Thursday, November 6, 2008

Podcasting To Get Ginormously Big!

Apple Activates Podcast Downloads in 2.2 Firmware

Podcasting has become one of those things that I'm surprised to learn still exists.

My sampling of it discovered a horrific morass of sub-amateur production values with a very high noise-to-signal ratio and a very low information-to-time-spent value.

Plus, getting them was a pain in the ass.

I don't want to subscribe and feel the pressure of having to listen. Also, I'm not someone who has iTunes open every day, so things would tend to back up -- a sensation I'm certain people who read RSS via Google Reader can sympathize with!

Now it looks like it's just about official that direct-to-iPhone podcast delivery is coming.

This is going to blast podcasting out of its small niche into ginormous audiences.

I don't know how podcasts are made available via iTunes (I dimly remember it was, in the past, generally a free and easy-to-do process), but this is something that every writer should investigate (I'm looking at you, Cliff Burns!).

Let me remind you what podcasting did for writer Mark Jeffrey:
His first podiobook, Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant, has received over 2 million downloads to date.

And that was while getting a podcast was a pain in the ass! Imagine how monstrous the potential will be once Apple makes it tap-tap impulse easy!

(Here I am at the end of this post and I need to add this for the abominable Kindle kultists: STFU about how great wireless delivery is. I get it. I just don't want that fugly locked-down no-ePub no-public library K!)

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