Podcasts And Interactivity

I reported recently on an ITWorld.com article that listed five reasons businesses should consider podcasting. One of them was that podcasts encourage two-way communication with listeners. Specifically, according to the author James Lewin, Because podcasts are built on RSS 2.0, the lingua franca of the blog world, podcast content is easy to subscribe to and blog about. This encourages other publishers to add their meta-comments about a podcast. Because podcast feeds are often built with blog-tools, they frequently support comments and track back, which encourage a two-way dialog about the content. This two-way conversation is important, because it creates 3rd party content about your podcast, and encourages links to your content. I'm inclined to agree with Lewin's observations, particularly in light of my own experience with "be able to subscribe to the feed, but there's no rule that says you must limit your podcast to an RSS subscription. Another point Leib makes: If your podcast is high in informational value but lacks other audio bells and whistles, such as music, interviews, celebrity value, or sound effects (particularly if the audience is business-to-business), you may be better off with text. Again, I don't think so. It's easy to dismiss the value of the sense of sound, but there's just something about hearing a real person rather than reading their words. And, again, if I'm in my car, I can't read anyway. "For Immediate Release" isn't the only podcast that is largely just a couple guys talking. One of the most popular podcast out there is Dave Winer's "Reader Comments... Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.