Feedburner published an outstanding in depth article today (April 18, 2006) on the state of podcasts (or the podosphere). The report was rather interesting and divulged the following interesting points:
1.) Feedburner now manages more podcasts than there are radio stations
2.) Podcasting is outpacing the speed of adoption of the last "most successful consumer product launch in history" the DVD
3.) Podcast directories are growing, and driving activity back to podcasters' originating Web sites.
Feedburner handles more than 44,000 podcast feeds and is expected to hit 100,000 podcasts representing upwards of 5 million subscribers by the end of 2006. Wow, that is a lot of feeds and subscribers to manage!
Feedburner is also hinting creating at new advertising product or service for rich media feeds. Back in the Fall of 2005 I saw a huge opportunity for Feedburner to leverage its position huge feed management company to help podcasters produce an additional revenue stream so I curiously asked the folks at Feedburner if anything was on tap. At the time I was told placing ads in rich media feeds was not top priority however this was back in the Fall of 2005 and in the online space that was light years! So I am happy to see it now it is a priority and look forward to seeing what they come up with.
Aside from Feedburner managing the bulk of the world's podcasts and subscribers, I would love to see mobile devices and mobile service providers catch up with the adoption of podcasts. I think it would be smashing to be able to download the latest podcasts directly to my device (iPod or cellphone) on the go. Wouldn't that be great?
