Podcasting Reaches the Masses

Though podcasting has become a familiar term for the most savvy of 'net users, it has only recently entered the view of the mainstream audience. The term "podcast" comes from a combination of the words "broadcast" and "iPod," the portable Apple media player which popularized the format. Users subscribe to podcast channels in the same way they get syndicated text from sites using RSS/XML feeds. In either case, the person tells their client program to continuously watch the source for new updates. When one appears, the program takes a excerpt of the post and stores it for the user to view when they log in to the client. Podcast subscription programs, or "podcatchers," download the audio podcast file so that the person can listen to the new item at their leisure.

The increased popularity of podcasts has come about largely by the efforts of Apple, whose new addition to iTunes has given millions of iPod users access to them. Over a million subscriptions to podcasts in Apple's new directory were noted in the first forty-eight hours. Apple's strategy with this new endeavor involves giving away access to these podcasts in the hopes of selling more iPods. Podcasts can also be downloaded with computer media players, but the iTunes system streamlines the process and makes it much easier to grab and listen to them. Some researchers expect the trend to explode even more in coming years, predicting the number of podcast listeners to reach up to 56 million by 2010. That's 75 percent of all iPod users, as compared to just fifteen percent last year.