As I see it now there are three major threats to the growth and success of podcasting as a medium in the coming years.

1. Centralized RSS Feeds - A recent scare involving the country of China blocking RSS feeds from the Feedburner domain underscores the dangers of having too many feeds hosted at one source. If that source goes down, a good percentage of the world of podcasting will go down as well. If the domain is blocked then the same result occurs. Are we all putting too many eggs in one basket?

   It is worth noting that the FeedBurner service is a necessity for some people due to shifting requirements like iTunes custom podcast tags and the Yahoo! Media RSS format. Feed statistics are another reason why podcasters and bloggers alike are compelled to use the FeedBurner services. There aren’t many other options for getting reliable statistics on access to RSS feeds.

2. Lack Of A Community Directory - One of the things that keeps people from adopting podcasting as a preferred form of entertainment is the fact that many people simply can’t find shows that they like. A robust community podcast directory would go a long way towards solving this problem. The directories with commercial aspirations simply have too much of an agenda when it comes to categorizing podcasts. The agenda is based in the desire to have people utilize their sites in ways that maximize potential revenue.

   A community podcast directory could feature hundreds, or even thousands of node editors managing lists of podcasts that they are passionate about. Lists could be created by geography, culture, podcast topics and almost any other possibility you can think of. This sort of approach allows the user more options to find a path that will lead to enjoyable podcast content.

3. Misuse Of Content - There are certain individuals and companies who feel that freely available content is free to use in any way they like. Reasonable individuals understand that this is not the case. Even the ever present Creative Commons licenses in podcast feeds don’t stop someone from misusing your content. That means producers of podcasts may have to resort to methods that limit the reach of their shows in order to protect the content that they have worked very hard to create.Since directories are able to crawl the web for RSS feeds with enclosures then snatch those feeds into their ad laden directories, producers may be forced to publish multiple version of feeds.

   So the podcast producer might publish a feed with limited content that then points the subscriber to a protected feed like their iTunes podcast. This is definitely not a preferred option, but producers concerned about misuse of their content might just have to take it until the legalities of reproducing syndicated content are clarified and accepted by the larger community.

[tags] Social Media, Podcasting, FeedBurner, Community Podcast Directory, Centralized RSS, RSS, Creative Commons, Misuse Of Content[/tags]