Mike Rowehl's summary of the Search SIG's meeting on audio search recalled a post I'd seen from Evan Williams a while back, on exactly why podcasting is different (the real meat comes in this comment). Podcasting is not streaming, it's not even "blogging for audio." If you had to compare it to anything, the best analogy would be to TiVO for radio. Either way, as podcasting becomes more and more accessible and popular, it's going to have a profound effect on our culture, not mention the economics of the media industry.

When you talk about podcasting and search (as seems to have been the focus of the session), it's important to keep in mind the user experience. Take Joe Podcast-Listener; he's got a brand new iPod and wants to fill it with some good podcasts. How is he going to do that? It's the same question if you replace iPod with TiVO. Joe is going to 1) go with what he already knows, i.e. what is popular, 2) ask his friends and 3) look in some listing, guide or directory. What are the chances that Joe is going to look for podcasts that contain specific keywords of interest to him? I would think very small (do you decide what to TiVO based on whether or not one of the characters mentions a specific phrase?). That kind of search is good for research purposes, but for Joe, it's not going to help that much. Joe needs a directory of podcasts, which is filterable (possibly through tags) and maybe shows him recommendatins from his friends. Perhaps later, when Joe is more comfortable with podcasting, he'll look back for specific shows/episodes on specific topics.

This seems to match with what Odeo and PodShow are doing. The others are looking at audio search in general and not specifically at podcasts (at least, from a user value perspective). That would include Blogdigger's Media Search, which pays special attention to enclosures and podcasts, but is really tailored towards web media in general. An interesting question is how useful a search-feed-as-podcast-subscription would be to a podcast-consumer (our Media Search RSS supports enclosures, so you can take search results and funnel them onto your iPod auto-magically); I could see it going both ways, depending on a number of factors. I've had great success finding Daily Show clips, which don't come from a central source as a podcast does. The value ffrom media-search-meets-podcasting comes in surfacing bits of content people know are out there but don't know where to find. This would also work well for finding (hopefully legal) music from artists you know and love.