Prior Art?

While the patent was filed in November 2003, it is not clear when exactly VoloMedia argues to have invented podcasts. In his blog post, however, Navar argues that this was "almost a year before the start of podcasting." We have wondered about this timeline, however. Using enclosures in RSS feeds was first publicly written about by Dave Winer in January 2001. Indeed, the system for downloading and distributing podcasts in Winer's "Payloads for RSS" from 2001 looks quite similar to VoloMedia's patent. When we spoke to Winer earlier today, he also pointed us to an early podcast by Chris Lydon from July 2003.

The podcasting movement only really picked up steam in 2004, when moving downloaded files to iPods (which were also just coming of age) and other MP3 players became a lot easier thanks to numerous developers who wrote the first podcast clients.

Looking at the patent, it quickly becomes clear that VoloMedia laid out the fundamentals of podcasting in great detail, including how to synchronize content between mobile devices and PCs. Navar argues that in November 2003, it wasn't obvious that users would start to download episodic content. Given that Dave Winer first met with Adam Curry to discuss the concept in December 2000, however, we really have to wonder if this claim would hold up under greater scrutiny. We asked VoloMedia for a statement and will update this post once we hear back from them.

More to Come

For VoloMedia, which just switched gears towards a stronger focus on serving ads after it fired its sales team, this patent obviously comes at a good time. With some luck, the company will either be bought by another podcasting company interested in the company's intellectual property (and Navar says that more patents are in the pipeline), or it will receive a nice influx of cash based on licensing deals with other companies in the podcasting business. That is, of course, if the patent really holds up...

We'd like to continue the discussion in the comments - and also tell us how you listen to podcasts these days. I usually listen to them while walking the dog. But everyone is different, so tell us your preferred podcast listening method.

Richard MacManus

• NPR: All Songs Considered, plays all the latest music; check out their review of the top music of '08, it's must-listen for music geeks
• Live in Concert from All Songs Considered
• ReadWriteTalk (iTunes link), our own podcast channel, hosted by the awesome Sean Ammirati
• RWW Live, ReadWriteWeb's bi-weekly podcast show hosted by Sean, featuring a few of the RWW authors and special guests
• The Semantic Web Gang, Paul Miller and his Semantic Web crew

Marshall Kirkpatrick (walking the dog while listening to podcasts is a common theme here at RWW)

• StackOverflow (and many other things on ITConversations)
• TWiT: This Week in Tech
• Gilmor Gang
• NY Times Backstory
• RedMonk Podcasts

Sarah Perez

• CNET's Buzz Out Loud ("my hands down favorite")
• Diggnation
• CNET's Loaded
• TWiT: This Week in Tech
• The Social Geeks (featuring Sarah)

Frederic Lardinois

• Slate Gabfest with @jdickerson
• NPR On the Media
• Nature Podcast
• FLOSS Weekly (Free Libre Open Source Software)
• New Yorker Out Loud

Lidija Davis doesn't listen to podcasts, but she participates in one - The Drilldown.

10 Favorite Podcasts From the RWW Community

We got a great response from our friends on Twitter (follow @rww on Twitter if you want to participate in future polls). A number of podcasts were mentioned multiple times. Here are 10 of those that randomly caught our eye:

• This American Life, presented by Chicago Public Radio
• For Immediate Release, a show about PR and tech
• TED Talks, brain food
• You Look Nice Today, "an audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene"
• Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR quiz show
• KEXP song of the day, Seattle radio station which has a selection of great podcasts
• Six Pixels of Separation, podcast of Twist Image, a Digital Marketing agency
• MacCast, Mac fans computer show
• BBC Friday night Comedy, "a satirical take on the week's news with the cream of UK comedy talent."
• Strange Love Live, which @dieselboi described as "a fun, insightful and sexy podcast"; our own Marshall Kirkpatrick was on it recently.

Below is the full unstructured list from friends of RWW! Sorry there are no links, but generally you can copy and paste an item into Google to find out more...

Kate LaFrance: Stephen Pierce's blog dtalpha.com.

Roger Harris: Nature magazine, Scientific American, NPR

Terri Ellman: This American Life and Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.

Kenny Hyder: the maccast & atomfilms

Mike Billeter: Marvel's own Mighty Marvel Podcast and The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons (ESPN).

