Daily Podcast News

A lot of Podcast sites have drifted away. I remember back to the beginning of Podcasting and looking around google to find new podcast sites. There wasn’t an awful lot of choice out there. Podstar.com was a site which was updated daily with some interesting content that enhanced my experience of Podcasting. It was even a sponsored link in google so it must of getting a lot of visitors although the comment rate didn’t reflect this.

Another site which I regularly visited was podfly.com, I remember back to when I emailed the owner to discuss what his site would be based on and which CMS he should use. In the end he installed Mambo which was something I had never heard about and wouldn’t be a choice for me even after seeing it. Podfly featured in many sites as a great place to find out “How to Podcast” in three easy steps. It was easy to understand but the problem was the way in which the content was displayed with messy links to navigate through it.

Podfly then decided to open up its site to allow for other podcast enthusiasts to contribute and add an article. It started off well with some great content from Gary Bibb and Kristopher Smith. Alas within a few months the content had dried up and it hasn’t been updated since the 3^th of January.

While these two were the main sites (along with ipodder.org) at the beginning of the evolution of Podcasting, the main site now is Podcast Alley who has over taken and features the main place for podcasters to interact with each other on the forum. People flock to it everyday either to check for new podcasters or to see if they had any feedback from their listeners.

But is Podcast Alley such a big deal? The majority of podcasters feature either a link or have it included in their podcast asking people to visit Podcast Alley and vote for them. I know feedback is a major part of podcasting and if you don’t get feedback what makes you carry on knowing you might not have listeners. But don’t most podcasters have blogs which allow for comments, if not they can always drop you an email (with optional MP3 attachment). Or maybe you have a j2 account or Skype where you could record and place these recordings in your podcasts.

Why do people feel they need to be rated on some website? Although this site is the main place to find podcasts at the moment and as pointed out in mobilepodcasts latest podcast it is the best for people new to podcasting to locate the top 10 most popular podcasts that they should subscribe to. But at the start of the show he was very upset to find a comment left on podcast alley which was as follows:

Not so great, I started listening to this podcast thinking it was about Treos, but was disappointed to find ramblings about everything but. I’d pass on this one and pick up the Wizards of Tech as they seem to talk about Treos more than this podcast.

He goes on to agree with my point of view saying:

Time to change? But then I saw it was signed by ’superdork’ and realized just how meaningless podcastalley.com is…

Podcast Alley is a site for people to view their mind whether they like or dislike your podcast. Not everyone is nicey nicey as Gary Bibb pointed out saying:

“Why in the hell is everyone in podcasting so damn nice to one another?”

To be a true podcaster we need to take on the advice and either do something about it or just forget about it and “podcast on”.

On a Saturday my girlfriend (Suzanna) always looks forward to buying The Sun so she can preview all the major soaps to see what’s happening for the week ahead. Once she has a quick glance she quickly grapes the newspaper and flicks through until she finds the Dear Deirdre section. When she finds it she’s in her element, there’s no stopping her, it’s like she just switches off completely. She looks towards the main heading: “I slept with my boyfriend and his dad and now I’m pregnant” and gets sucked in. Most of it is sensationalised rubbish in my opinion but you can’t let her know that. What she needs is a podcast which includes people’s problems and helps them through it. Step forward The Hotline hosted by Suzy. Anyone is able to email her their problems and she will advise you in the best possible way. So if you want to know which colour to paint your kitchen or know how to get a date, just email your questions to her. I know Suzanna will definitely be a subscriber.