Yahoo follows Apple’s foray into podcasts with a public beta of its podcasting search and subscription service. Yahoo has launched a browser-based podcast service. It’s in beta, and can be found at podcasts.yahoo.com.
Yahoo Launches Podcasting Service
They have integrated Yahoo search with the product, and allow users to listen to podcasts via the browser or download them to a music player.
Yahoo’s Lee Ott of the portal’s podcast team posted about Yahoo podcasts:
Yahoo! Podcasts offers a comprehensive directory of podcast series and individual shows from across the Web, complete with detailed search results, most popular and highest rated lists, editorial picks, and a full collection of tools you can use. These community tools include ratings, reviews, and the ability to tag audio content, or view the tags that other people add.
The group has added functionality to let the service work with aggregators like iPodder, and it can integrate with Yahoo’s Music Engine and iTunes. They are working on features that will add podcast creation and publishing, and personalized podcast recommendations.
On the Podcasts beta site, Yahoo offered a quick overview of what a podcast is, and placed a search box atop the page. Users can search for a podcast episode, series, or both. The site has recommendations from the Podcasts team, podcasts that others like and have rated, and links to categories like News and Comedy.
Podcasts can be tagged, and users can search on those tags. Some of the more popular tags have links for quick searching (what a surprise, sex is one of the most popular).
The site offers a three-page walkthrough on creating a podcast. Users will need third-party software like Audacity to create a podcast, as well as web hosting space to store it. Once created, users can submit the path to the podcast RSS feed so Yahoo’s search engine can index it.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
