Apple is celebrating #10YearsOfPodcasts this week with a special section in iTunes devoted to just that: 10 years of podcasts. While podcasts might seem ubiquitous now, back then they were nowhere nearly as well known.
2005 was the height of the iPod age, and with new devices came new types of content to fill them. The conceit wasn't new—people talking about and otherwise sharing what they loved—but thanks to the internet and the iPod the level of access was unprecedented. Almost anyone sufficiently motivated could not only make a show, but reach an audience.
I used to commute to work every day, a trip that took 45 to 90 minutes each way. Podcasts immediately became a way to fill that time. Among my first subscriptions were MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, Merlin Mann, and Scott Bourne, and the Treocast with Dieter Bohn and Mike Overbo. The first was by TWiT and I later added TWiT proper, Security Now, Windows Weekly, and others to my pull list. The second was by Smartphone Experts, and I was soon listening to Phone different and WMExperts as well.
Ridiculously, I now co-host McBreak Weekly and Dieter Bohn somehow hired me to run Phone different, which became iMore.
Podcasts changed my life.
And because I'm privileged to host a few of my own now, they continue to do so on a weekly basis. (Some bi-weekly or monthly...)
Yet technology podcasts represent only a tiny fraction of all the content out there. Serial may have woken some people up to the format and the possibilities, but there have been amazing shows on comedy and cooking, hours filled with interviews and investigations, whole series on history and religion, and enough music, science, health and fitness, and pop culture to fill... well, to fill the internet.
So here's to #10YearsOfPodcasts—because official hashtags are cool!—to Apple for adding them to iTunes, and to everyone who has produced, hosted, shared, and recommended them.
Here's to more than ten more years!
Now hit the comments and tell me what podcasts you first subscribed to, and what you're listening to now?
