In this episode host Ed Weaver talks about how corporate podcasting works and what makes it successful. Whether it’s for training or educational purposes of employees, Weaver believes corporate podcasts can provide a less formal learning environment for an ultimately more educated and involved workforce. On Media Swamp
After looking at new information now provided by FeedBurner, host Ed Weaver discusses the global reach a podcast can have (and how sometimes you forget it does). On Media Swamp
Nielsen/NetRatings gets us excited with a report showing robust growth in podcasting and then qualifies it in subsequent conversations when asked questions by, well, people who can ask questions. The right ones, that is. Frank Barnako pops the balloon here. Many interested parties are incredulous, such as Robert Scoble. I, on the other hand, think the report shows such a high degree of fascination with podcasting and therefore the need for speed in releasing the report that a lot of approvals got rushed. Facts didn’t get checked, appropriate comparisons were not made. I know none of us have ever made mistakes like that. 
Let’s look past the obvious errors, though and consider what makes a report like this hit the streets a review or two early. Something is going on in podcasting and everyone knows it - even Nielsen/NetRatings.
“The gloves come off”, as we would say here in the U.S - in other words, a fight has begun. Competing specifications for content syndication, long thought a dead issue, have been revived by this post from DeWitt Clinton and response by Robert Scoble. DeWitt then follows up with another response, for a good ongoing discussion.
Atom may be a better specification - I’m not an engineer, so I can’t comment intelligently on it from that point of view. But, from a marketing perspective, let me say this:
Sony’s Betamax was a better technology than JVC’s VHS. Does anyone remember that battle?
I’m not claiming to be prophetic here. I’m just noticing that buzz and adoption of RSS has swamped Atom. Is that a guarantee of widespread adoption? It could be - only time will tell. I’d be wary of basing my business decisions only on the fact that Atom is a better specification, though.
Robert hits a softball thrown by Peter Davis, regarding podcasting as an inefficient medium. Radio and television are therefore inefficient mediums as well, but somehow, those two industries have managed to survive .
Since Robert is moving to PodTech, he has to provide a good defense, which he does. As I’ve pointed out here before, portable media players are what makes podcasting go fast. Portable media consumption is the name of the game, baby. It’s here to stay. And longer than Peter Davis believes.
This is great news, as ESPN delivers a story about the Colorado Rockies baseball players using iPods and in-house video to improve their games. I believe that stories like this will finally begin to expand the current thinking about what podcasting can become. As we’ve discussed here before, podcasting is more than grass roots new media contributors - it’s another distribution channel for radio and tv content, and certainly is effective for training and education for people that would rather not be shackled to their computers.
Great news! Congrats to the Rockies for being early adopters.
Fractals of Change shares the true issues at hand on ‘net neutrality and I think skewers the right people and lifts up the right people. Thankfully, there are a few out there that get it, but it will be an uphill battle. The boys with the big PR and lobbying dollars have been at it longer. Let’s catch up - the games not over yet.
This will dramatically affect those of us that are dealing with large file transfers for media distribution. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - it’s not our fault that the telco’s made bad investments or that they’ve fought the wrong battles - we shouldn’t have to pay for them going forward - they should.
Robert Scoble, the famed blogger of Microsoft, is moving on, as he discusses in multiple posts here, in response to his outing by Tom Foremski and others over the weekend.
This has been a blogging and podcasting phenomenon over the past few days that is worthy of mention. One man’s career decision has made news worldwide. Previous to this, people changing firms would only generate news if there was a corporate power struggle like at Morgan Stanley last year or Jack Welch retiring. Now, we have a mid-level individual contributor that has generated more PR juice over a weekend than many high-level execs generate in an entire career.
Robert is heading to Podtech.net, home of John Furrier. It will be interesting to see what a highly visible social media guy will do with and to that startup organization. I’m encouraged that podcasting is continuing to generate this much momentum, both in audio and video formats.
I only know Robert from being a frequent reader of his blog, both on his site and via RSS feeds. While I think this will allow him to feel much more in control of his destiny, his voice may now be so influential that it doesn’t fit in a small startup where one wrong comment could impact a year’s worth of revenue in one moment of time. I believe it will make PodTech or break them - time will only tell. I wish them both the best.
Well, it’s nice to be in good company. Apparently, eMarketer is saying the same thing as what’s been running through my mind - the end podcasting device is the mobile phone. Telecomasia writes about it here. Rob Greenlee of mobile podcast pioneers Melodeo, writes about it here, commenting on the Telecomasia article.
As downloading gets easier to accomplish, I see a lot more users actually synching their phone to their computer to copy over podcasts, rather than download them over the wireless network - it gets expensive to do that, although the wireless carriers very much want that to be the workflow.
Several things need to happen to make this come about more quickly - larger storage on the phones themselves and software that easily allows updates to your playlist on the phone. Oh - and increased battery power - let’s not forget that .
Interesting article from CNET about new players from Zing that use Wi-Fi to pull down content when in a hotspot. Conceptually, a good idea; practically poor, since it only has 8MB of storage. I think cell phones will have a much great possibility of impact, as mentioned here before.
More and more cell phones are MP3/MP4 enabled and include Wi-Fi - so what’s the compelling reason to buy a Zing? Upgrade your phone instead, which will have more native capacity, as well as a flash memory/SD card expansion slot (most likely).
To say nothing about “just one device” and the utility of it all….