Search-engine company Yahoo Inc. has announced it will jettison a little-used service for finding and rating podcasts, the latest casualty of the Internet company's rejuvenation effort. The podcast section will be silenced Oct. 31, according to a notice posted on Yahoo's Web site, joining several other features that Yahoo has scrapped as it tries to snap out of a financial funk that has depressed its stock price and triggered a reshuffling of top management. Yahoo is expected to dump more services before the overhaul is completed, with its music subscription service frequently mentioned as one of the most likely targets.
According to research firm Hitwise, however, the podcast service won't be missed: of 32 Yahoo-owned properties it monitors, the podcast section was the least trafficked. Yahoo launched the podcast service two years ago in a bid to capitalize on the growing number of people transferring audio files to Apple Inc.'s iPod and other portable media devices, but the feature never attracted much interest.
Neowin featured two Podcasts up until this start of the year, NeowinCast and PowerUser.TV the latter was cancelled due to production costs and the finale uploaded on Christmas day of last year. Despite growing popularity, the NeowinCast podcast also went the way of the dinosaur after its last show which was posted on April 20th of this year. Podcasts generally take a long time to produce, edit and the hard and software needed for the service doesn't come cheap which makes Podcast a less important factor for many news outlets.
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