As more people subscribe to podcasts, market researchers are struggling to assess podcasting's reach. The Pew Internet and American Life Project stepped into the fray last April with a report that six million people had listened to podcasts - audio recordings posted online. Pew's figure was derided by some as an overestimate.
Now two other researchers have tried to predict the future of podcasting, and the variance between their results is instructive. Marc Freedman of the Diffusion Group predicted that 56.8 million people would be using podcasts in 2010. "Podcasting will be a common feature, integrated into browsers and digital media players," he said.
But Ted Schadler of Forrester Research predicted that 12.3 million households - about 30 million people - would use podcasts by 2010. His forecast assumes that many early adopters will give up on podcasting and that others will never pick it up. Often, he said, "We find both that the early adoption rate differs completely from the later adoption rate, and that people use things and they just don't like them, and after a year they stop."
Ever since the 90s, when technologies were proliferating so quickly, there has been an ever-increasing fear of missing out on being on the ground floor of something (whatever it may be), so companies are leaping into new technologies like mobile media, podcasting, RSS, etc., before those technologies have had a chance to--well, not mature, but even start to crawl. It's hard to make forecasts about how popular something is going to be when research has found that more than half of the U.S. population has never even heard of it.
"Podcasting" as it is conceived now (as a downloadable audio program distributed in MP3 or similar format and designed to be played on an iPod) certainly will only appeal to a niche audience--those who are technologically savvy enough to download MP3 audio and use iPods and those who like audio-only programming (perhaps that's a niche within a niche). When you consider how many people listen to radio programming vs. watch television, the potential for podcasting to take off explosively is not encouraging.
But what constitutes a podcast? If I download an audiobook in MP3 format, is that a podcast? If a colleague sends me an MP3 file that comprises an audio accompaniment to a PowerPoint presentation, is that a podcast? If I manage to track down an old episode of the "Jack Benny Program" on MP3, is that a podcast? If I come across a link to an NPR interview with a favorite author or musician that I missed, and I download it, is that a podcast? If I can't remember when "Car Talk" is on but download old episodes when I have some spare time to kill, is that a podcast?
Technically, the answer to all of these things is "yes," so in that case, I think the potential for podcasting is quite high. The real issue for all the people who are seeking to use podcasting as a marketing and advertising vehicle (whence the interest in the technology, after all) is that it's not going to be like network TV or even radio, where millions of people are going to tune into it at any one time. Or even like a CD or DVD release where a certain number are sold in the first week of release. The point of the podcast--or any digitally delivered, on-demand content--is that it is delivered one download at a time, user by user, over a long-ish period of time. So compiling lists of the top 100 podcasts for the week (as some folks have been doing) kind of misses the point.
I suppose another question that people have is "Will there be a podcasting star?" or some program that takes off as a podcast and reaches Seinfeldian heights of popularity. It's certainly not impossible and there is certainly nothing standing the way--at least technologically--of that happening. But like most things, it will all be a matter of marketing and publicity and getting the word out to large masses of people--and as any self-published book author can tell you, that ain't easy.
But again, once video podcasting comes to the fore, it will be a whole new ballgame.
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