Dave Beisel has a post on the future of podcasting.  It looks like he and I share the same questions. He calls for a unification of concepts and comments:

In some respects, it doesn’t matter what we call syndicated rich-media content to devices – it is what it is.  On
the other hand, it makes sense for there to be a general consensus
around the term podcast, so everyone is speaking the same language.
And I believe it’s just as important for the digerati to have the same
common notion of it as my grandmother does, as this clarification and
consensus will help further promote this new medium, whatever you call
it.

While I am very interested in the phenomenon, I don’t like the term and I suspect it may dissolve into a broader category.  As Dave says, it is just a form of content pushed to consumers.  In a way, a digital radio program is a podcast…

The differentiation between the forms and formats of content, and the analysis of each format as if a different phenomenon is counterproductive.  How is audio (podcasting) different from video (videocasting) content distribution.  The strategies surrounding both are very very similar.  If I read this blog post outloud and record it with a microphone and a digital video recorder, then distribute it as a blog entry, a podcast, and a videocast, is there really much difference in how one would approach each format?  I don’t really think so.

Podcasts, videocasts, blogs are all microchunks of content.  They should all be treated and analyzed in that context.

Steve Richmond pointed me to this hilarious video:  What if MS redesigned the iPod packaging?

Today, Cagan pointed me to Google Pages and Infogami.

I had heard of Google Pages a while back, with speculation that it was Google’s entry into the yellow pages space.  I think Google Local Search is more in the YP area.  Google Pages seems to me as an easy way to publish a page on the web, without the need for hosting services and HTML knowledge.  Very similar to any blogging service.  Unfortunately, Google Pages did not let me create an account – apparently, due to demand, they have frozen new accounts.

I was able to create an Infogami page.  For me, with no HTML or web development skills, the interface was less intuitive than that of TypePad.  However, I see that Infogami is a product of Paul Graham‘s Y Combinator, and that it’s organically related to Reddit, so I am confident that they will refine the product and end up successful.

Here’s the bottom line:  When web publishing keeps getting easier, the scope of the web expands.  This expansion feeds the search/find problem, which I see as the biggest challenge on the web (which, in turn, leads to the success of companies solving this problem, such as Google, eBay, Monster and Amazon).  However, when this expansion is fueled by Google, it gains context.  The next step may be templates, or even specific tags, in Google Pages for resumes, music, classifieds, or blogs.  Then we have a huge threat for the first generation of search/find solvers.

If I can use Google to search for resumes, which returns me the Google Pages (as XML files) of candidates meeting certain criteria, why would I need Monster?  Same for iTunes…  If any band can upload their music, tag it as required, it’s available to any searcher.

Connectedness and classification are the two biggest drivers of the next generation of web services.  We keep observing this change on the edge.

Since the second Istanbul NEG meeting and some of the posts on your blog, I
thought about what you said in terms of investing in media and related sectors,
and so I wanted to ask, or shall I say, put forward a proposal on investing
(time, money, talent, skills etc) in areas related to data-mining and knowledge
management. Information/news in todays world go hand-in-hand together with the
ability to search those digital files, because if you cannot get the information
you want the moment you need/want it, the info becomes junk or useless. And ONLY
the search utility itself is useless unless you know the subject matter
beforehand (i.e. if you never heard about nanotech or biotech it is pretty
unlikely for you to search "nano engineered photovoltaic coating" or 
"anti-tumor biotherapeutics drugs"). Search engines are only helpful when you
know the subject matter. You cannot search what you don’t know. Also, the
dilemma of "how do you know what you don’t know?" issue is generally best
addressed when you have trusted entities to feed you with quality and
filtered news/information like media, schools, libraries, peers or the "wisdom
of crowds" (DIGG or NOOLUYO is a good step in that direction) which
we talked about in our first meeting.

 

   
Anyway, no one needs to be reminded of the importance (and succe$$) of Google or
Yahoo, and there are a gazillion news articles and web sites dedicated to search
engines, data mining, deep web etc, heck even the US gov is on a similar path ("albeit
on security concerns, probably using apps like this, this, this, or this ) sometimes
imitating corporations use of similar tech (such as this or that) , but what
I wanted to emphasize is that there is just too much data or information out
there and we poor humans don’t have the resources or more importantly the time
to read or go through all that important information.

Even Bill Gates expressed
his frustration at this information overload problem when talking at their
annual meeting of CEOs, adding that "businesses need
to do more to help their employees sort through an ever-growing flood of
information that threatens to become a drain on productivity".

 

Ditto Accenture Chief Executive, William D. Green on his August 28
interview
at The New York Times when he said "Technology has done a great job at providing
data. People install these large enterprise resource planning systems that
generate a lot of pretty charts. The reports come out. But we have data overload
and information underload. What information management, business analytics and
business intelligence are all about is, how do you take all that and put in it
in a format that helps people make decisions? We think this is going to be a
$27-billion-a-year market in four or five years. We just invested $100 million
in our information management capability."

 

   
And lastly, as this and
this
article points out about Deep Web, not everything is indexed by major search
engines:

 

"Google may have already
indexed 8 billion webpages, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many more
pages are hidden behind corporate firewalls or in databases waiting to be
indexed. By some estimates, this so-called dark Web is 500 times bigger than the
World Wide Web as we know it. Unlike the public Internet, however, it can’t be
retrieved by the usual Web crawlers. Instead, the information must be fed into
search engines’ mammoth databases using special retrieval techniques."

    So there
you go Cem, here I presented with you with some ideas to think about on Media
and Search, so if you want to invest in anyone of them, don’t forget the other
half, they are highly correlated ("IAC/InterActiveCorp. buys Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion."). As for me, I don’t have any single solution, but, Web 2.0 (The
Hype and the Hullabaloo of Web 2.0) could be helpful for what I believe will
be one of our biggest problems of the 21st century, namely information overload
and the limited time span people have to get higher signal to noise
ratio.

The bigger the
problem, the bigger there’s a chance to build successful and profitable
companies.

And I hope some
smart Turkish entrepreneurs/investors are working on these
issues.

What are your
thoughts/ideas/comments?