Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion has some data on social media adoption in the US. Apparently, only 8% of the population listen to podcasts and 5% use RSS feeds. Podcasting is not yet what we would call mainstream. Does this mean that ChinesePod is likely to only reach 5% or so of the total number of Mandarin learners? Possibly. What do you think?
Another way of asking the question is, are we all geeks here? Frank Gaffney asked me this question in the usability podcast. So, are we? Or do you regard yourself as a geek? Are you more tech oriented than most?
Do you know of people who refuse to use ChinesePod because its too ‘tech’? Is it perceived as a geeky thing to do?
I’d be interested to hear your ideas.
Ken Carroll
I have two personal stories for you on both sides of the coin.
I was describing ChinesePod to a few friends of mine, one of whom is interested in studying Chinese. After describing the service, he informed me that “he didn’t have an iPod,” so he didn’t think he could use it. After explaining to him that any computer can play ChinesePod lectures, he was interested. There is probably a group of people out there who don’t understand the technology, and are a bit put off by podcasts.
I’ve also described the service to a friend of mine who had studied Japanese, and suggested that he try JapanesePod. He told me that he had heard of podcasts, but had not been interested in researching them because he could see no use for them. I think he had the opinion that podcasts were like LiveJournal personal diaries. I think that such people, who are interested in learning Chinese or any language, but at first glance are not intrested in podcasts, will be drawn to ChinesePod.
The people here probably are on the geek-end of the spectrum, but there is a lot of interest among the language learners I’ve talked to after I describe ChinesePod and how easy it is to use.
Ken,
I am using a tutor that is also a Community College Teacher. She is using the New Practical Chinese reader Textbook, which is OK, but nothing like the Podcasts you have. If you could get people like here to start using your Podcasts in their teaching, it would mean breakthrough in reaching a larger audience. She and I have talked about Chinesepod, and she is very computer literate, so I don’t think that’s the limiting factor. Is the New Practical Reader and “approved” learning tool, and that’s why she is hesitant to using Cinesepod? She has 5 separate classes going on right now, plus me being home-tutored, so around 100 people. They all are young americans, typically with chinese background and they all use iPods.
If you could create a network with Chinese teachers in USA, convince them (maybe by getting an “approval” stamp from somewhere) to use Chinesepod in their teaching, they could drive an increase in usage across America.
Aaron,
Useful feedback. Thx. This shows how the perception of something being ‘tech oriented’ will hold people back before they even really know what it is.
Mikael,
I agree. College Professors have to be very circumspect about what they recommend to learners. Often they’ll look for some way to demonstrate that a new book or tool actually works. (That may just come in the form of another teacher who used it successfully.) Already, however, we have a fair number of professors who have told me personally that they think ChinesePod is well suited to college programs. And we are indeed reaching out to these professors as you have suggested. I guess it will just take a little time.
Ken
I work in technology. I love learning about it and using it. I have my own website, blog, and love to do graphic art. I own 2 mp3 players, 2 computers, a pocket pc with built in GPS, and tons of other geeky stuff. So, yes, I am a geek. I know computers inside out and people’s phobia of them. That being said, in my Mandarin class there are plenty of older (than me) individuals learning Chinese. Everyone my age uses Cpod. Everyone older has no clue how to download the episodes. Here’s how the conversation goes:
Me: You should really check out Chinese Pod.
Them: Oh, I don’t have an iPod.
Me: You can use any MP3 player.
Them: Really? Well, I don’t have an MP3 player.
Me: Um…Okay, then just listen to it on iTunes.
Them: What’s that?
Me: Nevermind…Go to www.chinesepod.com and just click “play episode”.
[A day later, they call my cellphone-true story]
Them: I couldn’t find it.
Me: The website?
Them: No, the play button.
Me: How? It’s right on the front page, you can’t miss it.
Them: Oh, now I see it. How do I listen to it in my car?
Me: *sigh* You have to download it.
Them: How do I do that?
Me: *here goes* You have to download iTunes, search for ChinesePod and click “subscribe”, download the episode by clicking on it, go to your My Music folder, iTunes, iTunes Music, Podcasts, ChinesePod folder, locate the file, open it, in Windows Media Player click on Burn, click “Burn currently playing”, insert a blank CD and click “Start Burn”.
Them: …………
Me: You there?
Them: Can you do it for me?
