Podcasting: Maybe It Doesn't Suck

      By: Emily Thorson  |  April 16, 2005

      At 10:56am today, I sent an instant message to a colleague in DC. It said "Holy cow, I am at a panel about podcasting."

      Why were my whereabouts such groundbreaking news? Well, because in our company, I'm not generally known as a fan of podcasts. I'm an organizer at heart, and it's hard for me to see why EchoDitto, a firm that specializes in building online communities, is spending energy on what's basically a broadcast medium. I mean, no matter what you call these things, you're still making a radio show, right? What's new about that?

      I'd gone to EchoRadio and downloaded the mp3's. They were interesting, but a bit time-consuming to download and then listen to. Then, last night, things changed. I was going through my RSS feeds when suddenly, music started coming out of my computer. Christian music. I assumed it was a tab I'd left open in Firefox and started madly clicking through. Nothing. Finally, it stopped, and I went back to Newsfire. I started reading Colin's blogpost on the new Todd Solondz movie. Then I looked more closely--in the bottom of my Newsfire was a little play button. The music was coming from my RSS reader!. I didn't have to press any buttons or drag anything into iTunes. It just started playing.

      There is potential here to break down the boundaries between the written and spoken word (and sound). The cool part isn't that you can download a radio show, it's that just by opening up your RSS reader, you can see a piece of information that contains a photograph, a one-minute interview, and a two paragraphs of text--and there are no clear lines between those different types of information.

      I know this isn't where I'm supposed to see podcasting going. I know that when we pitch it to clients, we see a rosy future of radio shows being beamed to iPods. And that's okay. But there's also something incredible about being able to hear news as well as see it. "Multimedia" is such a 90's word--it makes me think of Microsoft Encarta. But damn, just think about it! A few things I want to see:

      • A post on the Google blog about ways that people are using maps.google.com, and has interviews with a few key people--say, the guy running the satellite part and the guy who mashed up googlemaps with craigslist.
      • A post from the campaign trail that opens with the noise of the crowd and the first few lines of a stump speech--definitely a motivator for volunteers!

      Conclusion? I'm not sure. I'm new at this whole "not thinking podcasting is a waste of time" thing. But maybe it's the first step towards doing for sound what the web has done for the written word--releasing it from the confines of Articles and Books and Chapters and letting it become Blogposts and Interviews and Tags and Hyperlinks. I'm nowhere near a convert, but I just put EchoRadio onto my RSS feed. I'll keep you posted.

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      Comments

      Anonymous (not verified) — Sun, 04/17/2005 - 17:40
      Some people, when they read book, do put music on, and other people, when they read a book, never do.
      Brendan Watson (not verified) — Mon, 04/18/2005 - 06:26
      I think you touch on an important point: The power of podcasting isn't in producing a "radio show" (though that's fun) but in making content (stump speeches, informal conversations, organizing conferences) available to those who couldn't be present. The mass media has always been a very unreliable way to get one's message out. The power of podcasting, video blogging and yes, old fashioned text (and RSS feeds) is that now individuals can control and efficiently distribute many different types of information (text, photos, audio, video, data, etc.) The more media you use, the more tactile your organization (and other organizations you work for) become — which explains why within the news media, television is always rated the most credible despite its obvious flaws. Creating this tactile identity and experience is very much, it seems, what online communities are all about.
      Reed (not verified) — Mon, 04/18/2005 - 07:58
      If I go to c-span, on my computer, and look for the latest white house press priefing, I want to see it in video format. In fact, in any situation where I am seated, I think video eclipses audio by a large magnitude. This will only increase in the future, as video viewing options multiply. (Why be the kid on the Metro with an iPod when you can be watching video instead?) As far as news is concerned...the whole raison d'etre of podcasting is to be able to time-shift and move mediums. None of that technical stuff, however, replaces radio's clear advantage: live information. With radio, there's a few seconds delay between what is happening and the listener. Podcasting, on the other hand, is more geared towards non-live material, like interviews and the like. While this may be fine for some information, people will always prefer to listen to news live. Without live news, podcasting becomes just another way to distribute audio-based media, via rss. But that strikes to the heart of my dislike of podcasts: I use rss to *get news*, preferably live if possible. To use an example: on Monday morning, I come in, briefly browse the latest rss news, and simply mark all the rest (probably 2-300 articles) as read. Why? Because those articles are no longer timely. I view rss as a way to get *the latest information* to me. If someone created an rss feed that posted all of its articles a day after news had occurred, no one would read it. So why should I download audio files that are delayed in a similar manner? The success of blogs, for instance, is highly dependent upon the ever shrinking gap between the poster and the commenter. A great blog thread is *a conversation* between people, not merely a one-way street. I don't think that time-delayed audio files will ever manage to surpass the popularity of a back-and-forth conversation, such as radio call-in shows. I'm not saying that audio clips aren't useful. But focusing on a distribution mechanism meant for *live* information masks the fact that these clips are not. If you want live audio distributed universally, you cannot beat radio. Add timeshifting and storage to radio and the need for "podcasting" becomes obsolete.