Recently, Forrester Research released some new data on podcasting which caused quite a stir in the blogosphere and podosphere. In her blog, Charlene Li of Forrester states that only 1% of online households in the U.S. regularly download and listen to podcasts.”
On Tuesday, Rick Klau, FeedBurner’s VP of Business Development responded on Feedburner’s official blog stating that podcast circulation is growing at nearly 20% per month.
Experts have been debating about the number of podcasts available since there are no official organizations keeping count. PodZinger now has more than 130,000 podcasts in its index and Klau points out that the podcasts FeedBurner manages are already exceeding the number of radio stations worldwide.
Apparently, podcasting is also quickly outpacing the speed of adoption to the DVD format. According to Klau, “Back in 2000, the DVD format, just 3 years old at the time, was declared the most successful product launch in consumer electronics history, outselling the VCR five to one. Using these statistics as a benchmark, in less than two years, the number of podcasts available online is tenfold that of DVD titles in nearly half the time.”
All these stats and research sound very promising but Nicole Simon of Corante seems to sum it up the best:
“25% of (again I assume US market) users have expressed an interest in the time shifted aspect. And are getting used to XX on demand, without the boundaries of what today’s media brings with them…Yesterday it was only Tivo, and that is mostly offline business. Today, 25% express interest, only 18 months after podcasting started and video casting has not really taken off.”
