“Podcasting is like cappuccino,” said August Trometer, developer of iPodderX. “Gourmet coffee was around for a long time, but it took Starbucks to put it on the map. Apple is like the Starbucks of Podcasting and advertisers will take us more seriously now.”

Thats a direct quote from a press release by apple about their podcasting effort, that in two days delivered one million podcasts worldwide. I guess this is what happens when you add important value to something that’s ubiquitous like iTunes. Did Apple invent podcasting? Of course they didn’t (even though I can see a lot of people thinking otherwise), but they’re the ones who’ll be bringing the idea to the masses, because the marketing machine behind them is pretty much unbeatable.

This heavy impact has two major consequences I can foresee. First, other podcast oriented services will be seriously affected (Odeo might be one of those, unless they can come up with something that gives them the edge advantage), and second: companies will become aware of the strenght of podcasting - meaning we’ll probably see a lot of new corporate efforts in the area, like we’re seeing with weblogs.