Confused by the title of this post? Good. That’s how I feel when I see podcasting mis-defined.

Unfortunately, people are still getting the definition of podcasting wrong. I was on this site reading their review of the recent Pew study on podcasting and I saw this paragraph:

“Podcasts are typically sound files that can be played on personal computers, TiVo Inc.‘s digital recorders and music players such as Apple Computer Inc.‘s iPod. Many are regularly scheduled and automatically delivered, and more recently some have incorporated video.”

As I continued my quest to review the coverage of the Pew podcasting survey, I stumbled upon MSNBC and unfortunately, someone plagarized the other because I found the same lame, silly definition of podcast in their article.

What’s wrong with the definition on MSNBC and copied word for word on the other site (or vice versa)?

1. Podcasts aren’t sound files. It can be visual as well.
2. Videos haven’t recently been incorporated into podcasting. Podcasts have always started out as audio and video files, right from the beginning.
3. iPods or TIVO aren’t needed to listen or view a podcast so STOP MENTIONING BRAND NAMES WHEN DEFINING PODCAST OR PODCASTING (yes, I’m yelling).
4. Automatically delivered…hmmm…not even a newspaper is automatically delivered, unless I’m subscribed to it.

Want to know what podcasting is? Check out the definition at Wikipedia as that definition is the most accurate. It states:

“A podcast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.”

I can relax now.