Needless to say, I have many MANY Cpod CD’s for people. Even some technically inclined people have asked me to make CD’s, as they don’t want to wait for the BitTorrent. Cpod, please consider selling CD’s. I’m running out.
A certain degree of computer literacy is probably needed for all stuff that is obtainable via the internet. Personally I think it is very important that CP does not focus on iPod users alone, nor on podcast comsumers in general. Otherwise there is indeed a real possibility that the public that is attracted to CP remains stuck at only a fraction of what is possible.
Up till now the website is not to biased towards iPod or other mp3-player owners. It is relatively easy to use thae website without these gadgets. Every decent browser will allow interaction with CP. And if someone wants to download the mp3’s it is relatively easy as the links are clearly on the page and right-clicking + save as will do the trick. And there is always the player. I have the podcasts on my mp3 and I saved them one by one using that method in the beginning. Later on I installed juice, but being totally illiterate regarding podcasts (not my thing really) I had to look around before I managed to download the .mp3’s using juice. Incidentally I still try to figure out the RSS thing, but that is not important right now.
What I’m trying to say is that CP should continue to make life easy for computer users that just manage to log on to the internet. While the site is relatively user friendly, it lacks a decent navigation system for new users so that they can easily get to the podcasts that they want. The label system is great, but not that obvious for a beginner. If you want to navigate to the very first newbie lessons you better prepare yourself for some endless clicking on ‘previous’ buttons. What is lacking for the moment is some sort of table of contents. I’m trying to maintain one on the wiki, but that is almost invisible. Perhaps it is difficult to make such a table (or a set of) in this system, but then it should be considered to make one manually in HTML and maintain it seperately. ‘My Course’ is great, but it asks the user to do a lot of stuff before it becomes usable. Beginners and non-geek users will be passive on the technology side and they need to be taken by the hand.
Anyway, besides the trouble navigating this website I’m quite happy with the way things are presented.
Marc in Belgium
I get chinesepod through the website. I have never subscribed to a podcast feed. I didn’t even know podcasts were available through RSS until I started using Chinesepod.
Finding Chinesepod was a complete accident for me. If I had been searching for what I most wanted to find on the internet, realistic conversations in mandarin in a format that would make them easy to study, I would not have found it. Instead, I was searching for something I was moderately curious about, finding out what Shanghainese sounded like.
The whole search path was “What does wikipedia have to say? Oh, there is a link to a page that will let me hear what it sounds like. This is neat, what else is on this site? The site owner, John, reccomends something called Chinesepod. What is that?” I found chinesepod because I thought the Shanghainese page on Sinosplice was so cool, that I figued anything they reccomended was worth investigating.
When I found the site had the exact thing I most wanted to find, I didn’t even consider technology issues. And when I have told people that I have found a website that does a 10-15 minute Mandarin lesson every day, and that you can download it, and hundreds of archived lessons for free, their response is a function of how interested they are in learning Mandarin, and how satisfied with their current materials.
Good content motivates people to adopt new media formats. My father had been downloading .mp3’s of his favorite radio show and burning them to cd’s to listen to in his car for months, before I found out about it, and explained what an mp3 player was. As far as I knew, nothing came of it. Remembering our conversation, I bought him an mp3 player for his birthday a month or so later. I was shocked when he opened it and asked “How is this different from the mp3 player I am using now?”
If people who want to learn Mandarin as it is spoken in real conversations find this site they will probably stay. As they tell people, over time, the page rank will go up, and so maybe this site will come up on page 1 when you search for “learn chinese” instead of page 5. (At least that is where it is on Google).
I don’t know what has to be done to make a page show up with particular word combinations. But I do know that if I search for “chinese conversation” or “conversational chinese”, Chinesepod does not show up on the first 10 pages. Since that is what Chinesepod does so well, I would see what it takes to encourage those, and other similar word combinations. Associating with the different levels of difficulty offered might not be a bad idea either.
Ken
I am never quite sure what you are really asking with questions like this. Curiosity?- No. Maybe related to improving the business? - Maybe yes ? Especially after dropping the one liner that new funding is on the way. Are you not happy with the number of new subscribers, holding on to monthly basic members, converting just listeners to buyers, percentage of paying for annual subscription to premium level?
