The news made for catchy headlines: podcasting is more popular than blogging, research firm Nielsen/NetRatings claimed. Could it be, really, that more people create and upload audio and video clips than dash off musings on websites? No, in fact, it couldn't, as bloggers immediately pointed out. Nielsen erroneously compared the number of people who listen to podcasts -- content consumers, to use the technical term -- to the number of people who write blogs -- content producers. "Lame beyond belief," writes Robert Scoble, who recently jumped from Microsoft to a podcasting startup. "Podcasting doesn’t need the false hype," he adds. "We need real numbers, real research, with organizations we, and advertisers, can believe."

Frank Barnako called Nielsen/NetRatings, and got a confession from PR people there: They screwed up the language of the press release, confusing the term "podcasters" -- the people who create podcasts -- with "podcast listeners." Estimates put the actual number of podcasters somewhere around 10,000 -- a pittance compared to the millions of active bloggers. So much for the podcasting revolution. Long live blogs!