3.8 KiB
Podcasting 2.0
What is it?
Podcasting 2.0 is a set of forward looking ideas combined with the technology to realize them. It's a vision for what the podcast listener experience can and should be. That experience has stagnated for over a decade, with almost all of the improvements coming in isolated sections of the ecosystem. There hasn't been a single, unified vision from the podcasting community acting together with one voice. So, we've ended up with fragments of innovation across the podcasting landscape with no central driving goal in mind. Podcasting 2.0 is the expression of that goal.
Stated eloquently, the aim of Podcasting 2.0 is this:
"I think our focus should be 100% on improving the podcasting experience in an open-standard way that allows every player to innovate faster and better than any one company could do on their own. This is our best bet at avoiding one company emerging as the monopoly of podcasting."
--Tom Rossi Tom Rossi
Closed ecosystems can not innovate any better or faster than open systems. We should know this by now. The open world of RSS based podcasting can not only keep pace with closed systems, it can exceed them easily. Podcasting 2.0 is simply the technological expression of this idea. We can make a better podcasting experience for users than they can get behind any walls - no matter how high or expensive those walls are.
There are three parts to Podcasting 2.0:
- The "podcast" namespace
- Web app friendliness
- Value for Value
Step 1. Declare the "podcast" namespace in your feed
To be a Podcasting 2.0 compliant podcast you need to first declare the "podcast" namespace in your feed if you self-host your podcast. If you use a hosting company for your podcast, check here for a list of hosts that now support the new namespace.
The namespace gives you (and your listeners) access to many new features:
- Transcripts: You can deliver a text transcript along with your episode to make your content more accessible to those with hearing challenges, or for those learning your language.
- Funding: This points listeners back to a donation or membership page that they can click on to join or donate money to your show.
- Chapters: MP3 files have had the ability to embed chapters for many years. But, now you can create a "chapters file" that gets delivered along with your episode to allow rich content like images, embedded web pages, titles and silent markers. This chapters file lives on the web, so it can be changed later after publishing without uploading a new audio file or changing your episode.
- Soundbites: Specify short bits of your episode to serve as an intro or a teaser for your show.
- Persons: You can give multiple bio's in each episode that have short "about" descriptions of the people on that episode (like hosts, guests, etc.). Did you interview someone cool? Point to their head shot image and link to their Wikipedia page or their blog. It makes searching for people within podcasts easy and enjoyable.
- Location: Is your podcast about a specific place? Tag it's location right in the episode or podcast feed to let people know. It makes your show more discoverable on the web.
- Named Seasons: Seasons have been around for a while, but now you can name them. This way you can avoid the hassle of trying to cram everything in your show title.
Step 2. Make sure you're web app friendly
Next, you need to confirm that your feed does not use "mixed content". That means that all of the parts of your podcast (the feed, images, audio files)
Step 3. Value for Value
The final step is monetizing your content with cryptocurrency.