For more than a year or so I’ve been very intrigued by podcasting. Not surprisingly, that’s just about the time I broke down and got my first iPod. I’ve followed a lot of what’s happened on the technical side of podcasting via an old acquaintance, who is a pioneer in the podcasting space.

But mostly, I’ve just been listening to a bunch of cool podcasts. However, lately I’ve been thinking about doing some podcasting. Many, many years ago I was involved in radio as a show producer and doing some voiceovers. Throughout my writing and editing career I’ve lent a hand with “multimedia initiatives” at several former places of employment that were launching online audio “broadcasting.”

The concept of podcasting appeals to me on several levels – as someone who loves all forms of new media, as a frustrated radio DJ wannabe and as someone who knows just enough about technology to be dangerous.

Currently, I’m working on a feature about podcasting that will appear in the Winter Issue of Revenue. It’s been interesting to see how the online marketing community is embracing podcasting.

It’s also intriguing to see the “big boys” get into the game. Monday Yahoo launched a suite of podcasting tools that help search, rate and arrange the digital audio files. The free service is aimed at helping consumers sift through the rapidly multiplying number of podcsts that are available today. And I’m pleased to note that there are tens of thousands of them and plenty of new ones popping up every day.

Yahoo estimates that up to five million people currently listen to podcasts, which touch on every possible topic including books, beer, computers, music, humor, family, finances, games and gadgets.

With Yahoo Podcast Search, the most popular podcasts are now promoted on Yahoo’s front page, along with a few other recommended podcasts. The podcasts can be searched via keywords, categories or user-generated topic tags. Searchers can listen to or subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for individual shows or episodes of programming or entire series.

The service is compatible with most MP3 devices including Apple’s iPod, the iRiver player, Dell’s DJ, and Creative Technology Ltd.’s Zen.

In the future Yahoo plans to provide podcast publishing and hosting tools as well.

But Yahoo’s not first to get into the podcasting search space. At the end of June, search startup blinkx released a service to find podcasts and video blogs.

Lat month America Online announced features to deliver the best of the Web’s podcasts to more than 100 million visitors at it’s portal. I expect in the near future you will see many more tools to make searching, arranging and listening to podcasts easier and that’s very exciting.

Let me know about how podcasting fits into your future marketing plans. lisap@revenuetoday.com