I’ve been hooked on using Alexaholic and the brand new Google Trands lately. Today is my first post where I will use data from these two sources to illustrate a point about podcasting. Will it work? Who cares. Graphs are cool.
In one of my post about RSS adoption and why it’s so slow I talked about how tech acronyms will slow adopyion rates among the main stream. The more we can flatten the learning curve the faster new technology will take off. Of course, this is common knowledge, but usually appilied to UI’s. No one ever thinks it could work with something as simple as a name.
I propose that podcasting would have a higher adoption rate if all audio publishing was referred to as “internet radio” and podcasting was simple a feature. Perhaps all podcasters should stop using the word “podcast” and just call themselves EJs (Electronic disc Jockey) with internet radio stations. Most blog post from podcasters already have a built in player so it is really internet radio on demand. As a matter of fact, an entire campaign should be waged on that note alone. It’s not “podcasting”, it’s “Internet Radio On Demand”. Now THAT is something the mainstream can grasp.
Interest in podcasts is up, WAY UP. But America seems more hooked on internet radio while Singapore is falling in love with podcasting.
One could make the argument that podcasting will soon overtake internet radio. Someone else could make the argument that podcasting and live streaming are radically different. I see it making more sense when podcasting is put under the umbrella of internet radio.