Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

John Furrier’s strategy to rope in Scoble to Podtech, will surely yield rich benefits going by the tremendous job Scoble is doing in raising interest in podcasts, as you can see here and there.

This augurs well for me as a corporate podcast evangelist since I’ve not had much traction in the past, especially with corporate marketers. I could do with some more celebrity advertising! Case-in-point: Last week, Scoblog read “Nielsen blows it on podcasting!”, which naturally had all of the blogosphere buzzing again! What Scoble does is lend credibility to the entire argument, which in the past may have languished in the lower rungs of Technorati.

Here’s the mini blog-o-drama in link summary…

1. Nielsen: Podcasts more popular than blogging – Podcasting News
2. Nielsen Survey Nonsense (via 1) – Jon Watson
3. Nielsen blows it on podcasting (via 2) – Robert Scoble
4. Think again, Nielsen (via 2) – Leesa Barnes

Nielsen Facts:
6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast.

4.0 percent, or 5.6 million Web users, have recently downloaded a video podcast.

My Take:
Let’s start from the facts. Here’s what the Nielsen report concludes:

These figures put the podcasting population on a par with those who publish blogs, 4.8 percent, and online daters, 3.9 percent.

If “podcasting population”, here refers to those who publish podcasts, then the analogy works right. However if as Scoble & his commenters have argued, if “podcasting population” refers to users who listen to podcasts then the argument doesn’t hold water. Funny, how the devil lies in the details! Anyway…

My takeaway from the research article is ONE FACT:

PODCAST USAGE & CONSUMPTION IS GROWING RAPIDLY DEFYING PREDICTIONS

Case in Point: Forrester projected that just 700,000 households in the US in 2006 will use podcasting, and that it will grow to 12.3 million households in the US by 2010!

Actually, the devil here too, lies in the detail as to the Forrester definition of the term “household” vs. the Nielsen definition of “adult online population”.

Regardless of the semantics, I wonder what Charlene Li of Forrester Research thinks about the Nielsen Research Report. She of the “just 1% use Podcasts” fame (as of 04/05/06). If podcast usage has increased thus (from 1% to 6%) in 3 months — you do the math.

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