April 23rd, 2012



Will Podcasting Ever Be Huge?

Podcasting has been on the cusp of greatness since the invention of the smart phone and maybe even before.

While the audience is large and growing I wouldn’t say it’s something that is mainstream. Will it ever become huge and a key part of the zeitgeist or if there is something flawed about the platform and format itself?

While I am sure that e-reading will eventually eclipse printed books and digital movies and television will (or maybe have) eclipse DVDs and VHS, I am not sure the same argument can be made for podcasts and radio.

In that respect I would liken it to RSS, which was ultimately eclipsed by Twitters usability and filtering. Obviously in many ways Twitter is very different from RSS, though the intention is the same – help me consume content from my favorite sites in an easy way.

Perhaps the format and experience needs to be tweaked in the slightest of ways to create the watershed moment where we realize that we have been doing it wrong all along, or perhaps audio will never be able to achieve the same groundswell of support offered to videos, photo and text. I can’t say I buy this – people sit at their desks all day and listen to music (whether on the radio or otherwise) – and you don’t need the same kind of full-concentration with audio, making it almost more appealing.

The a-ha moment is coming.

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Special thanks to Joe West for help on this post.

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  • http://qcircles.net/ Jeff Jenkins

    I think a significant difference with Twitter is that it's bidirectional.  Even if you aren't posting new content yourself, there is retweeting.  The format also makes it easy to read just a little whenever you have a second to spare.  I'm really into The Economist's word-for-word podcast, but I find I have trouble paying any attention to it unless I'm doing something mindless (commuting, biking, cooking, etc).  

    The other problem I have is figuring out which podcasts I might be interested in.  It would be neat if there was a page like you get when you click on an RSS feed which would give a text preview of a bunch of posts from a podcast.

  • Steve

    Inside every podcast, video, and webcast is a short text summary waiting to get out. 

  • http://amandapeyton.com amanda peyton

    That's an excellent point – though why has video been able to overcome some of the problems that podcasting has run into?

  • http://amandapeyton.com amanda peyton

    Yep, Twitter and RSS were tackling the same problem from completely different angles, and one was much more easy to consume than the other. The idea of “consumability” is perhaps an issue with podcasts that you touched on. Maybe the real question is how to make audio more consumable.

  • http://qcircles.net/ Jeff Jenkins

    I think consumability is definitely a significant factor.  There is no default client for podcasts in the way that twitter is one for links, or YouTube is for video.  I assume there are companies who are trying to do that, although none have got so big that I (a very light podcast consumer) have heard of them.

  • http://www.facebook.com/podcast411 Rob Walch

    Jeff – iTunes is definitely the default client for Podcasts.  It has been since June 2005.  I think the bigger difference in Podcats vs Twitter (140 characters)  and Youtube (Most videos <3 Mins) is that Podcasts run 30 to 60 minutes on average.  It is really the difference between finding time for a full meal – vs grabbing a quick snack.  One other big difference between Podcasts and Twitter – is the audience – in Twitter – you may have 10,000 or more followers – but “followers” is at best a shaky term.  If you have 10,000 listeners with a podcast – you have a very loyal and engaged “audience”.  From that perspective monetizing your audience as a Podcaster is much more likely than say for someone on Twitter.  Read this post for more on engagement of Twitter followers - http://podcast411.libsyn.com/w...

    Regards,

    Rob Walch
    Host – podCast411 and Today in iOS Podcasts 
    VP Podcaster Relations Libsyn