Do you have to be a geek? I don’t think so. I would say the CPod community eats less meat than the societies we come from but that doesn’t mean you should market to vegetarians. I beleive the concept of being tech adept is less and less important today. Think back 5 years ago. Have you gotten computer smarter as much as the technology has gotten easier to use. Who informs/teaches anyone about flicker,torrents , utube, digital cameras…..All you have to do is compare these kinds of technology to setting up and using a TV, DVD,cable network. Thats still impossible. I have a simple system in my apartment but I still sometimes grab the AC remote instead of one of the three TV remotes on the table.
As others have mentioned I think you need to have an easier way for Newbies to find there way around. If one clicks on itunes and comes to CPod but todays lesson is an upper Intermediate its going to be tough to stay and get infected even if one is mildly interested in learning Chinese, compared to those of us already here. As mentioned before you really haven’t profiled your users to know who we are and why we are here.
Another important issue is information overload. If I didn’t have to work I could spend all day every day in the Chinesepod world. At the same time I think CPoddies are a curious lot so other interests take up time. More and more of information transmission is not audio its video so you are going to have to figure out I beleive how to make video that is entertaining, professional and educational if you want to capture a broader market.
I am wondering is it possible to do a Chinesepod meets Friends/Sex in the City separate video feed. By this I mean a whole learning experience based upon a simplified Western guy/girl come to China to learn chinese and their life and times here. The you may need funds but doen right you might draw in a whole new market who would want to learn chinese that never even thought about it before.
Lastly I am still curiuos who the market is for the Advanced Show. By having no English translation you shut out those not up to this level from learning and extracting any lexical chunks. Shut out is the correct term. Yet you have pinyin which seems quite pointless to me on an Advanced show. Pinyin is not correct pronunciation its an approximation at best so it can’t help an advanced student. Somewhere you mentioned maybe not everyone speaks English that wants to learn Chinese. Ok So if I rule out the French and North Koreans, the only people I can come up with are native Chinese who can only speak putonghua poorly. Is this the market?
Mike in Jubei
I am a techie. I used to be geekier when my work was all about writing software applications. I am guessing that most people would rather use their iPods and MP3 players to listen to music. In the future, they’ll probably use their cellphones to listen to music. I like podcasts are wonderful educational and news dissemination tools. If time wasn’t a limited resource, I’d be listening to more podcasts to expand my horizons.
I think a Chinesepod presence in myspace.com could attract more younger English-speaking demographic group who aren’t listeners yet or who have yet to give podcast a try. To reach the senior crowd, you’ll probably need to design a separate blog page with a simpler interface and fewer links. I have read a report in the past that senior people would like to have simple cellphones to use; they find all of the cellphone’s growing set of features to be intimidating. Methinks the same could be said of web pages.
Prior to learning about Chinesepod, I was looking for Chinese text with audio to carry with me on my laptop or some small device. I don’t learn Chinese efficiently. I need to hear the words spoken, read the text and even learn to write them. Chinesepod is the first educational tool that allows me to do this on my own time. For some strange reason, Mandarin isn’t an easy spoken language for me because of my need to visualize the Chinese characters. I grew up speaking the Minnan/Hokkien dialect in the Philippines and expanding that vocabulary is just a matter of hearing new words. But Mandarin requires visualizing the Chinese characters.
I am glad that my Mom saw the Time magazine article on Chinese language which featured Chinesepod. She sent me the url and the rest was history. I wish I had known about Chinesepod last September. I would have gone on my first trip to China last May with a 10-15% increase in my limited Mandarin vocabulary.
As for writing Chinese characters, I had a lot of writing homework when I was a kid in the Phillippines. Since I am ethnic Chinese, I attended Chinese-run elementary school and high school. I had to write down traditional characters more than a dozen times for each character. The problem was doing that became a chore and the goal was to turn in the homework without really learning the meaning of the words I wrote down.
I’m a geek, but not in the normal way. I’m not nearly as tech-savvy as most of the people here. I’m a language geek. There are a few of us here, so far as I can tell. We’re the people who will decide to pick up Old Hittite as a hobby, because it sounds fun, or think that it’s really funny that the Japanese word for ‘thigh’ and ‘peach’ are pretty much the same word (peachy thighs…). It doesn’t take too much tech-savvy to work out how to download an mp3 file, especially if you’re under 30 (no offense to over 30s here, but that’s the age where computer knowledge tends to disappear on most people at the moment). On the other hand, there are lots of clueless people out there who have trouble with light switches. I don’t think they’ve found their way here yet. I’m not sure that a video would encourage these people (’How do I play a video on my mp3 player? Can’t I just put it on a CD?’). Sounds like a good idea for the rest of us, though, although I don’t know that I’ve got the bandwidth for a video.
