166 Shows Removed because of PodSpam

This morning I instructed our CIO to have all shows that were using a RSS Feed generation service hosted by trafficgeyser.net and mypodfeeds.com  to be terminated here at Blubrry.com

From this point forward we will no longer allow accounts from those two services. Content creators must choose wisely on the service that they align themselves with. I felt that service hurt the Blubrry brand and service we are trying to provide here.

This decision was made after several weeks of evaluation, what we found was that the very high majority of shows using those services had content that we felt in large part was not appropriate for the listeners visiting this website.

The majority of the shows were non compliant with our terms of service and the content was for the most part marketing pitches for their websites our services. Additionally the high majority of the shows did not have complete profiles and by their show profiles it was obvious that their sole purpose of being here was to build page rank.

While we will work with any show that feels their content should not have been removed, please recognize that we have done this to protect Blubrry Listeners and the other content creators that are part of this community.

We have never taken this action at Blubrry.com and hopefully never will have to again in the future. We have implemented a new strict review policy in order to protect the content creators on this website.

Todd…

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Does your Show Listing Look Like This?

Tonight I was looking at shows on Blubrry and I found this podcast at the very top of the show listing. Name removed to protect the guilty.

What do you think a listener is going to do when they see this new episode listing. I can tell you what they are going to do they are going to skip it. The show will never be listened to.

The question I have for this podcaster is simple. Why did you even bother creating the content. You have no show notes, and you have not even done the basic things to make your show consumable to the public at large. 

The question that needs to be asked should we delete shows like this, or do we spend hours trying to bring the show up to speed?

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Some Great Improvements in our Stats Service

Over the past 2–3 weeks Angelo has been working on updates to the RawVoice Statistics Service. Those of you on Blubrry that are using the service will notice some changes to the free offering that greatly improves improves the user experience. [Details Here]

We also are very close to introducing a premium service that will offer greater detail to existing data, along with more reports that will make the RawVoice Statistics service the most feature rich podcast statistics service in the industry.

We will continue to have the free service but feel the list of plus up features will be so good that many of you will want the premium service for a small monthly fee. We will have an announcement soon on pricing and exactly what the premium package will include.

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User Generated Content Still Rules!

I have written what I feel is a hard hitting post on User Generated Content with a affirmation that RawVoice believes in the podcasting space, podcasters and user generated content.

Sadly not all in the space hold this view and have turned their backs on those that helped build their company. [RawVoice Affirmation]

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Podcamp NYC

The RawVoice team will be at Podcamp NYC in force representing all of our communities. Todd Cochrane CEO will be doing a session on Podcast Advertising and Jeff Hinz our Content Director will be on a session about Seesmic.

Blubrry is sponsoring the Friday night Podcamp Party in Brooklyn. So if your coming to Podcamp NYC we look forward to meeting up with all of our community members.

RawVoice is proud to be one of the many sponsors of Podcamp NYC

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Get Your Podcast Into The Movies!

We are pleased to announce the newest addition to the Blubrry Affiliate Advertising Program:

BLOCKBUSTER Total Access!

BLOCKBUSTER Total Access is the convenient, flexible way to rent DVDs online, with over 80,000 titles to chose from. It’s the only DVD rental service that offers the convenience of renting DVDs online with a choice of how to return them.

As a podcaster, you receive:

• A $26.60 commission for every subscription to the $9.99 first month offer.

What your listeners will receive:

Movie Night, Any Night
Only BLOCKBUSTER Total Access™ gives the convenience of renting movies online with a choice of how to return them: send them back by mail or exchange them for new movies or discounted game rentals at participating BLOCKBUSTER stores (up to plan limits on exchanges). You can keep movies as long as you want — there are no due dates or late fees for online rentals.
Special Promotion
Your first month is only $9.99 (plus taxes), a $10 savings from the regular $19.99! The plan includes 3 DVDs at a time, with up to 5 in-store exchanges per month for free movie rentals or discounted game rentals. When you’re finished watching a DVD, just send it back in the provided envelope or return it to a participating BLOCKBUSTER® store. The next available DVD in your rental Queue will be sent automatically.

So, got to www.blubrry.com/affiliates for all the details!

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Blubrry Listed as Place to Find Podcast by MSN

It is nice to see that Blubrry.com continues to be recognized as a hot destination to find podcast. We think our clean lines and ease to consume and find content is what makes Blubrry.com a very special listener destination. MSN

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Have you Looked at your RSS feed Lately?

Why is it that podcasters will spend hours editing the content of their podcast but fail to spend 30 minutes one time to make sure that their RSS feed is setup properly. In some cases I blame whole heartedly the service they are on for hijacking the internal data of their RSS feed and not giving podcasters many choices in configuring them.

But in large part we see huge numbers of shows that have simply failed to put the time into making sure that their RSS feed is representing their show as well as their content.

We see massive numbers of shows rss feeds fail validation each and everyday. We see shows that are whole heartedly missing important data many shows have no description, no keywords, no contact information, no titles, no iTunes specific tags etc. The list goes on and the issue is growing each day.

Every year I have posted a state of the RSS feeds as a report I do for the annual Peoples Choice Podcast Awards. This year I would like to see a trend be reversed and quite honestly it would help us and all of the other sites that are syndicating content.

This Saturday I will be doing a online Tech Podcast Round Table event that will discuss RSS in detail and show you what should be in your rss feed and how taking a few minutes to get it squarred away will pay off big dividends. I hope you will join me.

Todd Cochrane
CEO RawVoice

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How does your Show Look on Blubrry?

I have instructed the team at RawVoice to start contacting individual podcasters that are part of the community, to gently encourage them to take a few minutes and add descriptions and album art to their show listings.

It literally drives me crazy to see show listings on Blubrry that have a show name and nothing else. The biggest abusers are the podcasters from Blog Talk Radio. Many of the shows that have signed up do not have standard iTunes art. Their show descriptions are 2-3 words and in many instances no description at all.

We are going to give the shows a reasonable time to clean up their listings then if they fail to do so we are going to pull the listings.

We have prided ourselves on having very clean listings, complete descriptions for shows and rich meta data but a small subset of podcasters have made us realize that if they are unwilling to clean up their listings then they likely are not supporting the community anyway.

Issues we deal with daily
-Using the URL for their home page as their RSS URL
-Using the RSS URL as their Home Page URL
-No Show Description or a very incomplete description
-No Keywords

We want to work with everyone in the community, but it’s a two way street!

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Our Next Blubrry Meet Up

One of our goals in 2008 is to meet with as many of the Blubrry Podcast Community members as possible. On Friday Evening March 28th CEO of RawVoice Todd Cochrane we will be having a community meet up in Portsmouth New Hampshire.

If you are within striking distance we hope that you will consider coming out. If you would like to attend please drop a email to Todd @ ceo@rawvoice.com so he can get you on the guest list, and also get you the details of where the event will be.

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