The other day a colleague of mine and I were discussing the relatively misunderstood technology of podcasting. In the web conferencing industry, the terminology gets even more muddled when you introduce the notion of recorded web conferences that can also be posted on public sites. Consider the two definitions below.
- Continuously updated multimedia content distributed through an RSS feed.
- A method of posting multimedia files to the internet.
Obviously, number one is the the correct definition. The important two points to notice are “continuously update” and “RSS feed”. Listeners who subscribe to a podcast are expecting to get regularly updated “episodes” from that podcast. If you only have one “episode”, you would be better off simply posting the file on your site for public consumption rather than putting it behind a feed.
We get many calls into our support center asking questions about our podcasting feature and how best to take advantage of it. The simple answer is this: If you have regularly updated content you would like to communicate to your listeners then podcasting is probably a viable way to distribute that information.
