Intellipodcast Business Overview

Intellipodcast came about as a business idea in 2005 with the introduction of Apple® iTunes® and the popular ipod®. Video and sound have changed the face of the web, and podcasting and videocasting is slowly making its way into the public sphere with we think, the most impact to corporations and business as well as educational institutions and personal use as well coming in the next 2 years.

The mission for intellipodcast is to create a site where individuals can upload either narrative text or sound or video for automated production into RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts or videocasts and upload to iTunes. Visitors will also be able to purchase ipods and other mp3 players and accessories, software, video equipment and audio equipment and manuals.

There are only a handful of sites that provide podcast production services – especially for corporate and educational clientele, and intellipodcast was one of the first.  During the last quarter of 2005, a great deal of time was spent on researching the idea including attending the International Podcasting conference in Ontario, CA to understand the market needs and the technology. In the first quarter of 2006, we purchased and became trained on the equipment necessary to produce podcasts and video for the web and started active production for a company called RHS Solutions as a test case.

We also created the Grimms Fairy Tales podcast as a test case and posted it to the iTunes directory and within 3 months went from 2 subscribers to over 38,000 subscribers. This number continues to grow.

Podcast listenership may have a long way to go before catching up to the U.S. radio audience, but while radio audience is declining, podcast circulation is consistently growing nearly 20% per month.

Audience size runs the gamut. Some podcasts have a very large audience, like NPR's On The Media from WNYC, New York Public Radio, with more than 16,000 loyal subscribers (and as many as 40,000 who download media right from the Web site). Others are more personal podcasts created to keep friends and family up to date. While iTunes is the clear favorite for podcast subscribers, a healthy 43% of the market listens (or watches) their favorite podcasts using other applications. That said, the two most significant jumps in podcast circulation in the past 18 months can both be tied to iTunes: In July 2005, when iTunes 4.9 launched with podcasting support, and the end of last year, when millions of people unwrapped an iPod (Apple sold 14 million iPods in Q4 last year).

NBC, ABC, Disney, Fox and CNN have already started regular podcasts on iTunes with pay-per-watch TV shows as well as free content.

The power of this media format is yet to spread to corporation and educational institutions in a large way and there is still some confusion as to how to create and implement podcasts and the ways in which they can be used.
Intellipodcast’s new site will offer a very simple format for people to be able to take advantage of the large market and create podcasts or videocasts without necessarily understanding the technology. We aim to make the site as user friendly and as intuitive as possible.

Intellipodcast is a business division of our parent company, Brainy Betty, Inc. a premier site for free resources for businesspeople, students and educators on the Internet.