Previously I made some assertions regarding the Changelog team reconfiguring their podcast business. At the tail end of last week, they released a “Changelog & Friends: Kaizen!” pod episode that talked a lot about that topic. Confirmed were a couple of my suspicions.
I was dead on target about the move to YouTube. The Kaizen! episode had a lot of nuance. The audience had been asking for it and they felt they were leaving a bit on the table, especially relative to other creators in the developer content space. Gerhard also teased out the various different ways folks receive such content, from quick hitter TikTok types to immersive deep divers. Also the ability to see the participants facial reactions and other physical gestures came up as a bonus. Not really my thing, but I could see all the props and gimmicks from the cable sports debate shows and YouTube channels coming to bear.
Hit the mark as well on the production weight. Adam and Jerod were definitely missing the slack needed to birth new concepts and do more hacking. Sounds like this will free them up a bit.
The jury’s still out about my pod network claim. Adam did mention being able to give brands, especially with more nascent companies, additional options with the ability to connect an increased number of podcasts. My search/indexing bit is still hanging out there. I should do some research to see if this product doesn’t exist already, but loosely coupled, vertical network oriented, podcast search feels like it should be a thing. Market opportunity?
Personally, YouTube videos as the primary upsell still isn’t for me. I use pods as background material while multitasking on other things. That’s just about impossible to do with video content. Jerod mentioned in a comment that they’ll have to evolve Changelog++. Let’s see what comes of it.