Yahoo Podcasts, a comprehensive podcasting search, directory and listening service that launched in October 2005, is closing at the end of October, a fraction past its second birthday.
There is no official word from Yahoo as to why the site is shutting, aside from a message at the top of Yahoo Podcasts that reads “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.”
Other podcast directories have struggled as a medium that years ago held so much promise was surpassed by the rise of video. Odeo was acquired from investors, then sold off, then acquired another podcast directory called FireAnt; and more recently the podcast provider/ directory Podshow is rumored to be closing a third round of funding this week as they run short of money.
Yahoo Podcasts joins the ever growing Yahoo graveyard along with Yahoo Bill Pay (announced in July for Sep/ Oct shutdown) and the hat trick of closures in May of Yahoo Auctions, WebJay and Yahoo Photos. Yahoo Podcasts joins the TechCrunch Deadpool.
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I remember this as one of the early directories that helped introduce me to podcasting. I thought it was pretty slick at the time. Sad to see it go but it’s also oddly comforting to see Yahoo not afraid to cut a project that is not profitable.
Well, I’ve tried to add my podcasts to the directory quite a few times, and the form submitted, but the listings NEVER showed up. Same thing happened to quite a few people I hear. In my mind, its been “dead” for a while now.
How on earth could podshow be short of money?
What on earth could they have spent $23 million on in less than 24 months?
This is a sign of an exec looking show how proactive they are. Nothing more than showing how cost reductions are being made and cutting of the losses is a true mission. Pathetic, nobody know what a podcast is still, and a behemoth like Y! could own the market if they knew what to do. It keeps getting worse.
Another closure from Yahoo. Hope things don’t get worser than this for yahoo in the coming days.
Yahoo has shut down three of their properties: WebJay, Yahoo Photos, Yahoo Auctions. Today Yahoo PodCast directory becomes the latest victim. . .
Why?
Yahoo obviously has the muscle to turn these projects “profitable” at some level, so why not keep them?
Because they have realized they need to FOCUS to save their business.
Yahoo is taking notes on a hard earned lesson that Google should too take note of: abandoning your core business to pursue opportunities, no matter how closely related, will ultimately damage your core business.
Yahoo has been getting their ass handed to them by Google quarter after quarter in the extremely lucrative search engine arena and it looks like they’re finally waking up and realizing that to be truly competitive they need to refocus their attention on their foundation: being a search directory.
Yahoo over the past several years has become a “Portal”. Becoming a portal in the late days of Bubble 1.0 was something that many large web properties strove to become.
Yahoo has arrived at their goal of becoming a portal. But the problem is that by becoming a portal, Yahoo lost any real value or specialization that made them valuable beyond their brand.
Sure, they do a monster amount of business, but just look at how profitable google has made search. And just look at their stock price to realize the value that the market puts on Google owning an extremely profitable, scalable area of specialization on the web.
A chapter from Al Ries’ classic business book “Focus” teaches us the following lesson:
“If there were nothing but general surgeons and you were the only brain surgeon, you would have an incredible business and you could charge outrageous prices.“
Hmmm, it seems to me that Google has succeeded in becoming just that! What is somewhat mind boggling, however, is that Google is beginning to segment their brand into completely new and unrelated areas: desktop software (to combat MSFT?!), email, and a dozen other apps.
Apps like Google Maps, which again are within Google’s core business of helping consumers find things more quickly and efficiently are smart.Desktop software, email, iGoogle, google notebook, Picasa, a potential social network and others are only going to damage Google in the long term by decreasing their most valuable asset - the brand name that is synonymous with SEARCH.
Go Yahoo!
Yahoo Podcasts closing has nothing to do with audio vs. video. It hosted both audio and video podcasts. The site closing is overdue, honestly; they have done literally nothing with the site since the day it opened. As long as I can remember, new podcasters would come on to message boards and ask why their show wasn’t listed on Yahoo, or why it was listed two or three times. A number of podcasters posted to their support message boards in the early days, since it was ostensibly a beta product (though it behaved more like an alpha), but every question, comment and bug report fell on deaf ears.
As a podcaster, I’m happy it closed. I’m all for the big guys coming in and providing more exposure to podcasting, but if they’re going to put up a site that only works sporadically and then just forget about it, I’d rather it didn’t exist in the first place.
Truer words were never spoken!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Rewardless # 6, if closing means Yahoo PodCast means that Yahoo is focusing on its core business then thats good. But I think they are realizing that they don’t have much time for some of these peripheral projects and I would like to see how Google will maintain their ever-growing portfolio.
Tsk… tsk… tsk… they better catch up….
Solution for those who love podcasting AND online video : import all of your audio podcast and video show subscriptions in mefeedia. We support both audio and video, and provide a social media network on top of it to boot - and are completely inter-operable with iTunes, Miro, and many other players.
http://www.mefeedia.com
Internet Video killed the Podshow Star? Another round of funding - wow! I knew something was up when the KMart adverts stopped appearing on the Daily Souce Code.
It’s got nothing to do with audio vs. video podcasts. It’s got everything to do with iTunes being the 800 lb gorilla, and working super-slick with the No. 1 podcast-consumption tool on the planet: the iPod. My company pushes out millions of podcasts episodes a month, and close to 90% of them are consumed through iTunes.
Until someone figures out a better way to get content onto iPods, iTunes will trump all those web directories for true podcasts/video podcasts. Mobile phones might also be a way to beat iTunes - but so far every effort I’ve seen has been pretty lame, and the average consumer doesn’t yet think of the mobile phone as a media device.
Oh, and one more thing. Most of the web-based aggregators depend on an advertising model. Most publishers won’t let other people monetize their content in that fashion - either through display around the web-viewed content, or worse, as pre-roll/post-roll on that content. A business model based on making money off other people’s podcasts and video podcasts is going to be a very tough road to follow.
Excellent comments, bmof.
When you say that publishers won’t let other people monetize with advertising, are you referring to use of a non-commercial license like the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA?
these closures usually have nothing to do with “focusing on the core business” because my guess is that yahoo had no one assigned to maintaining the site in any case, either technical or bd-wise.
by time yahoo actually turns off a site you can be sure it was in a headcount-coma for probably a year prior, yahoo photos being the exception and even more galling in that they poured money into upgrading it shortly before killing it in favor of flickr
Classic Yahoo behavior…
This is precisely why I don’t use ANY Yahoo products. Why get comfortable when they’re just going to close up shop later on?
I think that this is a sign that in order for on-demand audio to enjoy widespread adoption, providers/distributors/etc need to understand the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the way people consume audio on-the-go. Too many square pegs solutions for video were squeezed into the round hole of audio because of the YouTube and related video gold fever.
However, there is a large number of people that need a personalized audio solution beyond FM and satellite radio, and some solution is going to trickle up and fill the gap.
At http://www.stitchr.com , we’re working on it…