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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Podcasting notes

Several items in rapid succession point to the continued growth of podcasting.

First came word from podcasting pioneer Adam Curry who last week noted that the number of podcasts listed in the ipodder.org directory has passed the 3,000 mark. Not bad for a medium that fundamentally didn’t exist six months ago.

Next, Charles Pizzo forwards a New York Times article on podcasting, “Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts are Here.” The article looks at the nature of podcasts and discusses the medium with some podcasters. Why they didn’t call Neville or me, I just can’t imagine. From the article:

As bloggers have influenced journalism, podcasters have the potential to transform radio. Already many radio stations, including National Public Radio and Air America, the liberal-oriented radio network, have put shows into a podcast format. And companies are seeing the possibilities for advertising; Heineken, for example, has produced a music podcast. Inevitably, politicians are taking note, too. Donnie Fowler Jr. put out “FireWire Chats” by podcast in his bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saying Democrats had to embrace new technology if they wanted to reach a grass-roots audience.

Two representatives of a company called Loudish replied to my post last week about the potential for podcasts on intranets, explaining that’s pretty much what their company is set up to do. The company’s simple tagline: “Podcasting for Business.” Their business model, according to their Web site: “Loudish combines important corporate audio content such as CEO strategy briefings, personalised business intelligence, news and entertainment. All automatically distributed to your employees.” The company says it simplifies the process through the use of a dedicated server and content creation software, among other features.

Steve Rubel reports in Micropersuasion that two companies have opened their doors to support podcasting: Liberated Syndication and Pwop Productions. Meanwhile, listening to Michael Butler’s “Rock and Roll Geek Show” podcast, I learned of yet another podcasting company, Slapcast, which lets beginners podcast by phone and store their podcasts on its servers.

All-in-all, it’s definitely beginning to appear that podcasting is no fad. Curry (who hosts the top-10 podcast “Daily Source Code”) noted recently that talks with colleagues in the radio business reveal real worry. First, younger people started listening to iPods and other digital media devices instead of radio. Now podcasting is heating up. It doesn’t bode well for radio advertising, which supports the medium. First newspaper subscriptions drop, now radio listenership is on the decline. It’s getting hard to ignore the bottom-line impact of digital media.

02/20/05 | 0 Comments | Podcasting notes

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