Rob Inskeep: Killer Innovations - http://bit.ly/killer and, on a lighter note The Instance - http://bit.ly/Instance

Mike Keliher: You Look Nice Today, On the Media, Shill, Inside PR, For Immediate Release

eco2oh: Cool Hunting Video (brilliant art/culture/design snack) Tiki Bar TV, Eban's Lounge Podcast Selection, Dishy Mix

Joseph Miller: This American Life, TWiT, Stanford Entrepreneurship.

Simon Young: http://forimmediaterelease.biz, http://jaffejuice.com/, http://twistimage.com/blog, and of course http://ijump.tv :)

ipevo: Inside Mac Radio

itamarw: The Bugle (Times Online), BOL

Mike Robinson: BBC Friday night comedy http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/... TED Talks, always interesting... http://www.ted.com/index.ph...

kitalooclef: More Hip than Hippie, You Look Nice Today, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Real Time with Bill Mahr, The World's Tech podcast

Paul Laroquod: ill doctrine; Cult of UHF; Quirks & Quarks; Art & Story; Sessler's Soapbox.

Andrew Korf: Ian Masters on KPFK.org: http://www.ianmasters.org/

Rob Cottingham: For Immediate Release, Lullabot, Six Pixels of Separation, CBCRadio Comedy Factory, Manager Tools

Kevin Marks: RadioLab; In Our Time; This American Life; BBC Friday night Comedy; On The Media more at my last.fm account kevinmarks

Daniel Howe: The Father Bob Show - He's a disgruntled elderly priest from Melbourne who likes to speak his mind http://is.gd/bQ92

Iben Rodriguez: WNYC-RadioLab, VODcars, PBCC-Sunday-Sermons, ScienceFriday, and Berkeley-Groks.

chase squires: Marketplace ( http://marketplace.publicra... ) and the Stuck in the 80s podcast ( http://blogs.tampabay.com/80s/ )

Adam Ritchie: sound opinions from american public media, nyt popcast, npr all songs considered, boston globe page one, rocketboom

Erin | Books in 140: This American Life, CBC's Writers & Company, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker podcasts

Steve O'Hear: TWiT, phonesshow (prev smartphoneshow), mobile with the guru

Charles: "The Lew Rockwell Show" http://lewrockwell.com/podc...

Kim Gaskins: Savage Love http://is.gd/2rG0

Ethan Watrall: iFanboy, Quirks & Quarks, Wormwood, Leviathan Chronicles, OnBoardGames

Kevin Pedraja: This American Life, Fresh Air, NPR Morning News Summary, KEXP Song of the Day, Beautiful Places in HD

Kiran Max Weber: Future Tense, Core Intuition, gdgt, StackOverflow and TWiT. Gillmor Gang would have made it but think it died.

Andrew Korf: http://ecorner.stanford.edu...

Mike Maney: "Open Sources" podcast from @mjasay and @daveofdoom at http://www.opensources.com/

mike dunn: http://www.podiobooks.com, http://www.somethingtobedes, http://www.thebitterestpill, http://www.evilgeniuschronicles, http://www.deltaparkproject.

Hanna Wiszniewska: Changesurfer Radio http://bit.ly/OF7d, Pop!Casts http://bit.ly/liEk, TEDtalks http://bit.ly/vUTq

Tony Bain: venture-voice

alexislyon: Coffee Break Spanish!

McMatt: Sci. Am's "60 Second..." series. Informative, leads to other info and very chipper. http://tinyurl.com/5vgr79

Shaun Trennery: Twit, No Agenda, ZA Tech Show, Tech 5

Sarah Wood: Diggnation, Totally Rad Show, The Stealth Mac, We Need Girlfriends, KEXP song of the day

aussiesasha: social blend @ mixxingbowl.com :)

Sea-Fever Consulting: For Immediate Release, Six Pixels of Separation, No Agenda, You Look Nice Today, Just One More Book

Will King: TEDTalks, FastCompany.TV, MacCast, NPR Planet Money, KRCW LeShow

Sherif Mansour: 1) The Scoop (Aussie) http://tinyurl.com/594dwx 2) Instantiate Podcast (Aussie) http://instantiate.platform... , 3)TWiT (US)

arikhanson: For Immediate Release; Marketing Over Coffee

Chris from Germany: http://www.podcast.de/podcast/8995/Sci_xpert_-_Leschs_Universum
it's in German, a Munich university professor, over 30 parts, 15mins each

