Leo “head TWiT” Laporte suggests replacing the word Podcast with Netcast, he never liked the name and neither did I. It’s an interesting choice and I tend to agree with it, I may be a big fan of Apple, but it doesn’t mean I think podcast makes any sense, netcast is a lot better, it reflects a bit more what those things are and doesn’t link the whole medium to one product.
4 Comments
I think “Podcast” stuck because in the early days, they were aimed at iPod users, in that iPods were the easiest ways of capturing them (via iTunes). After all, there is more to podcasting than just putting an MP3 on a server. True podcasting is about the whole subscriber/automatic download/etc. experience.
While it’s true that an MP3 is an MP3, and any MP3 player can be used to listen to a podcast file, the fact remains that iPods and iTunes are still the best tools for maintaining a podcast subscription.
The trouble with “netcast” is that there is nothing in that term that is specific to audio files. Whereas “podcast” is too specific, “netcast” seems too neutral. SPAM emails are netcast. So are RSS feeds.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a better solution.
There is nothing in the term “podcast” that specifies audio either and “podcast” isn’t used only for audio anyway, sometimes they are “video podcasts” that are often refered to as simply podcast so netcast wouldn’t make it worst on that count.
Audio Netcast. Video Netcast. I like it a lot. I always hated “podcasting” even worse in french…
hmm – It reminds me of when they call “a guy who does TV or radio for a living” a broadcaster, it sounds a bit puffed up.
but furthering sylvain’s idea, how about losing the ‘net’ part of it altogether, and condensing those terms further to audiocast and videocast? I think those convey the function and media type while drawing a line between them and their analog counterparts, radio and tv.