Dave Winer, who authored the RSS 2.0 spec that podcasting is based upon, thinks that it’s time to turn Twitter into a podcasting platform.

“Back in 2001, I wrote a document called Payloads for RSS that explained how you could attach something to a RSS item,” notes Winer. “Today, we may be at a similar place with Twitter.”

Winer suggests that Twitter could be used to deliver content that’s to podcasts the way instant messages are to blog posts – shorter and more timely.

Here’s what he’s proposing:

• The “update” routine, as specified by the Twitter API, would add 2 optional parameters:
• the url of a picture that’s a thumb for the enclosed data; and
• the url of the data.

The image would link to the data. If you made a short “micropodcast” and published it via Twitter, the announcement might be displayed with a speaker icon that would link to the audio. A cell phone photo published via Twitter could be represented by a tiny thumbnail, which linked to the full version on Flickr.

While Winer’s Twittergram concept is interesting, the fact that it’s based on a proprietary platform, unlike podcasting, could create a barrier to adoption.