Steve Spalding: You Look Nice Today - Merlin Mann's podcast, Buzz Outloud, TWiT

Aaron Hockley: TWIP, TackSharp, Hanselminutes, .NET Rocks

Bram Pitoyo: strangelovelive

Chris O'Rourke: StrangeloveLive, Webb Alert, The Microsoft IT Manager Podcast

Chris Judson: FOSS Weekly, Reduced Shakespeare Co, YouLookNiceToday, Speaking of Faith, Wait, wait...don't tell me (last two are NPR types)

Michele: The Moth, Splendid Table, This American Life

dieselboi: Strangelovelive is a fun, insightful and sexy podcast

Brett Roberts: TED, Ask a Ninja

dekkerd: GDGT weekly, TwiT, loaded, Buzz out loud, geekbrief.tv

Shelley O'Connor: www.polyweekly.com

Jon Burg: FIR, Six Pixels of Separation, Cranky Geeks, NBC News, Naaleh

Finally, if you're wondering who is the guy who got a podcasting RSS tattoo, it is Drew Olanoff!

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research performed the study for Inc. Magazine and their findings confirm what previous studies have argued as well: social media use is now a major, mainstream activity.

The study was written up on Robin Good's excellent blog Master New Media.

According to the study's authors, "26% of respondents in 2007 felt that social media is "very important" to their business and marketing strategy. That figure rose to 44% in approximately one year. It is clear that this group of fast-growing companies considers the use of social media as a central part of its strategic plan."

Social networking is the most familiar of the technologies. In 2007, wikis were the least familiar but they have since leapfrogged over podcasting.

It's notable that the study's authors found much more extensive use and growth in use in the fastest growing 500 US companies than they found in the Fortune 500, the largest companies. It would be a logical fallacy to argue that the fastest growing companies are growing fastest because of their use of social media, but it could be a factor. It could also be the case that insurgent companies have a greater incentive and proclivity to experiment than incumbent industry leaders.

Three interesting charts from the study can be found below, followed by links to related studies and a few thoughts.

Related recent studies include Universal McCann's findings that half of adults in the US now use some form of social media online and the April prediction from Forrester Research that "Enterprise 2.0" will become a $4.6 billion industry over the next 5 years.

What does this mean? It means that when you tell people you write, read or listen to blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks and online video - if they give you a funny look, it is now officially them that's a freak, not you. Are these tools really as useful as so many people appear to believe they are? That's another question, but at least we're getting a healthy number of people and businesses trying them out.

Another relevant data point to keep in mind might be analyst firm Gartner's "Hype Cycle," though. If this graph accurately expresses business sentiment then adoption doesn't equal satisfaction. Qualitative analyst studies like this are always very controversial, though.

See Master New Media for the full write up on the Inc. 500 report.

Top image from Robert Sanzalone.

David Dworsky responded: "When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different?" His full comment is below.

Congratulations Jason and David, you've each won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

"When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different? People like to watch quality video - it doesn't matter if they use a Mac Book Pro or a Sony Bravia screen. The distribution channel is one thing and the content is another.

To have a rating system that's only based on TV viewers is plain stupid. Some people like to watch on their computer, some like to sit in the TV sofa, some like to use the ipod, some use Youtube - it's the choice of the individual.

To separate the content as TV- versus Internet-video is just an old habit from a business that haven't been fast enough to embrace new technology. It's like saying that the text in a newspaper is more worth than the same text on the newspaper website. Internet fandom is primetime (or at least it should be)."

Oprah image via The Last Podcast

Before readers let the snark fly, let it be said that Oprah Winfrey is a deeply serious woman. Her brilliance isn't just cynical manipulation of unthinking middle aged women. Her book club, for example, brings truly great literature to millions. Now she's helping solve the problem Microsoft faces with Silverlight in challenging the huge installed base enjoyed by Adobe's Flash.

Making History

Just like the early adoption of RSS by the New York Times helped legitimize and distribute that technology so essential to the web today, so too will Oprah's use of podcasting, Silverlight and Skype likely be remembered as a turning point for the platforms of the future.

The US podcasting market has steadily been increasing in size over the last couple of years and is expected to double within the next two years to almost 38 million people, according to eMarketer. With these kinds of numbers, podcasters and advertisers are starting to look into ways to generate more revenue through video ads.

The active podcast audience is expected to grow to an impressive 25 million listeners by 2012 and advertisers are expected to spend close to $450 million by 2012.

