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   Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:44:40 JST Evan Prodromou

   Of all the different types of Internet content, why did podcasts escape being captured by a single platform? (This is partial, btw; Apple continues to own the discovery and reviews portion of the ecosystem.)

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     Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com) (mattl@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:46:22 JST Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     in reply to

     @evan the nature of RSS being used as a delivery mechanism helped I’m sure.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:47:08 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Here's my thought: text and images were easy enough to produce that they made sense for mass peer to peer social platforms. Video is hard enough to produce, and host, that a platform focused on asymmetric publisher-consumer relationship was feasible. Podcasts fall in the middle; they're not so easy to make that just anyone can do it, but they're also not out of the reach of amateurs and hobbyists to create and host. I think companies like SoundCloud just couldn't make a go of taking it over.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:47:53 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     @mattl unlike blogs?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:49:15 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Rob Fahrni

     @fahrni https://gpodder.net/

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     Rob Fahrni (fahrni@curmudgeon.cafe)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:49:17 JST Rob Fahrni

     in reply to

     @evan An open format that Apple initially embraced and made an open directory for discovery, would be my take. Other Mom and Pop podcast networks sprung up then large orgs discovered they could sell ads.

     An open directory operated as a co-op or non profit would be a nice to have since many podcasting apps build their own.

     I don’t think it would be as large today if it wasn’t for discovery support.

     Evan Prodromou repeated this.
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     Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com) (mattl@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 21:52:32 JST Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     in reply to

     @evan podcasts often lived on blogs back in the day. I guess Blogspot or something like that could have tried to make a platform for it but I don’t know if it would have taken off.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:22:34 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)
     • Fabio Manganiello

     @fabio @mattl no kidding.

     So, there's not a causal relationship between RSS and avoiding capture.

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     Fabio Manganiello (fabio@manganiello.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:22:35 JST Fabio Manganiello

     in reply to

     • Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)
     @evan @mattl for blogs RSS has become optional - and more increasingly niche.
     
     For podcasts, on the other hand, that's still the main vehicle of distribution and syndication.
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     James Cridland (james@bne.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:22:50 JST James Cridland

     in reply to

     • Rob Fahrni
     • Adam Curry :pci: :pc2blue:
     • Dave

     @fahrni @evan There is an Open Directory operated as a non-profit. It’s run by @adam and @dave - and it’s free for everyone. https://podcastindex.org

     No podcast apps build their own directory really, except Spotify (and Apple of course). Everyone else uses Apple’s APIs or Podcast Index. Some odd corporate things like iHeart or SiriusXM have their own podcast directories, I guess, but they’re few and far between.

     Here’s (I think) a full list of them all.
     https://podnews.net/article/all-the-podcast-directories

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:27:16 JST Evan Prodromou

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     • Ben Werdmuller

     @ben I guess my thesis is that social networking platforms took over the blogosphere because they were able to provide an easy, unified publishing and consuming experience.

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     Ben Werdmuller (ben@werd.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:27:18 JST Ben Werdmuller

     in reply to

     @evan vs blogs, which were big relative to the size of the web back when they became possible, YouTube, which was almost instantly big, and social media, which similarly exploded. Podcasts have been a slow burn, and that really helped.

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     Ben Werdmuller (ben@werd.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:27:19 JST Ben Werdmuller

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     @evan My take: it looks a little like classic disruption. Podcasts were too niche for big tech companies to consider as a big enough market (see the failure of Odeo), which allowed hobbyist ecosystems to thrive. Then Carplay was released, making in-transit listening easier, and Serial became the first big podcast hit that year. People finally took notice. But by then the ecosystem had been established.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:28:42 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Ben Werdmuller

     @ben probably also for podcasts there were a lot of adjacent markets that edged into the space. Audible with audio books. Spotify with music. Apple with the iPod and iPhone. Podcasts were always a side business, but not so small that they were willing to let another company take it over.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:29:58 JST Evan Prodromou

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     • Utarg of Utarg 🔬🇪🇺🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦

     @toxy RSS was used for a lot of other things that did get captured, so I think it's insufficient to say that RSS was enough.

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     Utarg of Utarg 🔬🇪🇺🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦 (toxy@mastodon.acc.sunet.se)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:30:01 JST Utarg of Utarg 🔬🇪🇺🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦

     in reply to

     @evan I am not super-techy although not completely ignorant but I assume RSS?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:33:25 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • James Cridland

     @james I think there were a lot of attempts to take that portal/discovery spot for blogs; Technorati is probably the best known. Others were related to reading software or publishing software.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati

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     James Cridland (james@bne.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:33:26 JST James Cridland

     in reply to

     @evan A quick and simple answer: interop.

     The RSS feed is the primary distribution tool for podcasts (not the case for blogs). With podcasts you get the full experience whatever you use to consume it (whereas blogs via RSS are almost entirely unformatted text, very different to a blog on a webpage with fonts and styling and graphics and layout). The directory of RSS feeds is essentially free using Apple’s search and discovery APIs, or those of Podcast Index (again, blogs mainly don’t have this). And the audio file plays on everything, unencumbered by DRM.

     It’s all interop. It’s why the fediverse is interesting (there are many parallels to podcasting here).

     Interop is the foundation of podcasting. And, arguably, why it still has problems monetising and with analytics - because it was built to be as open as possible.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:35:23 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • DavidB

     @DavidBHimself no, it doesn't require writing skills. If you're talking about yourself and your life, you can just write a few paragraphs, like you and I are doing here. That kind of personal update, thinking out loud, proposing ideas has mostly been captured by social networking services.

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     DavidB (davidbhimself@firefish.city)'s status on Friday, 15-Aug-2025 22:35:24 JST DavidB

     in reply to

     @evan@cosocial.ca I'd say blogging is more difficult than podcasting. Hence the popularity of the latter. Blogging requires writing skills. Podcasting requires a microphone and that's all.