Podcasting Hype

I have a lot of respect for Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger. But I have very serious doubts about his new Podcasting venture, Odeo.

Sure, the iPod is big, and yes - there are lots of people who take hour-long commutes the way Ev used to do from Google in Mountain View to San Francisco, but I don’t think there are many people who are “type A” enough to want to listen to podcasts rather than good music, or rather than lose themselves in their thoughts at the end of a busy day.

So when really impressive people like Mitch Kapor (lotus 123) and Tim O Reilly (O Reilly books) fork over good money as seed capital for Odeo, I can only shake my head. Because of the impressive work Ev has done on Blogger, I won’t rule him out just yet, but let’s see if he has something else up his sleeve?

The only angle I can see is

1) iPod will soon support Video.
2) Odeo uses the same technology to distribute videos (as it uses for podcasts)
3) Odeo inserts video ads into the video stream.

but that seems so far from Odeo’s vision…