Cam, I'm honestly surprised... As someone who was at the beginning of the whole blogging thing, to hear you say "I simply do not see podcasting becoming an important part of the self-publishing world" ok, well, I didn't hear you say it, I read what you wrote, but do you really not see the potential? It always blows my mind that people who got the blogging thing so early on just don't get what podcasting can do. I'm hoping you change your mind in the future, because to me, once you boil it all down, blogging and podcasting are practically one in the same, thought each has it's own particular stengths and uses as well.

Did you bring a seventh-grader in here to blog this? Seriously now, "This is why people do not read while driving"...?? The combination of pedantic tone and content-free utterances in this whole piece is just weird!

In the section "The Tools" you don't say anything about what the tools actually are (but the heading looks so *serious*!); you (in my mind) misrepresent listeners' intolerance for voices that don't sound like radio pros..."Southern accents?" Come on!

The best is this strangely revealing (and totally fallacious!) distinction you make between the amount of preparation that the two media require. Also between "successful" bloggers and...the other kind. Do podcasters not extemporize? Do bloggers not prepare their writing? Maybe it's some defensiveness about your own ossified position in the "slef-publishing world" (sic) that accounts for this emphasis--and for the authoritative, term-paper "look" of this bloviation?

Sorry, man. I don't mean to bag, really...I've enjoyed reading your blog sometimes. I was just flipping through pages, reading around, and found in this post (ironically) a lot of what I see is exactly wrong with "self-publishers"--for which podcasting, who knows?, maybe anodyne.

I suppose this is why people have editors. My spelling/typing has always been atrocious. Even after proofreading several times, I missed one. Good catch, Ian.

But that underscores my point about podcasting. How can anyone expect to create quality podcasts without putting in a lot of time recording, re-recording, and splicing together their content? I stand by my suspicion that most people do not have these skills and are not going to take the time to learn them just so they can join the podcasting bandwagon.

Come on, convince me that I'm wrong. I just don't see podcasting becoming that big.

Cam,

You have a good point. Blogging and podcasting are very different and the only good reason to lump them into the same category is that now we can use similar technology (RSS) to distribute the media. Blogging and podcasting are as different as publishing a newspaper column and having a radio show. As blogging brings publishing to the people, podcasting brings broadcasting to the people.

I don't know why people think that podcasting offers any benefit for the blogger. I see no point in having a radio show, and for that matter podcasting, if people can't participate (call in). In syndication, people cannot contribute to the discussion. This is unlike comments on a blog, like this one, where readers can contribute to the discussion.

I'm not going to download a file to my mp3 player just to listen to a blogger talk to himself.

I think the potential for pod casting is huge, and I predict that satellite radio will pick up poscasters/bloggers. I mean, look how many famous people blog. When/if satellite radio takes off, why not add famous people to the roster? SR already has cool dj's who aren't beholden to the FCC's puritan standards. I'd rather listen to a cool interesting blogger than Howard Stern. And if SR is smart, why not allow subscribes to choose whose blogs to add, even one's own blog, since vanity is a great marketing tool. Be careful, CAM, lest you become a naysaying digital dinosaur fretting and worrying about new technologies. You aren't that old yet, are you?

"When/if satellite radio takes off, why not add famous people to the roster?"

Sure, I'm not saying podcasting won't be successful for some people, especially those who prove to be good at it. I'm saying it will never be as widespread as blogging.

I have yet to download a podcast worth listening to that wasn't professionally produced by someone who has experience in audio editing and radio broadcasting. As someone above said, "I'm not going to download a file to my MP3 player just to listen to a blogger talk to himself."

I'd have to agree, Cam. For me to check out a blog, I just click and link and quickly scan the page. For me to check out a new podcast, I have to subscribe, sync up my iPod, navigate to the file, and listen.

Podcasts will replace some of the things I currently listen to, but they are not going to do much else. It will be interesting to see who allows their current spoken content to be freely podcast (public radio?). I don't want to listen to somebody reading their blog.

I look at it this way. Back in the days of the printed 'zine, cassette tapes (filled with music) were often exchanged as well. Very few people filled a cassette tape with their thoughts to send to their friends. They used the 'zine for that.

I don't see why the change in technology would make that situation any different.

The main point that I've missed hearing in all of the podcast hype is the message that podcasting and 'blogging are really solutions to different problems. Certainly, both address the desire for "the people" to reach an audience, but I appreciate your comments about how they differ.

If people were really interested in hearing weblog posts read aloud, they'd be working on the text-to-speech problem instead of podcasting.

Your point about the amount of attention required to "receive" the information from a weblog vs. a podcast is probably not universal. I find that it takes me much more effort and concentration to process information from the radio compared to text, which is easier (and faster) to absorb in bits and pieces as time allows.

"I have yet to download a podcast worth listening to that wasn't professionally produced by someone
who has experience in audio editing and radio broadcasting." This sounds a lot like the argument
that traditional media made against blogging: it will never be as good as professionally written and
edited journalism. It's interesting that you should mention barriers to entry because this is why I
think podcasting has been so successful. Podcasting dramatically lowers the barriers to producing
and distributing audio broadcasts. It doesn't lower them to the same level as blogging but it opens
up a whole new world of niche interests to audio broadcasts. You may not have found any podcasts you
like but as a Linux and RPG freak I love listening to the Linux Box Show and RPGMP3, shows which
couldn't exist on traditional broadcast media. Are the production values worse than professionally
produced shows? Of couse, but I get to listen to entertaining shows that wouldn't exist without
podcasting.

