In honor of blogger Robert Scoble's move from Microsoft to podcasting network PodTech, Scoble baiter Chris Coulter lists eight reasons why the podcasting biz, despite being hailed as the new wave of media, is dead in the water.
- Commodity Market Already - Existing content (Radio, TV, Video) can be flipped over without much more than an re-encode. It's a pre-made commodity market, no need to pay Silicon Valley charlatan-hustlers thousands of dollars to "show you how".
- Lack of Talent and Quality - People want to hear existing Radio/TV shows and Audio Books, not geeks and goofball Rocketbloomish amateurs playing with gadgets and whatnot. And the podcasting hypesters are populated with the eternally wrongheaded "Medium is more Important than the Message" types. As lesser barriers to entry, is only that, it doesn't confer any sort of talent or quality along with it.
- Not Discoverable - No channel surfing, no radio-scanning check-out concepts; you can skim thousands of news sites and blogs (or other online reading materials) in no time, not so with podcasting.
After the jump, Coulter calls podcasting "overhyped." Gee, who knew?
- No ROI - It takes a heck of a lot longer to listen to podcasts, over reading the same material online. Most of the market, outside of certain niches, isn't going to invest that time.
- Passivity - The market wants media without work, pre-packaged in easy forms, not eternal geeky tricks of twiddling and syncing.
- Start Line on the Faddish Cycle - Like anything "new new" on the net, it runs through the usual cycle: massive experimental euphoria with tons of venture-speculation money thrown around, and then the serious bubble-popping cool-off phase, with a full-circle return to rational value-added markets. World changing? No. Some limited niche value? Yes. Hucksters trying to quick cash in on the boom before the bust? Tons.
- Land Grabbing - Audio Books, Audio/Video Training Material, loooong been around. If a certain codec now works on a portable device, it's now somehow podcasting?
- Over-hyped - It's all venture-fueled, a new new techie hot branding — firehose money at it. It's JUST a distribution mechanism; and just because you can do it and download it, still doesn't mean anyone is listening.
This was expanded from Chris's earlier, more petulant one-item list, "1. Scoble's doing it."
Photo: Hypnoradio [bbaltimore on Flickr]
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Jun 12, 2006 12:35 PM
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