Yahoo! announced that their Yahoo! Podcasts will shut its operation this coming October 31st. The reason is not that clear but I read from Read/WriteWeb that “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.”
Yahoo! is really one of the largest podcast directory, has a user-friendly navigation and even has a handy player for streaming podcasts without downloading them, that is why it used to be my favorite podcast search engine.
But then, for the past several months, I noticed that they are not updating the site anymore and have read some complains such as this and this. And so, I began looking for other podcast directory and been using Podcast Pickle, Podcast Alley, Podcast Search and Podanza lately.
And with the news about the closure of Yahoo! Podcasts and not hearing anything why they are shutting down, there have been so many reactions why Yahoo! decided to closed its podcasting site. Some said that it is because the damn thing never worked. But perhaps, with the many businesses of Yahoo! they just don’t want to focus with podcasting anymore and it does not necessarily mean that they will kill their podcasting directory because the industry is dying.
2 responses so far ↓
geoff // Oct 9, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I am kinda glad Goliath gave up. The sites you mention, plus blubrry, zencast, and dozens more, seem to be doing a really great job of getting the content to the listeners. Yahoo is incapable of handling such a hydra as podcasting. Simply look at the number of podfaded shows they still list.
I would say it is “sad” to lose the yahoo listeners, but the ones intelligent enough to put the shows’ feeds into their own readers never really used yahoo’s laughable interface anyway.
merryjazz // Oct 10, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Yes. one thing that really turned me off from using Yahoo! Podcasts is the long lists of the podfaded shows that are still in their directory. But in fairness, what i like in their directory is the prompt display of the podcasts’ URL or website.
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