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Podcast Adoption Increases

By Rob Safuto on Apr 21, 2006 in Analysis, Podcasting, Social Media | Tags: , , ,

My friends at LibSyn and FeedBurner have issued their own independent reports that provide a very good insight on the adoption of podcasting.

The FeedBurner Report

The FeedBurner Report shows that “podcast circulation is consistently growing nearly 20% per month.” FeedBurner is tracking about 1.6 million people subscribing to feeds that they manage.

Despite all the recent hoopla, these figures provide conculsive evidence that the market for podcasts on the side of both the publisher and subscriber is very healthy indeed. A picture is worth a thousand words so have a look at a pair of graphics from the FeedBurner report.

Feedburner Subscribers
FeedBurner Subscription Growth
Feedburner Podcast Growth
FeedBurner Publisher Growth

The LibSyn Report
LibSyn has experienced similar success in growth. According to their report, “…more then 45 million people listened to and watched podcasts off the Libsyn network in the first quarter of 2006.” Not bad for a distribution network founded by a handful of folks in Pittsburgh sans venture capital support.
LibSyn also reveals that 72% of podcast downloads from their network come from iTunes with web browsers coming in a distant second for capturing podcasts. A hefty 88% of the podcasts on the LibSyn network are in audio form.From Q4 2005 to Q2 2006 LibSyn had a 65% increase in podcasters joining their service. Definitely very positive results. Here’s LibSyn’s picture of their web traffic growth since last summer.
LibSyn Growth
LibSyn Website Traffic Trend
My Conclusions

As a medium, Podcasting (like text driven RSS) is alive and well. This isn’t some hokey technology adopted by a few core geek types living in garages and basements. Maybe it was like that a year ago but now we’ve all come out into the light to join the rest of the world.

The growth will continue for two reasons. First, the technology to create and distribute a podcast is relatively simple and getting easier all the time due to the efforts of many enterprising individuals and companies. Second, the cost for entry into the medium is ridiculously low.

There are challenges for businesses who want to get the most out of podcasts on both the publishing side and the subscription side.On the subscription side it can be quite hard to find good podcasts that relate to your business. This is due to the fact that there are many more entertainment podcasts than their are business driven ones. And many of the exisiting business podcasts focus on marketing and communications. If those happen to be your businesses then you’re in luck. If not, then you might consider being the first in your field to publish a podcast.

On the publishing side their is a creative dilemma. While creating a podcast will not break your budget, I do recommend a significant time investment in planning the content of the podcast along with the look and feel of the associated podcast blog. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing right. You’ll have to assess whether or not your team has enough free bandwith to take on such an effort.

Either way, I think that any business that’s serious about taking advantage of the power of Social Media should keep an eye on the wealth of information available via podcasts while considering the possibilties of using Podcasting as a medium for both internal and external communications.

[tags]Social Media, Podcasting, Podcast Growth, LibSyn, FeedBurner[/tags]

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