iTunes lists hundreds of podcasts in the music store, covering all sorts of topics - football, world news, tech news, music shows, general stuff etcetcetc Its not particularly tech-centric anymore. I'm not trying to argue that 9/10 people you meet know what a podcast is, but a fair few are aware to some extent of what it is, and a large number of people have access to iTunes by virtue of having an iPod. The biggest challenge facing podcasters right now is breaking away from the iPod/iTunes perception - most people with vague knowledge think you _need_ both to listen to podcasts. The implication being that there are a good chunk of people out there picking their podcasts up using iTunes. Although, I have to admit, that by popular demand, I had to archive each episode of the podcast I do with "listen now" links to the mp3, as well as supplying the feed before I started reaching a majority of my entire target audience. I do still maintain that without understanding the mechanisms behind podcasting the term "download" is heavily misleading, no matter the contextual sentence it is in - there are people out there who use "download" when they mean save, or when they mean open (Which makes front line support so much fun: "I was just downloading this document and my PC crashed" "Where were you downloading it from?" "Word." ".........."), putting other words around it doesn't negate the lack of comprehension that goes on in the average person.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Lockwood Sent: 19 December 2006 11:41 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [backstage] democracyplayer Hmm. My personal experience is that people (both "ordinary" users and "technical" users) don't use generally podcasts, and that generally, non-technical users use the term "podcast" to refer to any vaguely topical spoken word MP3 file, which they expect to download - when they want to listen to one, they don't use the software that will regularly go and get it for them, they simply download it manually. But then, that's just my personal experience. Just like in my personal experience, most *real* people don't subscribe to text RSS feeds, nor do they read 'blogs written by people they don't actually know. Cheers, R. On 12/19/06, Luke Dicken <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > people actually use their RSS reader on a daily basis > > RSS useage is pretty low - about 12% last count? RSS feeding > media... 1% of users download a podcast on a typical day - > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6175728.stm. It's the > realm of geeks. > I'd disagree with this heavily, and when I read the article when it was first posted I have to confess I went various shades of purple and said things to the monitor that should not be repeated in such civilised company. The concept of "downloading" a podcast is redundant. Its liking asking someone how often they "receive a radio signal" on their television. Other stuff downloads the podcasts for you, it not something you do or are even aware of. If you had to ask joe schmoe on the street what happened when you downloaded a podcast, with a rudimentary understanding of podcasting, he'd most likely equate it to subscribing to the feed. The study the article is based from is ridiculous, asking technically correct but horribly worded questions, and thus the article, and conclusions drawn based on it are just nonsense. With that rant out of the way, I'd be interested (and this comes back somewhat to statistics) in how many uniques the bbc feeds are hit from. That would probably give a reasonably accurate view of % uptake across a broad spectrum of the population. 12% sounds like a reasonable number - but don't forget that ten years ago internet usage itself was at those sorts of levels (no I can't cite my source, yes my figures might be off, but the point still stands...). Its definitely on the increase - to a point where I was talking with a Biology lecturer and he suggested putting course news and lectures up in RSS format. I'd say its gone well beyond geeks - although perhaps it remains the realm of people with the intelligance and curiosity to ask "what does that orange button do", which, lets face it, is probably a small number of today's mainstream internet users. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