I also think podcasting will play a huge role in the future of public and commercial radio
broadcasting. Obviously a very large number of people find podcasting to be a convenient way to
listen to broadcasts, and any station that takes advantage of this stands to significantly increase
their audience. Already stations like KCRW and WGBH are embracing podcasting, and it happened a lot
faster than any mainstream media outlet started a blog. It's hard to imagine that this phenomenon
won't spread.

"Sure, I think there will be some successes for those who master the art, but the numbers will be
nowhere near those of successful bloggers." I guess I don't really see the point in comparing
numbers between blogging and podcasting. Podcasting harder to create and there will probably never
be as many podcasts as there are blogs. The audience for podcasts is harder to predict but even if
it never gets as big the blog audience, so what? Podcasting is already huge and growing but the
point isn't that it will be as big as blogging, the point is that it is bringing a whole new world
of content to the net that couldn't exist before, just like blogging did.

Similar to early blogging perhaps that the method and medium are still finding accepted uses. As a radio junky who makes every effort to get local air time when possible, podcasting is just another option from a series of /relatively/ easy ways to publish audio through the net (shoutcasting, etc). Perhaps excepting syndication, nothing at all revolutionary. This time more people are bothering to listen.

I agree in frustration with the generally negative tone of this post. I also doubt podcasting will ever become as widespread as blogging. However, the possibilities for excellent and unique content, (expect plenty of non-word based sounds), and future extensions into video clips and locative tagging using similar framework is quite exciting -- to be encouraged.

You've convinced me that you personally prefer a textual medium, perhaps even consider it superior for personal expression!...? I often prefer audio, lectures, dialogues, etc. Best of all -- it leaves my eyes available for more interesting activities -- occasionally closed ;).

I think you make some valid points, though I'm higher up on the excitement scale when it comes to podcasting. Overall, I can understand why people think of this in "blog" terms, given the RSS Feed, etc.

But I think the comparison here is less to blogging specifically than to the Web in general. Put on your "web, circa 1994 hat" for a moment... think back... One of the big advantages that the web presented was that it dramatically reduced the costs of reaching a huge audience. Basically reduced them to near zero. Now, it didn't mean everyone got huge numbers of views, but... if someone had *compelling* content, they could reach thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people. We take this for granted now, but that really was groundbreaking back then.

I think podcasting has a similar potential benefit. It offers an opportunity for those who can produce compelling audio content to get it to huge numbers of people. The key, of course, is still the "compelling content" part. Most podcasts produced or which will be produced... will not be that interesting (like most web pages). But there will be a few that will be great. And a few talented folks who would've never had the resources to reach mega audiences via radio -- will be able to do it via podcasting.

Now for sure, there are some differences -- the barriers to entry for podcasting are still higher than web publishing. But... they're a heck of a lot lower than getting out audio content via radio.

One final point -- I think where this really gets interesting isn't now, when it's still a novelty, but a few months, year or so down the line when it's more accessible to a mass audience. Think of the crappy web browsers back in 93/94, and how much easier it is to navigate today. Now think of the "1.0" version ways to access podcasts now, and think about how much better they'll be soon. Imagine if, for example, Apple were to add an easy "download podcast" option to iTunes. Overnight, 10mm users who are comfortable with that interface would suddenly start exploring the world of podcasting...

I also think that podcasting has been overhyped, because it is hard to do, and frankly, most people don't have the skills and the technology to do it well enough to make it worth my time.

But what makes it interesting to me is that it is a way of distributing audio (or video) content that has a significantly lower cost of entry than traditional broadcasting. I also like that it is inherently asynchronous which means I can listen when I want to.

The bandwidth thing is a big problem, but it exists for traditional blogs/websites that get too popular too quickly as well. Hopefully some of the research into distributed caching and p2p will pay off and help relieve us of this burden.

Then again, most of the audio and video content I've watched off the 'net has been professional stuff -- radio archives, Daily Show clips, etc. Does "podcasting" have to refer to amatuers? Or is it just a delivery mechanism for content?

Cam, I was expecting a link to an MP3 of you reading this at the end.

I basically agree with Cam. I think podcasting is a useful niche of Internet publishing, but podcasting publishers will always be a tiny fraction compared to blog publishers.

I don't think Podcasting is much a publishing revolution is all.

Oh boy... What I find hilarious is this thinking that even the most popular blogs are well written or even thoughtful. Please! By and large, this medium (if it even qualifies as one) is practically defined as horribly composed navel gazing. [Ed. note: personal attack deleted].

Relate that to podcasting, which is most definitely mediocre personal broadcasting. Looking at it another way: If newspapers are important sources of information on dead trees, radio is its counterpart in the audio medium. So if blogs are mediocre sources of people's opinions on the latest Postal Service cut or sloppily constructed views of the president's social security plan, then podcasts are their audio counterpart.

I also think Cam is right. As a non-iPod-owning person, I enjoy doing my daily surf o'[print] blogs. I think it would take a lot of time (and iPod space) to listen, as you said before, to a blogger talk to himself (or herself).

I also think a lot of the great things about blogs would be lost -- layout choice and page design is a big one. What would an entirely podcasted blog look like? And what about pictures?

Even though podcasting will find its niche somewhere in the swirling whirlpool of online journalism (NPR, TV, etc.), blogs probably won't be the preferred medium.

I see Podcasting very different from Blogging...
I see it in the new media tricks as closer to the DVR and TIVO...
After using a DVR I often backup and rewatch my programs, and of course ffwd the ads... the same thing you can do with Podcasting... I haven't jumped into it yet, but I often feel the need to backup something I just heard in NPR... and to jump over stupid DJ comments or excesive commercial ads...