I have my podcast hosted on both Libsyn and Slapcast and then redirect them through this blog’s feed. It has become a practice I am glad I got into and would encourage any other podcasters to take up a similar strategy. Because Podcasting (or Netcasting, SyncCasting, Truckcasting or whatever it will eventually morph into) is a paradigm of which its very backbone is such a tenuous and continually evolving technology, it is by its very nature next to impossible to predict its next metamorphosis.

I learned that Libsyn has been purchased by Wizzard Software which states its forward looking strategy to be, that:

Over the next 12 months we plan to continue to execute our current business plan, focusing our efforts on speech technology business solutions for programmers and enterprise businesses interested in incorporating and using speech technologies for their workforce and in their products and services. We plan to continue to expand our efforts in attracting customers to use our VoiceTools product line as well as our customized programming and consulting services through the leads we generate by distributing our Voice Tools, IBM’s OEM ViaVoice desktop products and AT&T’s OEM Natural Voices desktop and telephony products, on a worldwide basis.

I’m not clear as to what or how this strategy influenced their decision to purchase Libsyn or Switchpod, which is another podcast host. Apparently wizzard software feels that:

this new podcast service network will lead the industry by offering competitive advantages to both the podcast community, as well as becoming an attractive new medium for the advertisers and sponsors.

Since they have made the purchase coincidentally Libsyn has had numerous slowdowns and 404 errors over the halloween weekend. In fact I have not been able to download any podcasts hosted on Libsyn with either Getright or Nimiq. Yes, Juice is working and I suspect Itunes is working also. I also realize that the state of podcasting is such that the technology backbone it rests on is due to fail from time to time. But the goal of podcasting is to use RSS, Atom or whatever technology we can use to make the adoption of podcast production and consumption as simple and as ubiquitous as possible. To make it inclusive not exclusive and though the management of a business does involve decisions that make it more profitable hence less expensive to circulate the product, the goal should not be forgotten in this attempt to gain market share.

I have sent a support query to Libsyn and as of roughly 18 hours yet to receive more than an autoresponse back. Though I have had trouble with Slapcast in the past, it seems apparent to me that Libsyn’s popularity may have grown into being their worst enemy. For the return of my investment I am not getting what I feel is a good value. You are limited in far to many ways with Libsyn. And this last little hiccup may just be the straw that causes this camels back to break. It has been nice to have an alternate choice, and who knows. I maybe writing a similar post about Slapcast going out of business in the near future. But we can only deal with things on a daily basis. And though they have gotten my money for one more month I believe it maybe time to move on.

Update: As with most hypothesis, until all the facts become evident, truth is rather subjective. In an support email response Dave (One of the original founders) states:

Our system is still having some problems with partial content requests, which is more then likely causing the issues w/ these applications. A fix was put into place ealier this week that was supposed to address the issue, however there were some performance issues and it was pulled to be reworked.

And further he comments on the aquisition by Wizzard Software:

We (the founders) shall retain full control over Libsyn- one of the reasons we really like this deal. We will release more about the details of this deal soon. Trust that it’s not a sell-and-retire kind of arrangement. In so many ways, we are finally just getting started!