So there has been a TON of news on podcasting lately. Even I got a mention on
Chris Pirillo`s Blog when he
asked friends to leave voicemails. I think that the concept of "What is Podcasting" is starting to come out more. I think that many others had the same thought that
I did and were just wondering why it was so special and what it all meant.
I have heard more information ans seen more examples lately that makes me see more about what it was all about. I was listening to the podcast above, and I heard one point of view that said podcasting was not just about internet audio, but was about internet audio on demand and integrating this with the syndication powers of rss. That changed my view of podcasting completely. I realized that I had been doing this already way before the name podcasting came around. Check out
Windows Media Server. This is a REALLY cool server because its all about managing the distribution of media. It can stream a video or audio to as many people as you want. Its especially good for LANs since it supports the multicast protocol and can use ONE data strem to deliver to all the clients. The other advantage is that it will distribute more than one data type as well. It can distribute LIVE feeds (meaning that it accepts and buffers and rebroadcasts another live feed), it can distribute static files (meaning audio or video files), and it can do either of these in synchronous or asynchronous mode, meaning that you can program the distribution points to either broadcast to all users on the same time scale (so that if you join late, you start where everyone else started), or they can start at the begining and manage their own experience. The only thing that its missing is the power of RSS. I think that you could really build a powerful service around this product.
Here is an example. Lets say that I wanted to create a podcasting service. As a podcasting service, I would offer bandwidth and storage space to subscribers of my service. Also, as a service, I would provide RSS feeds for each customer that mapped to the distribution points that each person posts.
THIS IS WHAT WE ARE MISSING. THIS CAN BRING PODCASTINBG TO ALL. It will allow people at blogger, people at livejournal, people with their own MT blogs, people with their own blogs to be able to upload their own media files (audio, video, slideshows, ANYTHING) and have it automatically added to their podcast rss feed. I read that
Dave Winer just bought a server that has some serious bandwidth. I wonder if this is what he will use it for. This would be something that I would string together quick if I actually had a server on a fast pipe (the 256Kbit/s I have here is not enough), I would throw something like this together, but alas, I do not. Another feature that this service could add would be to have a phone number to call into, enter a user number and automatically record a new podcast over the phone. THIS is the thing that gets me excited about podcasting (though its so much more now).
So in the end what am I saying? Well, its not podcasting thats big or going to be big, its this: "AdHoc Media OnDemand". Sure, thats a mouthful and not that catchy, but really thats what this is, and why its so popular.
If there is a service out there that can really nail these concepts in the generic cases (like what I explained), then that is what will make this thing take off. Here are my arguments:
What is it about podcasting that threatens its popularity and lifetime?
1. Its not easy to do. Sure, just record something and make it an mp3, then post it on your website, but look how many people have blogs that are just on some other service out there and all they know is that interface and maybe a little html. They are not going to want to make their own podcast. Making it easy for them is crucial. This means both on the recording front (an standard application to record with and upload the media to the target server is crucial), and on the publishing front (and automatic distribution mechanism via RSS and HTML links is necessary) as well.
2. Its not always easy to find or to recieve. Sure podcast RSS feeds are popular now, but because they are all over the place, not supported by everything, and not easy to produce either, that means that often times these podcasts are just a link in a blog entry.
3. Its not easy to subscribe and download or transfer media. Sure there are guides out there about how to do it. But as soon as you tell someone that its more than 2 or 3 easy steps, that will push off so many people out there. Right now these guides are really just for the geeks and that needs to change.
These are not easy to solve, and this is not an easy process to fix. I think I have the vision now. I was worried at first, but I see now where it can go. Its just going to take a lot of money and a lot of effort. (Oh and the fundamental way that websites make money might have to change as well since this service that is hosting feeds needs to pay for the Terabytes of data that would be leaving per month.)
If anything comes from my blog entry today, I hope I give someone ideas for doing something, or help convince someone else to really go through with this plan, or even give another suggestion to someone that is in the middle of implementing something like this.
Either way, if there was a service like this, I think that I would use it all the time. The primary reason I was worried about any of this now was just that there was no way I wanted all of this media to chew up all MY bandwidth.
J.P.