This was a better article than I was expecting. However, I'm not really convinced by the use of the word "failure". Podcasts may be less successful than their

This was a better article than I was expecting. However, I'm not really convinced by the use of the word "failure". Podcasts may be less successful than their most breathless hype predicted... but what invention isn't? Podcasts are a modest success. They're modest, in part, because the masters of podcasting turn out to be radio producers. This is completely unsurprising -- the radio folks have been evolving their audio production skills in a competitive environment for nearly a century -- and it's the very un-surprisingness of it that keeps the phenomenon under the radar. Who besides advertisers knows or cares what the audience of a radio program is? Radio hasn't been the stuff of tech news since the 1930s. The other problem with podcasting is that the term is badly chosen and too narrowly defined. The word is associated with downloading (rather than streaming), audio (rather than video), RSS (rather than simple web links), the use of portable devices for playback (rather than PCs), and amateur production (rather than pros). Youtube and its clones represent the same core phenomenon as podcasting -- ubiquitous, cheap distribution of audio and video over the web -- except that they offer better UI and lower costs for users, producers, and advertisers. But somehow the word "podcasting" isn't used for Youtube. It's not the podcasting phenomenon that's "failing": It's the word "podcasting", and the specific constellation of technologies that it implies.