Friday, November 24, 2006

podcasting vs youtube

This post is in reply to one from a post headed
"Podcast Downloading Up Over 70% in Last Six Months"

You may want to read that post first to make sense of my reply,
or not...anyway the following was my reply to that post.

Sure,
But if you asked people did you go and watch a youtube video
today then more than 1% will say yes.
The other question is that yes itunes may have sucked down
a new episode of a podcast, but how many episodes that
are downloaded are subsequently actually listened to.
I think many podcasters think “oh yeah I have this many subscribers” but you know, how many of your bookmarks do you check on a regular basis. Like all internet use I think podcast listeners will subscribe to many and then hone it down to a few favourite regular lsitens. This doesn’t mean they’ll unsubscribe to those they ignore, thus inflating the believed listener figures of the podcasters.

To be honest, although the podcast is a really great medium for radio fans,
I don’t believe it’ll have nearly as large impact as the “fun” one stop social networks that include the massively expanding youtube.
The fact that youtube is a place where people are now replying by video to a video that is posing a question and asking for replies shows the powerful and compelling quality of “everyone is a producer and a reader/viewer”. Podcasting as a medium is more like the interesting loner who lives in a shack in the woods who you go to to hear words of wisdom. He aint at the party where you all let your hair down.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Podcasting as a medium is more like the interesting loner who lives in a shack in the woods who you go to to hear words of wisdom. He aint at the party where you all let your hair down."

Great quote! Speaking as a podcaster with various different podcasts under my belt, my favourite one, Pod of Funk, is DEFINITELY the one where I let my hair down and invite people into my shack where I encourage all kinds of hairdressing.