The year is 2022.
Podcasters no longer publish their new episodes into a social void. Instead, they can receive feedback and comments from listeners for every episode they publish, on a social platform they choose.
Podcast listeners can use their existing podcast playback app to also easily publish ratings, feedback, and discussions about each episode they listen to, right on the episode screen. These comments are not locked within a single app, but are available for display in many other podcast playback apps.
Podcast apps and hosting companies can offer innovative solutions to listeners and podcasters, built on top of the open protocol-based standards that make this possible.
In short, via a new podcast RSS feed tag called
<podcast:socialInteract>defined by the podcast namespace initiative.
It's a small tag to include, but has implications for everyone involved in the podcasting ecosystem, so here's an attempt to tell the story from multiple points of view: