How long is four years?

Well, if you’re a child, being four years old makes you old enough to dress yourself, make your own bed, maybe go to preschool. If you’re a Presidential term, four years brings you back to re-election time, or limps to the end of your lame duck phase, depending. If you’re a thirty-year mortgage, four years gets you barely into the principal-paying part of the loan. If you’re in high school, four years is a very long time, waiting to be treated like a grown-up. If you’re a parent of a high school student, four years is quick, a blink of your eye.

In the podcasting space, however, four years is a very long time.

Today marks pioneering video podcast Rocketboom’s fourth birthday. Rocketboom, a daily video blog, launched October 27, 2004, shortly after the term “podcasting” was coined to describe sequential, episodic, subscribe-able, downloadable (audio or video) content. (That is to say, “RSS with enclosures.”)

Topics have ranged from the serious to the ridiculous. 

Over the past four years, many consumers of media have shifted their attention away from the printed page, radio and television, toward blogs and podcasts available on their computers and mobile devices. There’s a lot of great content available, with more new gems being created all the time. Creation of blogs, podcasts, and even entire social networks becomes easier as inexpensive, powerful tools become available to larger numbers of people.

But over the past four years, thousands of podcast series have debuted and “podfaded.” Scores of podcast networks, hosts, services, and products have launched and struggled or fizzled out between the fall of 2004 and today. 

Happy birthday to a new media old-timer.