Two things:
1. I don’t know if Chinesepod is making profit or not, but if it does, it could be worthwile paying Google to be one of those side-bar ads, when people search for “Chinese lessons” or something like that. You pay per click.
2. Non-geeks are intimidated by words such as “iPod”, “iTunes”, and “RSS”. Perhaps there should be a big banner on the front page of Cpod that says something like “Downloading is simple! You don’t need an iPod to learn Chinese! Click here to find out how Cpod works.”
I have referred non-geek friends to Cpod, and they have found out how it works and started using it. But such people have a lower probability of finding out about the service on their own.
I am not a technology geek. If there is an opposite that is what I am. A tech dinosaur? I had my kids teach me how to use itunes and my husband’s ipod just so I could have my chinese pod lessons. It has been very painful. I frequently have no idea what the techies are talking about on the site. I have no idea what an RSS feed is. But I do love the chinese being taught. I have been trying to improve my Chinese for years. When I stumbled on Chinese pod (via another Chinese website) it was love. I recognized that Chinese pod could give me the teaching I’ve been looking for for years. I was even willing to learn some painful techie lessons (from my kids) in order to use it. So how do you reach non-techie people like me? Give them the Mandarin they want and they will figure out a way to make use of it. Seriously you guys have made it as easy as possible. I like the fact that you can just click on “listen”. Sheesh, how much easier can you make it?
Sue
Not easy enough so that people won’t mess it up. I’ve seen people unable to find the play button on a stereo. But it’s great to see someone conquering a touch of technophobia or techno-no-savvy or whatever you want to call it in the aid of language learning. It warms my heart! 加油！Keep at it!
Wow, all this feedback is so enlightening.
Rick in Atlanta,
I’m glad to hear that I helped you find what you were looking for!
Mike in Jubei,
I have to address a few points you brought up:
The market is advanced level students of any nationality. By removing English translation we are addressing the needs of (1) an international audience, and (2) advanced students who need to stop relying on English. We have gotten plenty of good feedback from appreciative advanced users telling us this is just what they need.
Originally we did not include pinyin, but we got very reasonable requests for it from advanced users, and since we can add it in so easily, we did. Pinyin, however, is not an approximation. It represents the sounds of Mandarin Chinese exactly. The key is to stop thinking of pinyin as English. It is not at all English or European; it just looks that way. Take pinyin’s q and x for example. These sounds do not exist in English, so other unused letters which didn’t correspond to anything else were used. If they wanted to, the creators of pinyin could have used v instead of x and the system would be just as exact a representation of Mandarin Chinese, because pinyin is not an approximation.
Adding pinyin makes it easier to look up words in traditional dictionaries, and helps students confirm pronunciation, without resorting to translations.
The market is Koreans and Japanese.
(sorry for the OT commentary!)
Some of the comments above are understating the potential served market for learning chinese. Spanish speaking nations, portuguese speaking nations, slavic language speaking nations - there’s all kinds of people who don’t speak english who desperately want to learn chinese.
BTW, to hear that the technology “tech-savy” bar is around 30 years of age is hilarious. I can gurantee you that 90% of executive, senior, and middle management for the 5000 largest corporations on earth are over the age of 30, and are comletely and entirely tech-savy. Cripes.
Ma Ding,
Very true about the future of the market, especially with regards to Spanish speakers. But the current market for high level Chinese in China is heavily skewed towards Koreans and Japanese. Typically classes here are something like 50% Korean, 20% Japanese, 30% other. (And that “other” isn’t all from “the West”; it also includes Africans, Vietnamese, Malaysians, etc.)
Mike,
To answer your question “I am never quite sure what you are really asking with questions like this. Curiosity?- No. Maybe related to improving the business? - Maybe yes ?”
Yes, we are a business. We happen to be idealists, and enthusiasts of various stripes, but we certainly look at this as a business. Nothing that requires this level of intensity and commitment would last very long if we didn’t think it could be tremendously successful. I ask these questions because I want to create value for you. If I can do that, then in the end, we all win. I would personally measure success in several different ways (we want to change the world, for example) but financial success is certainly one of them.
Ken
John, understand. Just look at Japan’s biggest trading partner - it’s China. I think you are talking about STUDENTS, university age, who are actually in the PRC studying, so the data may not accurately represent the actual full potential demand out there. Maybe it does. I’m including demand from people learning or wanting to learn, all over the world, especially global corporations and governments who have entered the chinese market or have a strategic interest in knowing the language. That’s probably a hard metric to measure.
