Low Podcast Adoption Rates are Real!
The podosphere today is bustling with opinions about Forrester Rsearch’s report on the low adoption ratings of podcasting. Here is Podtech’s opinion:
However if you look at iTunes and iPod marketshare alone – I estimate that around 15-20 million people are accessing podcasts on iTunes. Independent to my opinion some Apple watchers put the iTunes client software penetration estimates at around 100 million worldwide. In another report (I believe it’s Infoworld) estimated that 22% of iPod users were aware and consuming podcasts. This data along makes Charlene’s analysis look “all wet.”
Now I wish I could conclude the same, but my observations are quite different. As I work at a major research university, I often see students share their iTunes playlists online and I tend to browse to their podcasting playlist just to see what they are listening to.
Now here is what I have seen: out of about 100 lists I looked at in the last week, 2 subscribed to podcasts. You might wonder what shows those were? They were not the Daily Source Code, or This Week in Tech, or Diggnation. They were not even Ask a Ninja or French Maid TV. They were game related shows from IGN, if I remember it right. So at this point, not even college students have picked up on the phenomenon (not to mention the blank staresI got when I mentioned RSS in my class last week).
I think Rex Hammock’s macro-myopia theory makes a lot of sense in this context. And lets also remember, podcasters are a small, tight group, and small groups tend to have an exaggerated view of their own influence.
Technorati Tags: podcasting, forrester, RSS, podcasts