Podcasting, as any social media guru worth her or his robes knows, is dead. Like so many social technologies, it failed to jump the adoption gap, break the hype cycle or clear the Great Hurdle of At-First-Raving-and-then-Dismissive Punditry.

Except that the common wisdom - that podcasts are the 3-1/2" floppy disk of the 2000s - has been lost on one group of people: listeners.

According to a BBC story from the summer,

[P]odcasting has continued to grow and grow.

More than eight million adults in the UK - around 16% of the adult population - have downloaded a podcast, with almost half listening to one at least once a week. This figure is echoed in the US.

As a comparison, this is still a greater percentage of people than use Twitter.

And while many of those podcasts are just repurposed content from broadcasters and other big media voices, they're creating a channel that the rest of us can use as well, whether it's as individuals or organizations.

The lesson? (One that I have to constantly remind myself of?) Don't dismiss a platform just because it isn't on the front pages, or being talked up by the hottest social media voices. It may well be the humble, unsung hero of your next foray into social media.