Why Podcasting Is Retarded

Oh my god, did I just say that out loud?

Yep.

Thankfully I'm not recording myself, or I could make you listen to me rant about how podcasting is retarded.

I simply cannot understand the reason behind podcasting something. It makes sense for a music show, where someone plays samples (or entire songs) in order to discuss them with a band or the audience. You know, like they do on radio. What I don't understand is why interviews and press conferences are suddenly being podcast left and right. There is a reason that radio was largely replaced by television and the internet. Listening to people talk is slow. It is much faster to see something or read something than to listen to it.

I won't even argue the video point. I'll just let that stand by trotting out the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.

When it comes to text, you can skim. You can look for subheadings of interest. You can read a summary. Better yet, you can hit Ctrl-F on your keyboard and search the damn thing. With an audio podcast, you are forced to resort to a tactic that should have stayed dead with the cassette tape... skipping back and forth, listening for a few seconds at a time, trying to find what you want to hear.

Nevermind the fact that the term 'podcast' annoys me for the very fact that it's a trendy buzzword for 'streaming audio'. I will get over that eventually.

So what set me off? I actually came across a site today that only offered the article in podcast form. No transcription. To top it off, the podcast was almost an hour long. You only need to go to college to find out how little can be said in an hour. Speech is by nature slow because we have all these built in error-correction mechanisms (facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses for effect, etc.). Listening to an interview via an audio-only medium is even worse. We lose all the visual cues and are left with lots of pauses and enunciated speech. In short, the conversation is slow.

Humans are visual creatures. While podcasts may be suited to sounds that are hard to describe in words (music), they are simply a waste of time for things that are easy to describe in words (details about the release date of a new product, or an interview with some designer about his favorite tools). Please, stop chasing buzzword compliance with your website. Make it easy for your visitors to locate what they are looking for. Your podcasts and your flash intros may look really cool, but they just turn the average (highly impatient) internet user away.