Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:
PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.
“There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver information about the firings; we’re told he left that to middle managers.
This looks like the end of the podcasting hype.
None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups have delivered on their promise, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.
Expect more podcast hype backlash in the next year, while forward-thinking organizations and early-adopters push podcasting technology to mainstream adoption.
Podcasting network Wizzard Media has announced that it is is working with European lottery site PlayUKinternet.com on what they are calling the first international geo-targeted audio podcast advertising campaign.The three month campaign is aimed at audiences around the globe in Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Italy, encompassing over half a million ad impressions delivered across a select group of audio podcasts on the network.
“We believe their state-of-the-art geo-targeting capabilities will allow us to raise awareness of our products and services to highly-targeted audiences around the world through an innovative new media,” said Tasneem Domingo, Marketing Manager, PlayUKinternet.
Content delivery network Limelight’s legal problems won’t affect PodShow, says PodShow founder and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry:
We have spoken with LimeLight management and they have assured us they will not go ‘dark’. They have been a good partner to us, we trust them and stand by their word and their excellent service.
As with any well planned media infrastructure, PodShow’s platform is completely CDN agnostic. We can use any CDN without any interruption to our service and I would presume most companies that use a CDN for delivery would never allow themselves to be locked in to any one provider for any type of service.
In my personal opinion this story is being overhyped in the ‘twitter-verse’. These things usually end up in some form of settlement long before there’s any danger of ‘darkness’
Akamai Technologies, which provides technology for the distribution of digital media like podcasts, announced that a jury returned a verdict today in its lawsuit against Limelight Networks. The judgement found that Limelight was infringing on Akamai’s content delivery patent. As a result, the jury awarded Akamai a staggering $45,526,946 in damages, plus interest.
The verdict, which came at the end of a three-week trial in Boston, stemmed from a 2006 lawsuit filed by Akamai. The jury found that Limelight infringed all four of the claims that Akamai had asserted in its Internet content delivery patent, issued in the name of Akamai founders Tom Leighton and the late Daniel Lewin (no relation to the PodcastingNews Lewins).
The jury rejected Limelight’s defense that Akamai’s patent was invalid.
“Today’s ruling recognizes the strength of Akamai’s patent portfolio and is a tangible reflection of our resolve to vigorously defend the Company’s intellectual property,” said Melanie Haratunian, senior vice president and general counsel of Akamai.
Akamai intends to ask the Court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting Limelight from continuing to sell infringing services. It is unclear whether Limelight could continue operations if it does in fact have to pay the $45 million damage award.
Representatives of Limelight said separately they were “disappointed” with the ruling and “strongly believe” it did not infringe the patent.
Podcasting network representatives were quick to comment (via Twitter) on their own companies’ strengths and immunity to any prospective service outages which might be caused if Limelight were to cease operations.
VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, host of online tech show PulverTV, announced today the launch of PulverTV, which he is calling “The First 100% “Indie Internet TV” Channel.”
The staff at PulverTV are creating 12-14 hours/week of original programming. In addition, they’ve enlisted several dozen producers of independently created Internet TV to include in the daily program schedule. Their goal is to provide a space for independent video content creators to showcase their work and “get their shows discovered,” and to provide viewers with round-the-clock interesting fare.
Pulver, co founder of VoIP telco Vonage, the publisher of VON magazine, and organizer of Voices on the Net (VON) conferences, says, “I first got the idea to turn pulverTV into a 24/7 operation while appreciating the possibilities of personal broadband broadcasting and thinking about ‘What would [cable mogul] Ted Turner do today if he was just started out in television?’ I started thinking about pushing the limits on the practical and possible.”
Pulver has a hefty task ahead of him. As downloadable and streaming-on-demand video offerings proliferate online, a 24/7 Internet TV station will have lots of competition for viewers’ attention.
According to the analysts at Compete, the Podshow podcasting network is one of the top five movers and shakers of 2007.
Here’s what PodShow’s Adam Curryhas to say about the news:
This is a report I’m extremely proud to post about. According to Compete.com PodShow grew 29144% in 2007, making us the third fastest growing site, sans pr0n content even
Congratulations to the independent producers who are our partners in this success.
There are a lot of reasons why PodShow is growing - but the biggest is that they’ve done a good job of getting talented, attractive video podcasters that create content that’s of interest to a broad audience.
