Netcasts?
Leo Laporte has been pushing lately for renaming podcasts as netcasts. He argues that non technical people believe that they need an iPod to listen to podcasts and that this limits the potential audience of podcasts. I am not convinced. By looking at my logs, I know that I have IT Insight listeners who download the show using Juice as well as other alternatives to iTunes. Of course, most of my listeners use iTunes, but this only reflects the size of the market share that the iPod has captured.
However, this is not the whole story. Leo Laporte also argues that the dominance of iTunes is bad for podcasters. He seems to believe that a more fragmented market is better for podcasters. He goes as far as asking help from Microsoft to fight Apple dominance. This is ridiculous, it is like asking a wolf for help to keep the sheep under control.
As a podcaster who gets most of my traffic through iTunes, I understand why he may want to depend less on Apple. If your podcast is not featured regularly on the iTunes store or your podcast does not appear in the Top 100 list, you are out of luck and it is hard to get people to listen to your shows. However, Leo can hardly complain from lack of cooperation from Apple as they regularly feature TWiT and MacBreak among their top picks.
So, the question is, what does he expect from a fragmented market? Probably more power for podcasters. It is well known that he is currently in the process of building a network of podcasts and he probably would like people to go to his network page to select their content from a limited number of channels instead of a large directory containing thousands of podcasts where his products can easily get lost.
Will it help if Microsoft gets into the game? Most likely not. Instead of a de facto monopoly we will get either a duopoly or a fragmented market. The difference is that instead of the benevolent dictatorship we have today, we will get a known monopolist who will fight for its own financial benefit, competing not only for hardware supremacy but also for revenue from its own content (think MSN, MSNBC, etc). The same applies to companies such as Time-Warner.
From my point of view, I largely prefer a neutral directory that dominates the market where it is difficult to compete, but everyone faces the same difficulties, over a myriad of services where only professional podcasters, with a enough resources to publicize their shows on all existing directories, can reach all the potential listeners. I also sincerely believe that this scenario is also worse for consumers, at least for now, since the technology is still in its infancy.
I do not think that asking Microsoft for help is particularly wise. They are not known for defending the community interests. Besides, they also have enough interests in the content market for us to expect them to be impartial. Yes, I know, so does Steve Jobs, but since Apple and Disney are separate companies, any coordinated move is likely to go through high scrutiny by investors.
Leo Laporte claims to defend the interests of the podcaster community. He certainly does not represent me. I feel that he has already lost a lot of credibility by endorsing Dell computers on his TWiT show, when everyone knows that he is a Mac user. This is even worse. I feel that he is pursuing his own interests by trying to gain independence from Apple. I do not criticize him for that. I simply believe he should be more open about his true motives.