20050628   

Michael considered fate at 13:32   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

As evidence of Apple's brilliant marketing, or alternately, it's amazing luck, podcasting can now be called "popular". Why? Because Purina and Interactive Agency Arc Worldwide Make Foray into Podcasting and Mobile Marketing:

"... podcasting is a highly innovative way for us to strengthen our relationships with pet lovers," said Michael Moore, director of interactive marketing at Purina.

... Purina's downloadable podcasts will give consumers computer-based access to Purina's Animal Advice radio program. New shows will be published every other week and discuss topics such as animal training, pet surgery, behavioral theories and pet insurance.

If dog food companies are getting into the fray, this isn't just about some teenagers and an aging MTV VJ anymore; this is real media. Even Rush Limbaugh has a "Podcast Media Center". Consider the Internet Archive's offer of free (unlimited) web space, and anyone with a microphone or headset has a virtually free (see what I did there) means to an audible audience.

Sure, throwing some MP3s up on a website is absolutely nothing new. But it's the ease of use that is paving this media highway over what was once just a dirt path - the road less travelled, as it were. Technologies such as RSS allows for client software to automatically discover new content as it is publish, automatically download it, and even automatically load it to your portable digital audio device.

So simple my grandmother could handle it.. and the scariest thing is that she probably will be handling it, the second an "Internet Quilting Show" arises.

So what does this have to do with Apple? The Wikipedia entry for Podcasting outlines the origins of the term:

Possibly the first use of the term "podcasting" was as a synonym for "audioblogging" or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004. In September of that year, Dannie Gregoire used the term to describe the automatic download and synchronization idea that Adam Curry [the MTV VJ] had developed.

So you see that While it is derived from the word iPod it has no connection or requirement that an iPod is ever used.

The fact that Apple has, in essence, created a product that is so ubiquitous in the minds of both early-adopting technology consumers and normal non-geek wait-and-see retail buyers alike is in itself amazing. Yet it is this very mindshare, not the product itself, that has caused people like Ben Hammersley to incorporate and evolve this terminology into descriptions of other new technology. Hammersley, no doubt looking for a catchy phrase to place in his article to catch people's eye, made the obvious choice: ride the iPod wave.

The result? Everyone (and their mother) are hoping on the bandwagon and no one is stopping to consider that Apple has very little to do with the creation or development of any of this technology. Perhaps even more brilliantly, Apple is quick to realize it's good fortune and is patching the holes in it's marketing blanket:

Apple Computer made good on recent promises by Chief Executive Steve Jobs to release a new version of its iTunes music player software that supports podcasting.

Users of iTunes 4.9, which is available for free, can now subscribe to some 3,000 podcasts--essentially pre-recorded audio programs--from within the iTunes music software.

...In a speech last month, Jobs said that iTunes would eventually support podcasting, but didn't indicate that a related feature would appear in a revised version of the iPod. Apple has added a "podcasts" category to the iPod menu and allows users to bookmark specific sections of a podcast file for later reference.

Sure, there is and has been for some time various software available on the internet to aggregate podcast syndications and automatically download new "episodes" as they become available but Apple, by being the first major player to materialize these sorts of features in a commercially hardened and widely-used product, is poised to become the name associated with podcasting. The new iTunes version will help to spread and promote the phenomenon of podcasting by simply being simple; users of the software now, which includes many moms and dads, will download the new version because the program suggests it. They will discover a new area in this program called "podcasts". They will explore these new features and eventually forget there was even a time when the didn't exist. Years into the future, when technology journalists write their year-end Top-10 lists of "Best technology from ten years ago", they will laud Apple as envisionist, creator, and promoter of the media-democratizing Podcast.

From the Hindu Business Line:

...the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that nearly a third of the adults possessing iPod and MP3 player (half of them aged 18-28) have downloaded podcasts.

... Several radio stations, such as New York's WNYC, Boston's WGBH, Seattle's KOMO or Toronto's CBC Radio One - have already gone into the podcasting mode. Interestingly, the short segments of Internet programming being promoted by Al Gore and other prominent entrepreneurs in the US is called `Pods'.