Podcasting’s Image Problem

I’m finally getting around to listening to the sessions I missed at last fall’s Podcast and Portable Media Expo. While there, all the sessions felt like we were prepping for a boom. Everyone looking for how to hit the mother lode.

Seven months later, listening to the sessions, that suspicion is confirmed. The tone, pitch, and demeanor (of all but Dave Slusher’s session) is one of snake oil pyramid scheme sales pitch.

From an aesthetic sense, even today, if ‘pod’ is somewhere a company’s name, the presence looks cheap, unpolished, half-baked, and feels as reputable as a payday loan provider.

This is a huge problem. For everyone that publishes enclosures via RSS.

It’s not a lack-of-money problem. It’s a customer experience problem. The latest Web 2.0 toysite is far more polished and thought-through from an experience perspective than people frantically digging for fool’s gold in podcastville.

Hopefully, we’re in podcasting’s dip. A lull. To shake out those that can be shaken out.

“There was no boom in podcasting technology, and there won’t be.” – Dave Winer

One reply on “Podcasting’s Image Problem”

  1. Thanks for your thoughts Garrick. I think you’ll see a lot less “digging” this year at the Expo and more “how to” sessions about creating better audio and video – regardless of whether the creator wants to make a business of it or not.

    I’ve been through this sort of thing before, in the online trading industry. (Remember when brokers ran those commercials about the 12-year-old owning a helicopter?). Eventually, a level of realism settles and that’s when the true business opportunities emerge.

    Tim Bourquin, Founder
    Podcast and New Media Expo
    http://www.NewMediaExpo.com

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