For a long time now, I have been saying that podcasting is stuck in a holding pattern, where it is stuck in a state perpetual promise, but without a breakthrough hit.
Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb today reports about a possible watershed moment for podcasting: Oprah.
Outside of our tech echo chamber, Oprah has climed the iTunes podcasting ladder with a ten week series together with writer Eckhart Tolle (he writes about awakening your life’s purpose - the pseudo-religious stuff that Oprah’s audience seems to love).
Oh, and she is also using the Silverlight player and Skype.
The first two weeks have had half a million people watching simultaneously. According to digital media Dave Zatz, that broke the previous Live Earth record of roughly 240k simultaneous streams. Those streams were delivered by Limelight Networks and served up through the Move Networks video player. Live interaction with audiences goes on over Skype Video. All the sessions are available afterwards as podcasts on iTunes.
Who knows - Oprah might singlehandedly bring podcasting into the mainstream. After all, once somebody has figured out how to download Oprah’s podcasts, they are only one click away from also getting Joel Osteen’s sermons and This Week in Tech…
There is NO SILVERLIGHT on the Oprah.com site or for the Tolle Web event.
Just Move Player and some Flash navigation.