Runester

Here, let me plagiarize myself. I posted the following, in part, to a thread in the Fear the Boot forums. The entire piece can be found here, and the thread title is What’s wrong / right with gaming podcasts?

Podcasts seem to be following the same acceptance path as blogs (as predicted by Dan in his Ennie MC’ing Dan’ecture). Which means, everyone and their mothers therapist will have one. But, the quality shows with meaningful listener-ships will be few and far between and stand head-and-shoulders above the riff-raff.

If I’ve learned anything about “new” marketing, web 2.0, and social networks … it’s that the “how” of content creation and publishing is fast becoming commoditized and the “what” and “why” now rule. Remember when having a web site was both expensive and required specialized knowledge? Now you can have a great website for $5/mo or less, and a free content management system that allows you to update, skin, and publish it with no special knowledge or skills. In this new modal, it’s not that you have a website, it’s that you have something of value on your website that draws visitors. Well, blogs are the same way, and so are podcasts. if we’re not there yet, we soon will be – total commoditization of the podcast hardware / software / hosting. The only thing that will matter is what you say, not the whiz bang that you’re in this new medium.

This means that gaming podcasts which do little more then drop a microphone in front of their friends and ‘gab’ for an hour, or who refuse to edit their episodes or add any polish at all, or regurgitate content heard elsewhere; will all fall into the well of no/low listener-ships, and will probably fade.

The other side of the equation, is that as sites & blogs became commoditized they also became mainstream, and were used as marketing tools of major corporations and celebrities. The total available audience went up, and those that were successful started getting unique visitors in the tens or hundreds of thousands, each month. if (when) this happens to podcasts, you can expect the phenomenon of the vanguard (those few who listen on their iPods or PC based podcatchers) to shift, and masses to begin subscribing in waves; podcasts will become an influential new medium. With adoption comes audiences, and successful shows will have a much larger pie from which to carve their share.

These sure are exciting times! But it means that getting in early (too late, for that!), building a brand (FtB has done an excellent job), and producing quality content will enable a podcast to ride the coming wave. if content and quality matter now, then they will become ever more important as this medium matures.

The “Dan’ecture” I refer to is available via YouTube, here’s the video as an embed.