Continuing our series of posts analysing the proliferation of the major social media platforms in the UK, this week I am going to take a look at podcasts.
This information is drawn from our recent Social Media Insight 2009 report.
Podcasts have really grown in importance in the last two years. The platform’s popularity has exploded with the digital media of online and podcast supporting devices working in tandem to great effect.
Current affairs (12%) is among the most popular podcast topic, and this is largely thanks to the wave of media companies that now offer downloads as part of their news service. Media players such as the BBC’s iPlayer have developed a large following. Business and management (8%) also stands out. Podcasts are sought after among this audience because they have little time during the day to spend on catching up with the latest developments, so it can be easier for them to download content and listen to it in transit when they are less likely to be disturbed.
Education is another interesting area. Traditionally, auditory courses have been a successful way of learning a new language, for example, and this seems to have been embraced by the online community as well. Meanwhile, music fans (10%) see podcasting as a viable way of catching up on their favourite shows via what is essentially a music device anyway. Sport (13%) also has a good showing. People prefer catching up with results and highlights via podcasts, even if in a lot of cases they are not yet able to watch entire sportscasts online.
Graham Lee
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