It’s everywhere: podcasting. As many others, I receive Scott Sheppard’s podcast “Inside Mac Radio” at least once a week. According to Gartner, podcasting is on the rise and will mature in 2 to 5 years from now.

Gartner has developed a method to find out about the value of hypes. It’s called, very cleverly, the Hype Life Cycle, and it allows subscribers to see for themselves where in this life cycle specific technologies are located. The Life Cycle can be plotted in a graph, and that graph has a quickly rising slope and a slowly falling one to the right. The rising slope shows emerging technologies that are not yet mature. The falling slope shows emerging technology becoming mainstream.

Somewhere on this graph there’s a point where technologies are perceived as they are, i.e. the market has finally come to understood that all the high hopes for this new technology are not going to be fulfilled, but the technology or product will be useful to solve a number of specific problems.

Gartner believes podcasting still is is on the rise. This means (business) people expect all kinds of things from it that it will never fill in, but it will be useful to solve a handful of problems or improve some processes. Which processes remains to be seen, but already you can think of some niche markets where podcasting offers tremendous opportunities. Marketing comes to mind, and training, to give just two examples.

What is podcasting anyway? It is a pre-recorded radio-like format delivery of content across an extremely varied set of content themes delivered via Really Simple Syndication. At the moment, podcasting still is much a matter of amateurs playing with the capability to become “one’s own radio station”, but in due time it will become much more.

Podcasting, by all measures, is publishing. It is the delivery of audio content with an aural “design” that requires at least some basic understanding of how to get and keep a listener’s attention for the entire length of the “show”. Sceptics will claim there is nothing new in podcasting, and they would be absolutely right.

But as Butler Group’s Tim Jennings puts it: “It is the willingness of the masses to use these tools that is changing the nature of the game.” He has talked to CIOs about collaboration projects over the past few years and he has always found them saying the barriers to adoption have in the main been cultural rather than technical: how does one encourage staff to willingly share information and contribute their expertise in such a way that it becomes a persistent resource for the business.

Jennings believes applications such as podcasting help to communicate information to a distributed audience, either internal or external for more convenient consumption. One of the channels he sees as useful to record, are web conferences.

Apple Holding the Key?

But podcasting will not just be a money generator for companies wanting to offer content in more formats so their employees will finally collaborate.

On June 28, Apple introduced iTunes 4.9, an update that allows users to subscribe, manage and listen to podcasts. Gartner says this announcement, together with Apple’s agreement with Audible.com, shows that the company is quickly making life difficult for its competitors.

iTunes 4.9 integrates podcasts as a separate file directory on iTunes Music Store and on the iPod, making it easier to separate podcasts from music. It also lets users aggregate podcasts on iTunes Music Store.

With 3 elements to podcasting --creation, distribution, playback-- of which Apple now covers 2 elements well, the company’s efforts to create revenue from podcasting follow its strategy to online music. According to Gartner, that strategy is to extend the value of the iPod by creating a content distribution site that meets the consumer’s growing appetite for audio content.

Podcasting can also generate its own income stream. Advertising opportunities are possible in the form of sponsored podcasts and inserted audio ads. Gartner thinks Apple could well be ahead of the flock (again) by creating a publishing tool that would allow creators to integrate advertisements.

Gartner offers some advice to podcast providers. Says Allen Weiner: “It’s time to get aggressive in offering podcasts. Don’’t let return on investment be an immediate concern. The technology that will allow consumers to pay for podcasts, as well as advertising insertion tools, will soon be available.”

Podcasting: Big Business?

Apparently, podcasting can be a business tool in more than one sense. It can be of tremendous use to enterprises as a training tool or a collaboration enhancement tool. But it can also create its own money stream. At the moment, and for some years to come, podcasts will be in the hands of a few amateurs who play with it and try to get the most out of it.

But in a few years’ time, podcasting will go mainstream. It will become a professional content providing tool, requiring the skills to create recordings that can generate income. Now is the time to acquire that knowledge.