Tony Morgan, one of the guys I follow on blogsphere, asks “Is podcasting dead?” His experience says so, mine is the opposite.
Why I believe podcasting is alive and kicking:
1. Podcasts, as compared to the popular YouTube and other vidcasts, can be consumed with little attention. With videos, you need your eyes fixed on your monitor (or on your iPod) to get something from it. For non-multitaskers like me, it takes a lot of efforts to do that. A podcast is like listening to music — you can bike, hike and exercise with it.
2. Podcasts matches my lifestyle. While for some it isn’t, for busy people like me, podcasts doesn’t really consume much of my time because I listen while I work or while doing something else.
3. I’ve learned a bunch from podcasts. May it be for spirituality, leadership skills or just plain entertainment, I’m getting my daily dose of wisdom from podcasts.
Tony, on the other hand, gave valid challenges for this technology to create better impact. Some bright minds out there may pitch in how to solve some. One way to solve the problem on podcasts not being search engine friendly and hard to be scanned is for serious podcasters to consider transcription services much like that of medical transcription.
How do you think can podcasts be improved?