Podcasts have been around for a while - It was back in 2004 when they first caught fire. Since then, many unique and useful podcasts have risen to the top and consistently brought in audiences, most notably Diggnation and TWiT

Videocasting, on the other hand, is a new phenomenon, one that didn’t occur until the technology became available with the widespread use of YouTube, live streaming services, and better video and web cameras.

We hear less about podcasts and and more about video shows such as Epic Fu, Pop17 and even TWiT live (now streamed by StickAM). The trend seems clear - podcasting is going by the wayside and videocasting is taking the helm.

But then you’d be missing the bigger picture.

This past weekend, Las Vegas was home to the 4th annual New Media Expo, one of the top conferences on new media, podcasts, and video. Some of most interesting podcasters and videocasters gathered to talk about their work and exchange stories, as well as gauge some of the new distribution and recording technology available. I had the opportunity to be there and make some observations. Here’s the biggest one I made:

It’s about having more options.

If you take a look at Revision3, you’ll find that most of their shows have video and mp3 options. News-based shows tend to have both options the most. And this seems to be the overall trend for the podcasting world. As the pod chicks told me, “Podcasting is evolving.”

It’s an evolution towards choices. If you’re out to start a popular online show, you can’t just make an audio version - you’re going to fall by the wayside. But we’re busy people and can’t be at our computers all day, especially when we travel, so having the simple iPod audio option is essential as well. Hell, nearly every podcaster told me that a successful podcast needs a successful and consistent blog. That’s another medium of relaying information.

Being able to offer your viewers, listeners, and readers multiple options to take in your work, your opinions, your interviews, and your personality is becoming more and more apparent. You need to complement your video show with not only podcasts and blog posts, but live streams, twitter conversations, and even mobile video. Think about how many sources you have for your news - TV, blogs, newspapers, magazines, RSS feeds, and email lists just to start. Why wouldn’t podcasts and videocasts be the same?

So podcasting is far from obsolete - it’s just become an integral part of larger campaigns to reach current and new users. In the end, it’s about engaging your audience. But since users take in information from different sources and different mediums, the best podcasters and videocasters must do the same and spread their message across multiple platforms.

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Two companies I’ve long been fans of have hooked up their platforms to work together: Wizzard and TubeMogul. Wizzard Media is the media giant in the podcasting space, and TubeMogul is a video distribution service with one of the most adept, savvy and aware crews I’ve run into in their space.

In case you haven’t seen our coverage of TubeMogul in the past, their service is one that allows you to upload a video once and distribute it automatically to just about every embedded video site out there. TubeMogul has been furiously striking partnerships with a number of different sites where original video is created, including our video platform of choice Episodic.

For us, after a video is uploaded and tagged on Episodic’s server, it’s simply a one click process to blast the video out to YouTube, Revver, Yahoo’s Video, Google Video, and many others. This is the same functionality that Wizzard seems to now have implimented with the added bonus of integrating the analytics TubeMogul gathers from all these video repository into the stats package on their service.

Record Revenues at Wizzard

This news comes hot on the heels of more good financial news for Wizzard in their second quarter 2008 financial results. Their revenues for Q208 were just shy of $1.5 million, up 3% from Q207, and shaved $868,000 off their quarterly losses year over year, putting them a lot closer to operating in the black.

All the other key indicators for the business grew significantly as well, with total downloaded shows from Wizzard servers topping out at nearly a quarter of a billion downloads for just this quarter.

All in all, Wizzard continues to prove that there is money in podcasting, be it audio or video. Wizzard has always had a reputation for excelling in audio, but with podcasting itself making a comeback in trendiness, and Wizzard making a significant effort in the video side of their business, they should have a bright rest of the year ahead of them, particularly with the increased interest in video from the mainstream advertising community.

[Disclosure: Wizzard Media/LibSyn hosts the audio version of Mashable Conversations]

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PodTech, one of the earliest companies to form around the concept of podcasting, has finally seen an exit following what can best be described as an extremely tumultuous history. As someone who’s followed the saga of PodTech from the very beginning, the image to the public as well as what’s been going on behind the scenes has been at best, confusing.

Today, Eric Eldon over at VentureBeat is reporting that PodTech has been sold for a startlingly small sum: less than half a million. The buyer is a relative unknown called ViewPartner, supposedly a communications technology company. According to multiple sources, the company was expected to make $7 million in revenue on the production side alone.

The confusion about PodTech goes way back for folks like me who’ve been a part of the podcast community since it’s inception.  Most of the other organizations and networks that have formed around podcasting have all been grassroots in nature and PodTech bucked that trend by being squarely corporate, and thus a slight bit disconnected from the rest of the podcasting scene.

Still, that didn’t prevent them from having a bold plan for success employing social media and podcasting.  That’s why it was particularly confusing when the wheels started coming off the bus last year starting with funding issues, then Irina Slutsky being let go along with other employees and the Vloggies, then John Furrier essentially quitting, and his eventual abrupt leaving.

Then, last October Fake Steve Jobs broke the news that Robert Scoble was leaving the company, which was hastily denied, defended, and then fulfilled.

It’s a sad end for a company that held so much potential, but has lacked direction for quite some time now.  Just about everyone felt that the end was imminent, and while this isn’t exactly a eulogy for a dead company, there are a lot of folks who ended up with the short end of the stick on this deal.

I’m certain the analysis will be spun by many folks in the coming days that this is yet another nail in the coffin for the idea of podcasting and business being bedfellows.  Keep in mind that a company that was only a few years old went through a number of regime changes and strategy shifts, and where it ended up can’t be taken as a measure of what’s possible in the business.

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