Does something become more popular if you make it easier to do?

There used to be this running joke about how easy it is to Podcast. Instead of a full recording studio with expensive mixing boards and microphones, you could now record audio programs with a basic computer set-up, cheap microphone, some free audio editing software (like Audacity) and a Blogging platform. The truth is, it takes a little more than that to create a great program and even though it is inexpensive, it’s still time-consuming to make it work.

Podfading (when someone starts a Podcast but quickly stops recording new episodes) is a very real syndrome.

For some, it seems like a good idea at the time but recording simply doesn’t fit with their lifestyle, others were not seeing the mass numbers of people flocking to Podcasts (as they did with other platforms like Blogging and Twitter), and for others it was simply a matter of waiting until the technology advanced to the point where it was easier and more convenient. My guess is the latter is exactly what happened to Bryan Person (aka Bryper). In a sea of feeds, tweets and lifestreams, I thought Bryan had dropped Podcasting for a return to Blogging (and he’s quite active on Twitter, etc…). On a recent episode of the For Immediate Release – The Hobson & Holtz Report audio Podcast, I learned that he has a new audio Podcast that he records (wait for it…) daily.

What changed in the world of audio technology to make it that much easier? 

Bryan Person’s new daily audio Podcast is called, The Daily Boo, named after the iPhone app he is using to create it with. AudioBoo is a free iPhone audio blogging app that allows anyone to record straight into their iPhone (this doesn’t work on the iPod Touch because it does not have a microphone built-in) and then posts it on-the-fly to the Web. The Daily Boo episodes are usually under five minutes in length and while the AudioBoo site features hundreds (maybe thousands) of other Podcasts on the AudioBoo platform, The Daily Boo covers "our" space: online communications, media and technology. It’s highly entertaining, fresh and gives you just the right amount of snackable new media content on a daily basis.

Podcasting, streaming live video, Blogging, Tweeting and almost anything (and everything) else you can do with a laptop can now be done with an iPhone (and some other mobile devices).

If you don’t think this access, ease-of-us, mobility and speed of delivery is going to change everything you know about Marketing, Advertising and Communications, you’ve got another thing coming.

Final thought: When I think about how Bryan records The Daily Boo, it makes how I record Six Pixels of Separation and Media Hacks seem almost as old and antiquated as using a full-fledged studio is when compared with my current set-up. Yes, technology is moving that fast.