You’re a yankee, I’m sure you know that Congress has made learning chinese a national strategic priority. I know that there are loads of SME’s who are salivating at the prospects of doing business with China - the majority of US trade with China comes from SME’s allready - but who are intimidated by their lack of chinese language skills.
Paint me as bullish, but I think you guys haven’t even scratched the surface of the potential
What’s all this age stuff? I reckon the average age would be about 35, and a lot of us outspoken geeks here are well over 40, to put it mildly in my case.
Someone who has already had some success with IT tech stuff, a geek perhaps, has already demonstrated to themselves that they can learn to do something that others regard as being hard, so they would be less shy of trying Chinese and less put off by what others think. For linguistic geeks, the connection is even more direct. For similar reasons, we might have more than our share of paleontologists, visual artists, sports people, actors, electricians, and mothers of quads. We only notice the IT geeks though, because we’re sitting in and discussing their turf.
I have to agree with pandagator in that it’s probably just a generational thing. I teach Mandarin in a high school in the U.S. to 14-18 year-olds, nary a one of whom have any difficulty with podcasting (though most of them ARE geeks, nerds, or dorks in some way
). I encourage my students to use podcasts as a way to augment their studies. The real problem for them is time and money; they aren’t likely to spend any of their scarce time outside of class with “extra” study, and many of them can’t afford even the basic level of service. However, I can see a real market for podcast-based curricula if costs could be controlled. The growth market for Mandarin here in the U.S. is in the kindergarten through high school levels, where there is also a tremendous shortage of teachers. And conversely, there is also a lot of federal money available to train teachers and to develop materials and programs. Perhaps some savvy teachers will make these connections? Hmmm…
I use Ubuntu when I want to view the Chinesepod website, as I don’t want to install chinese language support in Windows. I only started using Ubuntu so I could view the Chinespod website, so I guess I am a bit of a tech-geek. I’m typing this while using Ubuntu - its the first time I’ve ever used it, I’m running it off a CD and it displays East Asian language characters just fine. Once my university study eases up I’ll probably even sign up for the 7-day trial now that I can properly trial the premium features.
Just a short comment. I am way over 40 but I am like an old dog trying to learn new tricks. Navigating CPOD was quite a challenge for me intially. I eventually found my way around the site, made a few posts, and mastered Juice and Bittorrent (sort of). However, I still don’t have the faintest clue about what RSS is all about. I don’t know anything about iTunes and I bought a Phillips mp3 player because it was much cheaper than an iPod and works just about as well. I would describe my efforts at all of the above as akin to a movie I once saw about two Chinese sword fighters who were supposedly fighting each other in the dark. I think it would be nice if CPOD had a place (not an FAQ) where beginners could go and learn how to insert fold “A” into slot “B” or perhaps there already is one available and I just haven’t found it yet. It is so darn hard when you are an oldie but still a goodie
I read about Chinesepod in Time, too, and when I realized my computer was as old as the hills, I had to go and get a new one just to be able to listen or burn CDs. I had no idea how to go about that and had to ask my tech guru friend what to do, and I’m still pretty clueless about iPods and RSS feed, but I’ve gt the MP3 stuff down pretty well.
I’m glad someone answered Mike in Jubei’s questions about advanced level podcasts because I’m finding them very helpful in exposure to new vocabulary and assessing how high my reading level is exactly. I couldn’t have addressed the comments better. The Newbies seem to get a little testy when something in the service isn’t directed at them, which is a shame because some day they won’t be a Newbie any more….
Bob, don’t worry, I’ve been a geek for 15 years and I found the site difficult to digest and navigate to what I wanted, still do a bit. The front page it’s pretty, but the first thing I wanted to click on was “yeah yeah sure but is it for me: what does it SOUND like?”.
Darius, yes Ubuntu is a great preconfigured Linux. I was using unix where all the tools you want are free, but switched to macintosh for Chinese learning because you turn it on and it’s all there, nothing needs to be configured for Chinese study. After spending my day building unix servers, it’s nice to come home and just use the things, still with mac’s own unix underbelly available for when I want to change something to work a different way, if I can be bothered.