Compete also notes that there’s a larger trend at work here:
Among the fastest growing sites, eighteen of the twenty offer a prominent peer-to-peer communication platform. Even in the adult video category, sites that function almost identically to YouTube (redtube.com and youporn.com) represent the fastest growing.
The numbers attest to the efforts of PodShow and all the talented podcasters that are making this type of growth possible!
The amount of money spent in the US online advertising market will double, to $50.3 billion in revenue, by 2011, according to research from the Yankee Group.
The internet accounts for approximately 20% of overall media consumption in the US, but advertisers currently invest only 7.5% of their budget online. There is tremendous potential for marketplace growth as advertisers bridge this gap. By 2011, nearly 25% of all media consumption will be online, drawing 15% of the advertising dollars.
Online advertising will grow rapidly in the coming year. The factors driving this continued growth are:
Increased online audiences
The development of new types of advertising
The creation of new publisher business models that help sell interactive advertising
“With internet connectivity nearly ubiquitous, online advertising growth is inevitable,” said report author Daniel Taylor, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “And yet the internet is still a relatively new digital medium. Steady growth in online advertising will require publishers to invest extensively in new media and advertising product development.”
Today’s big podcasting news is that Wizzard Media announced their download totals for 2007, an amazing one billion podcast files downloaded. To put that large number into some context, we talked with Rob Walch, Wizzard’s Vice President of Podcaster Relations (and creator/host of the popular Podcast411).
First off, congratulations - this is pretty stunning news. What do you think this billion-download figure means, for Wizzard Media in particular, and for the wider downloadable media industry in general?
To my knowledge we are the first ones to hit a billion in a calendar year in the Podcasting space (wearing my 411 hat). I am sure there will be others — if not in 2008 then certainly in 2009.
But the bigger news for podcasting is that someone has done it. I believe that hitting that the 1 billion mark is the type of benchmark that big ad agencies will take notice of. Now they’ll understand that podcasting is for real — and that is good for everyone.
So, when we were at the Portable and New Media Expo this fall, some guys were talking gloom and doom — that podcasting was essentially dead. Your news seems to belie that prediction.
There is a lot of misguided talk about podcasting being dead. We just are not seeing it. We continue to see growth in the numbers each month. To us, at least, podcasting keeps growing.
What do you think this bodes for the coming year?
We hope that 2008 will be the year that advertisers stop thinking of podcasting as an experiment, and start thinking of it as a necessity for every campaign.
Google has announced a new project, Our Stories, to help people share the stories of their lives, no matter where they live or how their stories unfold.
The project brings together the efforts of Google, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and UNICEF.
Google is providing the infrastructure to let people around the world create and share personal stories, starting with children in developing countries who are using OLPC computers or those who are working with UNICEF radio producers to record and share interviews.
Children are asked to record the stories of elders, family members, and friends. There’s already a collection of stories on the site, which includes stories from Brazil’s Museum of the Person and stories from Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Pakistan (through UNICEF).
Here’s an example of the project, Daniel’s Song:
One Podcast Per Child
The project is based on Google’s YouTube infrastructure, so it’s basically using video sharing technology to deliver audio podcasts.
We’re calling the Our Stories recordings “podcasts” because the project seems to be completely in the spirit of podcasting - enabling anyone, anywhere to tell their story to a global audience.
We’d like to see Google treat these recordings as true podcasts, though, and offer One Feed Per Child. This would let you easily subscribe to Daniel or any of the other kids that share their stories and listen to the stories on your iPod or other digital audio player.
“Social talk radio network” BlogTalkRadio today announced the creation of the new “BlogCritics Radio” Channel in partnership with online magazine BlogCritics, on BlogTalkRadio.com. The new channel will feature a group of BlogCritics writers and editors covering pop culture, news, sports and technology.
BlogCritics network hosts will have their own live talk radio shows and be able to conduct round-table discussions with listeners, sharing their views and opinions as a complement to their written commentary that appears on BlogCritics.org.
Shortly after the conclusion of each live (sometimes call-in) BlogTalk network show, the episode is made available for download as a podcast.
Eric Olsen, Blogcritics founder and publisher touted the partnership as an “opportunity to make our coverage … more immediate and interactive, as well as opening up topics that … time constraints do not allow us to address.”
BlogTalkRadio and BlogCritics representatives touted the partnership as the means to offer advertisers and marketers opportunities to cross-promote their brands on both sites, reaching more than 3.5 million users a month.
Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:
Podcasting network Wizzard Media has announced that it is is working with European lottery site 
VoIP pioneer 
“Social talk radio network” 
