to test the product, and the News Sentinel, WBIR, Channel 10, and the Atlanta Falcons are now customers, Van Beke said. Now, he said, the company is getting queries from the corporations that own these outlets, and Voices Heard is working to expand its offerings based on conversations with these potential customers.

The application, for example, could be used to manage comments at the end of an online story, organizing them by popularity into common categories and automatically weeding out those containing offensive terminology. WBIR has already used the product to poll its audience for the biggest news story of 2009, and Voices Heard is working to develop a polling widget in conjunction with its other offerings.

With the Internet moving increasingly toward the audience in social networking applications, traditional media companies are seeking ways to connect and drive new traffic to their sites, Van Beke said. Most important, they're looking for ways to translate online users into revenue dollars, he said.

The Voices Heard service provides a new mechanism for targeting ad dollars by creating additional ways of interacting with Web users and by tapping into ad funds companies are beginning to set aside for interactive online applications.

In the News Sentinel's "Ask John Adams" feature, for example, there's a banner ad in the question screen and, according to online editor Jack Lail, Voices Heard has posed the idea of answering questions via video with a short video ad prefacing each response.

"It's an interesting and creative concept that's been developed locally," Lail said. "That's pretty neat."

Thus, Voices Heard is in the somewhat unusual position of raising capital to keep up with growth as opposed to driving it.

"Overall, ad dollars may be smaller, but online and interactive dollars are growing," Van Beke said. "Right now it's just a matter of trying to focus on the biggest opportunities."