As mentioned earlier in the month, I didn’t ace my 2006 predictions, but that won’t stop me from making my token predictions for 2007. Here they are:

• All Podcast Crazy Money Q1 and Q2. There is more “crazy money” to be spent in this industry, but it will go quickly - and the VCs will soon start asking for profit over buzzwords. This will only be good for the industry as it will get us asking the right questions, not debating the benefits of one camera over another.
• Microsoft “Embraces” Podcasting. It will happen at some point this year. I put “embrace” in quotes because, honestly, I don’t know how effective their embracing will be. It will, however, be a starting point, and it will be smart of us to play along. Read my Zune Manifesto for more on this point.
• Multiple Paid Content Mechanisms. We’re already seeing a bunch of ways to buy television and movies online (see my Year of Living Digitally experiment for more) - the jump to people selling their own product can’t be far away. This mixed with a need to monetize will bring more pay-for-play Podcast content. Some of it will be worth the money.
• Wireless iPods and “True” Wireless Zunes. The first “thrill” of Podcasting was watching your content (with incredible ease) whenever and wherever you wanted to. The next “thrill” of Podcasting will be the ability to grab that content (with incredible ease) you watch whenever/wherever you want to. The PMPs know that they need to add wireless to fight what the phones are doing. It will happen, en masses, in 2007l
• Not A Single Blogger or Podcaster Gets On Oprah For Being A Blogger Or Podcaster. As we head into next year, we need to keep our heads on straight. The content we’re producing is incredible and the impact on the future of media is undenible - but our audiences are still tiny and it is still much more complicated than it needs to be to get this stuff. It is the responsbility of us early adopters and producers to fix these issues now, quickly and easily, so that one day (hopefully soon), we’ll see a Blogger or a Podcaster on Oprah for doing just that.

Will 2007 be Podcasting’s year? Don’t know yet. I do know that I’m betting my farm on the future of this channel and media. I also haven’t been more excited about a calendar year than this one.

And I’d love to hear your predictions as well. FWIW, I also talked these over with Alex Mandossian in Marketing Online Live #45. Please do post your comments and thoughts below.

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