In Delta’s never-ending quest to “get all web 2.0,” they’ve decided to get into the podcasting business with a site called SiteSeer. And it’s not just podcasting . . . video podcasting. You might think I’m about to tear them a new one yet again, but nay, I’m not. I really like what they’ve done. (Don’t be scared.) You can see the podcasts here.

What they’ve actually done here is create short video guides for a variety of cities in the Delta network. I have only watched two guides so far, Los Angeles (a city I know) and Seoul (a city I don’t). I assume the others are similar in that they’re about 5 minutes in length, they’re hosted by Delta employees, and they choose to highlight a handful of locations to visit. All of these seem to be professionally cut and have a nice jazzy background.

I’ve posted a screenshot of the LA one above. In the podcast, they talked about hotels, shopping, and dining. It’s very helpful that, as you can see, they’ve included addresses and websites for each place. I really liked that these are not completely generic guides. There are certainly some lesser known places here. The only thing I didn’t like is that they featured Pinkberry yogurt. That stuff is absolutely disgusting. But I digress . . .

They could use some help on the actual SiteSeer site itself. You can download the videos in Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and iPod formats, which is great. But just like on the “change” site, you can’t share the url for a specific podcast without using their “share” function. If they were really thinking about the community aspect here, they would have also included an “embed” option so that bloggers like me could actually include the podcast in their post. But that isn’t that most important thing here.

What’s really important is how this gets integrated with Delta.com. People are not going to come to Delta.com/SiteSeer every time they travel. No, they are going to Delta.com and they need to be able to find these videos there.

Right now, there’s a temporary link in the middle of the Delta.com homepage that goes to the videos. This is a rotating link, so if you don’t see it, keep reloading until you do. Where I see opportunity is for them to actually separate out the “Planning & Reservations” tab into two separate tabs. Put reservations in one area, but include things like SiteSeer (and hopefully future developments like maybe a user community) in the “Planning” tab so it’s easy to find.

Then start looking for better places to put the content where it’s most relevant. If someone looks at an airport map, put a link to that city’s podcast in there. If someone books a flight to LAX, put a link to the video on the confirmation page. To be fair, they may have done this last one already, but I’m not about to buy a ticket just to find out. My guess is that it’s not there.

I really think Delta is on to something here. They have something that people want – opinions on cities from the most traveled people in the world – airline employees. It’s something that I imagine most employees love to talk about and many travelers want to hear about. Wouldn’t you want to get tips on what to do in a city you’ve never been from one of them?