OK. I promise. This is my last podcast post for a while. The “Marketing Diva” has her own take on the podcasting trend and her blog post includes a bunch of decent links to articles, resources, podcasts, Power Point presentations and more. Enuf said. Click here to dish with the Diva, Dahling!
What is this? 1999? 😉
In the article, For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting NYTimes’ John Markoff stays sober in describing a mini-start up that’s making a move on the emerging market for podcasts. The most quotable quote, IMHO, attempts to provide perspective on how the leading commercial audio download service, Audible.com and podcasting may overlap (in the future, of course) with radio listeners:
“When I started Audible and we started signing up radio partners, people would ask me, ‘where does your technology leave radio?,’ ” said Donald Katz, Audible’s chairman. “Now it’s clear that the creative capacity that is out there greatly outstrips the capacity of the radio pipeline.”
And, here’s the good news, from my perspective, as described by Markoff:
“While still too much in its infancy to be considered an immediate threat to the radio industry, podcasting does present the prospect of a growing army of iPod-toting commuters who take programming decisions out of the hands of broadcasters and customize their own listening.”
Tinu Abayomi-Paul who writes for Search Engine Guide wrote a somewhat optimistic yet useful pitch, Why You’re Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren’t Podcasting which includes a link to her even more useful HowtoPodcast blog which includes a quite groovy little Flash movie, “The Easy Podcast Movie” which shows you how to do it in a few easy steps. $5/month and you can record yours on the phone. Maybe this is the revolutionary medium I hope it is and, of course, even those without iPods or other MP3 players can still listen on the Web.
OK. I admit it. Maybe podcasting IS the beginning of the personalized webcasting that I wrote about for years in Videography.
I was impressed with the NY Times coverage this weekend… snappy examples… Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here. I take as a sign of emerging yet premature maturity 😉 that there are already sites like Podcastalley.com and Podcastbunker.com, that review and rank podcasts.
I even download the iPodder podcast aggregator software, but I’ve not yet put it fully to use. Although, if you’re interested in learning more, you might check out Dave Winer’s (he’s one of the originators of the RSS, Really Simple Syndication format) well-linked definition of podcasting: What is Podcasting?
According to this ClickZ article MP3 Player Adoption at Tipping Point, there are now 22 million Americans with iPod’s or other MP3 players and this market has reached a “tipping point” that is making it viable as a distribution platform. I’ll sure be amazed if podcasting takes off. Probably we just need more people with something to say, or who REALLY want to be HEARD. 😉
Of course, it always takes a while for folks to learn to get their information and media in new ways. Witness the slow ramp-up of Tivo and PVR’s.
Wow. Apple‘s runaway success in the MP3 player market has spawned a new kind of broadcasting called podcasting. I caught wind of it in Wired magazine (Jan/Feb issue) and then I saw mention in USA Today. Sites like PodcastAlley.com, Audio.Weblogs.com, Ipodder.org and Podcast.net are breaking new ground. Do you think it’s a viable “broadcasting” platform or too elitest given that listeners need to be able to afford an iPod or other mp3 player? It’s cool, but I’m not even sure that mp3 services like Audible.com are even making a go as a business. However, I must admit that I’m starting to listen to books-on-tape type stuff on my new iPod. In fact, as far as I can tell, I get better deals on spoken word programs and better selection via Amazon–rather than via either Audible.com or the iTunes store. Stay tuned. 😉
