I analyzed almost 13,000 responsive podcast feeds from Digital Podcast.  I found about 260,000 enclosures or links to podcast shows, for an average of 20 per feed.  The vast majority of the shows are audio shows with mp3 and m4a making up over 88% of the shows.  Video mp4, m4v, and mov formats made up almost 10% of the shows.

Here’s the file type breakdown:

• mp3 – 86.2%
• mp4 -  4.3%
• m4v -  3.3%
• m4a -  2.1%
• mov -  2.0%
• other -  1.6%
• unknown – 0.5%

It always amazes me how much time people have for arguing about whether podcasting is dead. The news that Wizzard had achieved an amazing 1 billion podcast downloads, provoked a post over at Mashable called The Problem with Podcasting Isn’t Downloads. The point of that post was that getting paid for podcasting via advertising from podcasting networks just doesn’t pay well.

Then the reaction kicked into gear, argue, argue, argue, argue, argue, respond. Just an amazing amount of energy expended, and from my perspective pretty needlessly.

People should quit trying to put other people into neat little definition boxes. If people want to podcast, they can and should. Why they do it is no one else’s business, unless the podcaster makes it our business.

If people want to make a living producing downloadable media and distributing them as podcasts, then they need to figure out a business model to make it work. There are lots of ways to make money in this world, mostly limited only by our own lack of creativity, effort and persistence.

Quit debating, and get back to creating.

Evan Williams, who is the CEO of Odeo, decided to write a podcasting site roundup based on Alexa rankings (which by everyone’s judgement are pretty far off the mark and can be easily gamed if you have all your staff running Alexa and visiting your site).

I’m glad Digital Podcast, which I have built with my bare hands made the list, but I guess I have to say I’m a little pissed at Mr. Williams for dissing the site by to calling it Yet Another Podcast Directory. Digital Podcast,without any venture capital backing, was up and running a full 8 months before Odeo showed it’s face , which may make Odeo the Yet Another Podcast Directory since Digital Podcast was way ahead of Odeo, and just about any of the podcast directories except ipodder, Podcast Alley and Podcast.net.

I started Digital Podcast in December, 2004 because at the time Podcast Alley’s servers were crashing almost daily and Podcast.net was also offering very sporadic service. And iPodder was a mess, as it is to this day.

Digital Podcast also fails to get recognition from Mr. Williams as being the provider of the Digital Podcast Search Service, which powers the Nokia Podcasting Application and 60 plus other applications and for being one of the lead developers of the Open Podcast Directory Application.

Mr. Williams also calls out PodTech’s and Melodeo’s venture capital funding, yet he seems to fail to mention Odeo is also a venture backed company and has a good sized development team working away.

Yahoo’s Podcast site also gets some dissing from Mr. Williams, and he fails to mention that Yahoo’s Podcast site won a Webby for the site and just won the People’s Choice award for best podcast directory.

So here’s my round up (excluding the Digital Podcast Directory which I run and use all the time because I use the Digital Podcast toolbar and it’s the fastest way I know of to find a podcast). I’m not using any Alexa rankings because I know they are BS, I just have to look at my own site statistics to know Alexa’s toolbar is way too small a sample to provide accurate stats.

My recommendations are based on working every night after work in the podcasting arena since Dec, 2004.
Best Podcast Directory Site – Yahoo Podcasts
(hopefully we will catch them with the Open Podcast Directory Application)

Best Podcast Community Sites – Podcast Alley and Podcast Pickle
( The guys at Pickle also get my recognition for a site that came from way behind to catch and maybe beat Podcast Alley – I don’t know how many people work on the Pickle site, but they have done an awesome job of rapidly building community)

Best Podcast News – Podcasting News

Best Video Podcasting News – Video Podcasting News

Best Web Service – Digital Podcast Search Service (sorry I couldn’t resist)

Best Podcasting Toolbar Plugin for Firefox – Podcast Search Toolbar (also one of Digital Podcast’s contributions which includes the Digital Podcast Search Service, Podcasting News’ feed, Podcast Pickle’s feeds, Podcast Alley feeds, and Video Podcasting News feeds)

Best Podcast Hosting – I don’t know for sure, but Libysn and Podomatic both look pretty good

Best RSS services – Feedburner and Feedvalidator

I did my homework and that’s my list. Positive, constructive and sites anyone interested in podcasting should check out. I just wish people like Mr. Williams who have lots of followers would do their homework before they decide to start dissing the rest of the community.