ZapZap is a new audio and video podcast directory service based in Japan, just launched this weekend. While podcast directories are launching fast and furious, this one is particularly nice. Ajax is used just right, digg-type voting is central, synch with iTunes or play on site. The aesthetic is attractive and there are English and Japanese sections of the site.
ZapZap’s creator is an irreverent 25 year old named Jon Anthony Yongfook Cockle, born in England and living in Tokyo.
You have to wonder how sites like these are going to differentiate themselves from others offering similar functions. ZapZap does have a full feature set, it looks great and being available in two languages is a smart move. The only thing I’ve seen anyone offer lately that ZapZap doesn’t include yet is a javascript bookmarklet to tag an offsite podcast into your personal archive, as Pluggd offers (see review of Pluggd). Tags aren’t used for categorizing podcasts, either; that’s one step ZapZap is considering when scaling becomes an issue, finding podcasts could become increasingly difficult when the number of offerings increases.
The little touches here are nice. Each time a podcast you are subscribed to posts a new episode, it receives a “zap” vote. It’s easy to email a link to an episode to someone. Subscribing is simple. Offering a link to subscribe in iTunes instead of trying to compete with iTunes is smart. The functionality is just plain smooth.
There’s no business model apparent yet. Text ads could appear on the page. Ordinarily I would be exasperated to see one more podcast directory, but this one really is good.
The title of this post is a joke, right? Does this mean there are companies doing social podcast directories wrong?? And these guys are swooping in because of the huge opportunity??? I give em 5 months to change business models, then about 2 more months to a redesign/gamma phase, and then, the layoffs.
Skeptic > thanks for your comments. In terms of huge opportunity, there is basically nothing in the Japanese market like ZapZap, so we are in quite a nice position in that sense. Remember, the whole world isn’t browsing the web in English.
actually, http://collectik.net has been quietly doing offering a similar service for a couple of months, and is a japan-australia-canada production.
Pretty nice UI, but I was disappointed with the limited selection of podcasts (only 4,000 when I check).
This is becoming a problem as the number of podcasts increases. Only Pluggd and Odeo seem to consistently have a large collection of podcasts. The other players have really fallen behind.
How often would you go to Amazon if on a few occasions you couldn’t find a book? Same for Google and web pages? Same for eBay and ‘everything’?
Ok. That’s great.
I’m building the same site as zapzap and many many other podcast directories. I dont have a business plan. I’m doing it just because I can. My monthly budget is $35. Site development cost $850(Outsourced to china).
ZapZap seem to be a pretty high production quality.. How much did you guys actually spent and how much money are you planning to make? Or think you’ll make?
I think the market is pretty limited. I’ll jump with joy If I make $50 per month to cover the monthly expenses via google ads. Plus, that’ll make my site PROFITABLE($15 in profit)!!
All these podcast directories a pretty easy to clone… within a week you can get your own directories and just leech all the content from zapzap and many other sites(pluggd).
My goal is to outlast.
$35 per month budget.. If I don’t eat breakfast for a week per month, I think I’ll last along time.
@JoJo – the huge number of podcasts is the big issue, of course. I guess there are two approaches that can be taken: focus on searching (in which case you are dead right, you have to index everything) or focus on the ’social’, and rely on people bringing the best stuff into the system. I don’t know about zapzap, but http://collectik.net/ certainly takes the latter approach (as, of course, do other non-podcast tools like del.icio.us).
Searching is great when you know what you want to find, but social aggregation is better at helping you find stuff you didn’t even know you would be interested by!
JoJo > naturally the number of podcasts offered will increase as time goes on. I think most podcast directories make the adding of podcasts so simple that it makes “number of podcasts” such an arbitrary means of comparison. There is a balance, too – whilst having 20′000+ podcast channels might sound great, that’s a hell of a lot of variety and you really then need the means to sift through all that in an efficient manner – and I don’t think any of us have really nailed that yet. We’re working on it though.
JamesM > you might as well say that *any* site is clone-able. Unless you have really deep technology (Riya, for example) anyone can clone anyone. That’s not the point – it’s the *execution*. I know you are speaking hypothetically to make a point, but in response – if an $850 team has the necessary savvy to design, implement and market something with production values similar to or in excess of ZapZap, then business is business and we will gracefully accept defeat and retire to lick our wounds. My guess is though, they don’t. And when I look around at the other podcast directories in both Japan and The West, it’s a similar story.
Yongfook – You missed my point: I have yet to understand the market for _any_ social podcast networks, regardless of the language. Best of luck.
JamesM – Please send me an email at skeptic_at_ dead2o _.com – I’d love to hear how things go and do a post about it!!!
Congratulations once again yf. You are certainly making a name for yourself. Continued good luck.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
…apzap?
This post might be due for an update. Looks like Zap Zap is no longer around. If you hit the site you will see that the domain name has expired.