Podcast Expectations
Steve Rubel, on the Micro Persuasion blog, asks if podcasting is evolutionary or revolutionary. He compares it’s impact to blogging, for which he is a professional spokesperson and model, so to speak. He ends up in the evolutionary camp on podcasting, revolutionary on blogging, to no great surprise.
His argument is that podcasting is not very social, and blogging is. A lot of discussion around Web 2.0 is around the social aspects. I agree that podcasting is not social, but then again, neither is broadcasting. It certainly has more social possibilities than traditional podcasting ever did, but social is probably not at the top of the list. On the other hand, just because a trend is not social does not mean it’s not revolutionary.
Podcasting is revolutionary! It is revolutionary because of the perfect storm of portable hard drives with headphones (known as iPods, MP3/MP4 players, portable digital media players ), cheap bandwidth, RSS, and consumers being fed up with poor programming choices from media giants.
Some people have expectations of miracles in this trend of podcasting and the world to change overnight. If it (a new trend) doesn’t satisfy instant gratification needs, it is deemed a losing proposition. My experience says that sea change comes like a Tsunami. It starts with a violent crack way down below the surface. You don’t see it coming until it’s almost too late. Unfortunately, often it is too late for some.
But, the change comes….