You Can’t Handle The Truth About Podcasting

First, please watch this embedded clip from YouTube to put you in the proper mindset.

You can’t handle the truth!

Son, we work on an Internet that has limits. And these limits can’t be changed with men with vc funding – no matter how much you’ve got.

Who’s gonna stream to millions at once? You? You, Hulu?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You praise streaming and you curse the Podcast. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not admitting what I know: that streaming, while sexy, simply can’t scale.

And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, is the future of media online…

You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want portable time-shifted media. You need portable time-shifted media – without the restrictions that simply won’t scale.

We use words like streaming, drm, walls … we curse these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under tens of millions of dollars in funding without ever facing the truth, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!

I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you tell me how your plan on streaming to millions of users at the same time. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think our future is!

As much as I just enjoyed watching 30 Rock on Hulu a few minutes ago, …

Streaming won’t scale.

DRM won’t scale.

Devices that dial home with my watching habits won’t scale.

Oprah tried, and fell flat on her face, and then released everything she had via Podcast.

Did her impact change? Did she make any less money? Did they sell less copies of that “New Earth” book?

Do we have something to learn from Oprah?

Yes, we can track everything – but at some point it all falls apart. I point to the USSR and East Germany as recent examples.

Yes, we can stream video right now but it is simply nothing compared to a few million people watching American Idol on a Wednesday night. If you want the numbers television provides on our glorious Interweb then, dear friends, you’re going to have to find something that scales – something that “works.”

Podcasting can scale.

Without the need to call back home, without the need to worry about where every 1 and 0 is located, without the need to own it all, this can work. Podcasting can scale.

Streaming can’t.

DRM can’t.

You can’t handle the truth about Podcasting.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: bit torrent, podcasting, oprah, time-shifted portable media

Last updated by Paul Colligan at April 23, 2008.

http://www.jasonevangelho.com Jason Evangelho

Preaching to the choir, Paul! A nostalgic and geeky side of me would have loved to see you reading that post aloud, with the sneer and venom of Nicholson, rather than the clip itself

Despite what anyone wants to believe, Podcasting is still in it’s infancy, and it’s power is in the dedicated fans that latch on to their niche topics.

Preach on…
http://www.youtube.com/user/yeahitsbatman Supplementguy

Good Stuff Paul… When people don’t understand something… Must people Run AWAY! The Few that Dare to understand end up with all the money… Think about it! Dare to understand My FRIENDS!
http://AmateurTraveler.com Chris (Amateur Traveler)

Preach it brother!
http://www.jdsawyer.net Dan Sawyer

Well said!
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http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan…

I’m struggling to write something large and valuable here, but I can’t, because just like I felt after speaking after you at Podcast Academy, man… you’re a tough act to follow. Great post, Paul. Keep fighting out there!
http://www.storytellingwithchidren.com Brother Wolf

Scale ability is the holy grail of modern business world.

Preach brother! Preach!
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http://www.robgreenlee.com Rob Greenlee

The age old debate streaming vs downloading? What is the future of digital media distribution. Which will win debate is slightly off the mark in my opinion. Streaming has some instant “on-demand playback” gratification advantages, but we need to be clear about what we are talking about as it is just not entirely clear the distingtion between streaming and downloading? It think the downloading you are talking about is not totally the current podcast model of today. I think what we are talking about is a hybrid of the two concepts of today. It seems that what the future holds is closer to the concept of very high bandwidth delivery of IP based Progressive Download Streams to many types of playback devices. It is a combination of downloading and streaming, but not true streaming as streaming by definition only delivers enough data to play and does not deliver anymore. I think the real advantage of this Progressive Download distribution is the ability to deliver and play higher quality HD quality video files over standard IP connections without the real need for streaming servers or to always have very high bandwith steady and reliable data streams. Though I think that a Progressive Download server that is optimized for the delivery of large file downloads does make sense. I was with a company that built a mobile podcasting platform that created a technology called bandwidth adaptive chunking over 3G networks that bursted the data delivery based on the available network bandwidth. I think that much of what you see today with video podcasts is the future of video delivery. Rob Greenlee
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