There are many reasons why podcasting is becoming more popular in the US at such a fast rate. Firstly, podcast content is easy to digest. Most podcasts that are downloaded are usually short and focus on specific topics or genres, making it easy for people to listen to exactly what they are interested in and skip the fluff. With professional high-quality content and no commercials, it's easy to see why people may prefer to view a podcast over a TV show.

Also, there is a much greater awareness and much more promotion for podcasting via large online news and media networks such as CNET, New York Times, and well-respected blogs [Ed: see our own ReadWriteTalk for example]. Podcasts have also become part of many people's daily lives thanks to Apple's iPod and iTunes. With iTunes and the vast numbers of iPods, users are able to instantly and easily download podcasts onto their PC's or iPods, making watching a podcast almost as normal as listening to an MP3.

Following the success of Apple's iTunes, other major players have released portable media players that can play podcasts - such as Microsoft's Zune player and the Zune Marketplace - thereby increasing the podcast audience.

On top of that, there has a been a prediction that within four years 40% of all video viewed will be outside of the television set. That's coming from a poll carried out by Jack Meyers and tracked by the firm Teletrax of 300 media executives.

The key questions will be whether the growth of the podcast audience will continue to increase at the current rate and will it be enough to attract large amounts of ad spending. Most podcasters make money through advertising on the pages/feeds that distribute the podcast, as well as embedding ads into the podcast itself. Sponsorships and subscription services are not as popular, but will grow as the podcasting market increases.

The company claimed 85 million downloads for the month of May, which put it on a pace to hit 1 billion in a year. In their year-end calculation they determined that the Wizzard servers were receiving an average of 2.75 million requests for podcast episodes per day in 2007, up 300% from demand in 2006. That number is dwarfed by TV and radio viewing numbers but none the less demonstrated strong growth and contradicts the perception that podcasting has failed to live up to its promise.

Key moves this year

In August the company acquired Libsyn, long the most visible vendor in the podcasting community, and hired Rob Walch of the popular show Podcast411 as its VP of Podcaster Relations.

Alex Williams, founder of the Podcast Hotel conference, told me that while the numbers were large, the news of Libsyn and Wizzard's momentum was not a big surprise. "They were first to the market and they executed," he said. "This demonstrates the value of that. Plus they have strong, stand-up people."

Muddy Waters

In addition to the challenge of verifying downloads, it's an entirely different question to ask how many users actually consumed the media they downloaded. Download and view numbers are generally believed to be widely inflated.

None the less, Wizzard's numbers were more than 10 times what competing networks have reported for 2007. Revision3 announced last week that it had played over 100 million "clips" and 25 million "shows" last year (with "an unprecedented 100% unaided sponsor recall" says the sales guy), whatever all that means. Video meta-network NextNewNetworks rode the fast cars and big boobs formula to more than 100 million claimed views in just 10 months of 2007. Podshow hasn't announced any numbers for 2007, which can't be good, but it did manage to spend a lot of money and lose Natali Del Conte to CNet. Perhaps it too topped a billion but was concerned that no one would believe them.

Libsyn love

Libsyn is widely appreciated but has in the past been criticized for some spells of down time. The company's own support blog reports a lot of problems with stats collection, but perhaps those are reports of problems solved and thus good news.

Libsyn charges podcasters a monthly fee for storage and delivery. When I asked people what they thought of Libsyn, almost everyone told me it was good and cheap. Further proof that you can charge people for online services today and they'll thank you for it.

Note: If you like podcasts, check out ours too. It's called ReadWriteTalk and even if you listened to it a billion times you'd still want more.

"It’s a client for subscribing to, watching and listening to podcasts which can also transcode the content and sync it with a number of portable devices including smartphones," Rupert told Voice Over Times. The ability to sync with a wide range of portable devices was always one of FireAnt's most attractive features. Judging by the screenshot (above), the new Odeo media browser is based directly on the FireAnt software. While it is hard to tell from just a screenshot, to my eyes it looks nearly identical to the last iteration of FireAnt.

The relaunch positions Odeo to compete with companies like Veoh and their VeohTV service and Mefeedia. FireAnt's player has always been very slick, and Odeo still has name recognition as one of the first podcast authorities, so combining the two in the way Odeo plans makes sense. Can Odeo make a comeback? We'll begin to find out next month.