In trying to understand the growth and impact of new media, I like comparing where my own knowledge and typical technology use stands today with where it stood, say, one year ago.

Then …
One year ago, I didn’t subscribe to podcasts or use RSS feeds in any meaningful way. In very late 2004 or very early 2005 I had read about something called “podcasting” on J.D. Lasica’s New Media Musings site, and I’d also directly downloaded and listened to a couple of episodes of the Boston Sports Massacre. Heck, I’d even written a note about podcasting and RSS feeds in one of my occasional columns for Boston Sports Media Watch.

But I didn’t take much interest in learning how to “subscribe” to a podcast, and I didn’t exert much effort in finding good shows to listen to. On the RSS side, I downloaded a free reader and clumsily added a feed or two. But I found the application slow, clunky, and not entirely useful.

Flickr? I saw a work colleague using it from time to time, but I once again wasn’t really hooked.

MySpace? I’d never heard of it.

Blogs? I was figuring these out, at least, and in fact had just launched a sports site/blog to write about some of the action in my daughter’s softball league.

Then, at some point around June, the light finally dawned.

Now …
It’s hard to imagine not being a consumer of and advocate for blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, and social media, in general.

• My iTunes podcast subscriptions number around 15-20, though I’ve undoubtedly listened to several times that number of different programs over the past 10-11 months. Shows such as the twice-weekly For Immediate Release and the daily Financial Aid Podcast have become appointment listening at my computer or in my iRiver, and many weeks I spend more hours listening to podcasts than the radio (yes, I still listen to the radio).
• I subscribe to and read nearly 200 RSS feeds on topics including social media, public relations, online communications, business blogging, the Boston media, language learning, and sports. While I still find my RSS reader clunky (perhaps a topic for a future post), I’d be helpless to consume anywhere near as much information from blogs and news websites without it.
• I post family photos to a Flickr account and have a MySpace account to network and reconnect with old classmates.
• I belong to a group called the New England Podcasters, whose esteemed members include a marathon podcaster, a comedian, and a New England Patriots Fan of the Year.
• I read books espousing the benefits of business blogging such as Naked Conversations, which, with some good fortune over the next couple of weeks, will have also given me the ammunition and talking points that lead to a blogging assignment for a recruiting company.

New media tools have irreversibly changed my life and professional ambitions over the past year, and I know I’m not alone in expressing these sentiments.

Wonder what the next 12 months will hold?

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