Podcasting in 2010

Huh? Okay, I love eMarketer, but come on, people...

Joining the podcast audience requires confident use of an iPod or MP3 player, as well as ease with the process of downloading syndicated digital content from the internet (although podcasts can be listened to and watched on a computer with an internet connection, it's their portability that attracts users). This will remain a constraint on audience size even though the number of consumers who meet these requirements will inevitably grow over the next few years.

If we expect that the distribution mechanism for podcasts in 2010 will still involve the cumbersome process of downloading to one's computer and placing it on one's portable device, then we're probably being short-sighted. Personally, I think podcasting will explode and the audience will be much larger than 15 million people. Of course, by then, it probably won't be called podcasting anymore because there will be multiple distribution mechanisms and we'll be able to get our favorite programming without having to connect our portables to our PCs. How does on-demand IP content sound? I think it will get here before 2010.

That's the problem with these kinds of projections. They assume that the distribution mechanism will remain constant. Guess what? If the demand for the content is significant, we'll invent new ways to get it out to people.

Jargon Watch

Does Gareth Branwyn still do Jargon Watch for Wired? Here's one we've been using around the office a lot lately: Tetris Day - An exceptionally busy day at the office. Characterized by such a huge volume of meetings, conference calls and appointments that one's Outlook calendar begins to resemble a game of Tetris as meetings are moved, rescheduled and delayed.

Solid Piece on Conversational Marketing

Chas Edwards put out a great piece via Mediapost yesterday. I thik it speaks more to the participatory nature of things like group blogs and community sites, but it touches on a number of principles we've incorporated into our Conversational Marketing practice. (Oops, I've already said too much...) ;-) My favorite part:

Lenovo figured laptop buyers would have a greater inclination to buy a product they had a hand in designing. But instead of flying wannabe industrial designers to company headquarters at Raleigh, N.C., Lenovo set up a site that allowed buyers to vote for the color (black or titanium?) on the next line of ThinkPads. A small but significant step toward conversational marketing: the company gave its customers a mechanism to talk back. As I write this, 183,394 people have voted so far.

This example mirrors the one I've been talking about for years with DigiTech and the GSP-2101 Discussion List. In case I haven't mentioned it yet, that community was so persuasive that it ended up being the catalyst for a meta-language written by tech-savvy list members that allowed people to share programs and save them to external devices. Additionally, list members directly contributed feature ideas to future product releases. A customer has got to be pretty dedicated to pull off something like that.

Scary Influence of Reality TV

So I'm browsing iTunes for a minute and I hop over to the Rock section and what song is #5? Hemmorrhage (In My Hands) by Fuel. And I'm thinking, yeah that song was cool on the radio a few years ago. What the heck is that doing on the chart now? Then I remembered that the bald guy on American Idol sang it and nailed it.

Are people really that influenced by crappy reality TV? Ugh.