I read this blog post today on Read/WriteWeb titled Will Podcasting Survive?  While I agree with any of Alex's points that it has competition from other media platforms, and has limited use, I think there is some real value to podcasting.

It is very likely that podcasting has a niche market.  Are teens and tweens going to tune-in en-mass to a podcast? Not likely, no.  With any new technology, or use of technology, the best way to determine where it fits in is to test it against multiple platforms, in many circumstances and for many purposes.  That is exactly what is happening for podcasts.  After many people have tested podcasts to replace things like radio stations or videos on YouTube, what they've discovered is that those are not the ideal uses of Podcasting. 

We, at Shared Insights, have found it to be imeasurably useful as stand alone messages as well as integrated into our community platform.  Why:

• Channels: Everyone consumes information differently.  Some people would rather listen than read, and vice versa.  We found that one of the keys to a successful community is offering different channels for communication, interaction and consumption. 
• Information: It offers a quick way to gather and relay information to the member/consumer.  It is much easier to capture and relay a 10-15 minute interview by recording and posting that interview than if we recorded, transcribed and posted an interview.  Once posted, someone would have to read that interview.  If we can offer both an abridged version for the 30 second read, and the podcast itself, it can be imeasurably more useful. 
• Opportunity: Asking the founder and CEO of Prosper.com to sit down for a 15 minute podcast interview is a lot easier than asking him to give a speech at a conference, write an article about his experience as CEO, etc. 

While Podcasts are certainly not right for every medium, I think we will find, as community and idea sharing become more prevalent in the business world, podcasts will gain ground.  They may have a niche market, but more people in that market will embrace podcasting as a great way to offer content and ideas to there constituents.

Podcast away!

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astrout on 9/15/2007
Heather - you bring up some excellent points. As someone that does a fair amount of podcasting, I also find that podcasts are a great way to generate cross-promo between companies. For instance, I recently did an interview with one of the case study companies in the We Are Smarter book (Lyn Townshend). When I put the podcast up on the We Are Smarter site, Lyn not only linked to it from her site but also got one of her partner sites, http://scratchingandsniffiing.com to do a blog article about the We site. It was a really nice way of saying "thank you."

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