John,
IMHO and to echo Michele, your comments addressing the advanced podcasts are dead on. Bottom line, you guys are providing a UNIQUE product for all levels of the CSL community here on CPOD (where else am I going to get this quality of instruction online? Some crappy professor’s homepage that hasn’t been updated in months?).
Here’s hoping you all get amply compensated down the road for your outstanding work–materially, spiritually, or in whatever other fashion! Looking forward to even better podcasts, as you guys continue to tinker and implement some of the better suggestions posted here. CPOD wan sui!
Well, I’m certainly not one of the tech- savvy, & I’m sure I fall off the scale of the age bracket as described for being able to navigate my way round a website. But I’m a curious language lover & I certainly recognize good teaching material when I find it (having taught for aeons!) Because I was looking to find a source of usable Mandarin & bumped into Chinesepod two things have happened…I’m delighted to say my Chinese language skills are improving & I’ve learned so much more about the tech resources out there ,thanks to my Chinesepod teammates (geeky or otherwise) and the brave new world of social media.
John
Thanks you for answering my questiosn. Your response about pinyin is obviously correct and better put than mine. I am confronted by “pinyin is not English” everyday in Taiwan where many different “spellings” are used on signs some in pinyin . some Wade -Giles and some I do not know. Also for looking up a word, I have worked for a Japanese company and your point makes sense for reasons not clear to me most Japanese I know carry an electronic translator always but it is keyboard entry instead of character entry. I use a PDA and almost always enter character.
As to the target market ok I was partly correct. So I understand. Although I would say we will just have to disagree what you may miss in the long run with no translation (English, Japanese, Korean or….).I have translated a few of the dialogues myself.
I do like the feature of highlighting words in the text and the usage and explanations below. Any chance that might find its way into some level on chinesepod.com?
Mike in Jubei or Zhubei
I’m by no means trying to diss the older generation here. The problem I’ve found is that tech savvy over-x0s are in the minority. My father (quite tech savvy himself) spends a lot of time teaching his friends what email is and how to search for, well, anything, because they see a mouse and a screen and panic. This leads to such things as ‘Press the play button.’ ‘What play button? Don’t assume I know anythign about these infernal machines.’ ‘It’s the one that looks like a play button.’ ‘Oh. How could you expect me to know that?’
That having been said, I know people younger than me (I’m not particularly old) who are just as bad. I think there’s an assumption that if it’s on a computer, it’s complex and illogical (cause humans are so much better with logic…) and it is therefore to be treated with circumspection. I in no way agree with this, but I get that impression from some people. It seems to be encouraged by some large (nameless) computer corporations with a stranglehold on the market who like to make things unnecessarily complex and substandard, but very difficult to do without. Ahem. Rant mode off.
I have been going to the local Chinese Language School here for about 3 or 4 years. My Chinese teacher looks for free stuff cause I don’t think the teachers at the school get paid much–community service oriented. He is a very good teacher so i have stuck with him over the years. I think there is a shortage of good Chinese teachers so Chinesepod is a God send. I used to teach elementary school kids Chinese and the kids take to it better than the adults cause they LOVE the hanzi both reading and writing. Most beginning adults think it’s too hard so they don’t pursue it in favor of the “easier” languages (i.e. Spanish around here)…I bumped into it through Itunes just playing around and browsing. I surprised I had never discovered it via Google search as I have over the years done plenty of searching on the internet. By the way, my Chinese teacher looked at the intermediate and advanced lessons. The intermediate lessons are mostly too advanced for our study group and he told me your advanced lessons are too advanced even for most Chinese people….I use it on my IBook laptop rather than downloading on an IPod cause I want to look at it while I study. Not that I am against just hearing it (I did all of Pimsleur) but if the transpcripts are available and they are, I would prefer to see it while I’m hearing it.
I can’t say if we’re all geeks here w/any certainty, but would have to lean towards yes. The use of podcasts and/or this website for learning Chinese is quite untraditional. As a result, I think it would attract geeks and/or early adopters of technology which are geeks.
I attend Chinese classes at a local school which uses the ‘New Practical Chinese’ texts. When I showed my teacher Chinesepod, he was very impressed. He actually mentioned/included/referenced Chinesepod in a presentation the following week at a conference of language teaching professionals.
No one interested in learning Chinese is going to “refuse to use ChinesePod because its too ‘tech’”. There might be some initial confusion. Afterwards, it will be all smiles. Someone just has to be there to help them over the initial bumps.
You’ve barely scratched the surface with Chinesepod. Keep up the great work.