April 3rd, 2008 Todd
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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March 30th, 2008 Todd
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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March 13th, 2008 Todd
Podcast Audio & Video statistics can be a complicated animal and that we have large number of Blubrry media creators using our podcast statistics service as their primary source for up to date media statistics. We wanted to provide all of you with some details on the mechanics and history of how over three years of data analysis we are where we are..
We have released a white paper on RawVoice Statistics and hope the information makes you more informed on exactly how your numbers are being derived. [RawVoice Statistics White Paper]
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February 29th, 2008 angelo
We are pleased to announce some new features and changes to Blubrry!
First, the account settings page has changed. We’ve cleaned up the menu options by only providing a link to the Statisticss system (if you’ve filled out an advertising survey) and a link to the new Publisher system.
We’ve developed a new interface called the Publisher for members to manage their podcast(s) listed on Blubrry.com. Over the coming weeks we will be adding a number of features to the Publisher system for Blubrry members to utilize. I can’t get into the details what these new features include, but if you snoop around in the settings section you will find that we’re now asking for your twitter user name.
We’ve received a lot of complaints about home page coverage. We’ve changed the logic for the most recent podcast section to randomly select 4 episodes that have been created in the past few hours. we’re re-randomizing these 4 episodes every 15 minutes. This should provide fair exposure to all of the podcasts listed on Blubrry. Remember, your post has to include media in order for it to be included in the home page. blog posts will no longer be included on the home page.
Please contact us if you are having any problems or have suggestions how we can improve blubrry.
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February 21st, 2008 Todd
We wanted to keep you informed of the social networking events that are occurring this year. Below is a list of podcasting and social media events that are happening all over the country and World.
We’ll do our best to keep this information up to date on the events page (http://www.podcastfaq.com/events/) on podcastFAQ.com.
Events Scheduled over the next year
- PodCamp Nashville - February 9, 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee
- PodCamp MidWest - February 15-16, 2008 in Kansas City, Kansas
- PodCamp Toronto 2 - February 23-24, 2008 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- PodCamp Salt Lake City - March 15, 2008 in Salt Lake City, Utah
- Podcamp DC - April 18-20, 2008 in Washington D.C.
- PodCamp NYC 2.0, April 25-26, 2008 in New York, New York
- PodCamp San Antonio 2 - May 3, 2008 in San Antonio, Texas
- Podcamp Austin - June 20-21, 2008 in Austin, Texas
- PodCamp Ohio - June 28, 2008 in Columbus, Ohio
- New Media Expo - August 14-16, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada
- BlogWorld and New Media Expo - September 20-21, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada
- PodCamp Pittsburgh 3 - September 27-28, 2008 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- PodCamp San Fransisco - January 18, 2009 in San Fransisco, California
Events in Planning
This announcement is our way of letting you know of the possibilities you have to learn from and meet podcasters and podcasters in your area.
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February 8th, 2008 Todd
Over the next three days the RawVoice team is meeting to talk about our strategy for the coming year. We look forward to bringing you a audio and video podcast over the weekend.
If you have ideas on what you think we should focus on for the coming year drop me a line. ceo@rawvoice.com
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January 27th, 2008 Todd
Message from Todd Cochrane CEO of RawVoice
Over the next 3–4 weeks or so I will be in 5–6 cities and I will be meeting with podcasters, media buyers, fans of his show and podcasters associated with Blubrry, Tech Podcasts and Podcaster News!
During my month on the road, I will be meeting with a variety of people and getting them up to speed on the merits of investing in the podcasting space either through corporate involvement or advertising in new media shows and meeting with as many of you as possible
First Stop will be the Greater Dallas Area. 28-31 January the day time schedule is pretty full but If you have something going on in the evening I would love to meet-up.
The Second stop will be the greater Indianapolis area 1-10 Feb where I will be the longest. The team at RawVoice will be meeting their for our semi-annual lock the doors and planning meeting the weekend of the 9-10th. If you are in the greater Indianapolis area we would love to meet-up prior to the meeting or the week prior.
Third Stop will be the Greater Washington DC area 11-18 Feb to include all surrounding areas the last weekend he will be in Norfolk VA.
The fourth and final stop on this trip will be in Albuquerque New Mexico from 18-21 Feb
At all of these locations I look forward to meeting up with podcasters that are working with RawVoice and those that listen to my show let me know if you are available and we will pick a location to meet up.
Contact ceo@rawvoice.com
Todd…
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January 24th, 2008 Todd
The team at RawVoice has worked very hard to make the Blubrry site a great place for listeners to find and consume media. We have watched listeners behavior on the website and made changes to make it easier to use, yet keep the advanced features in place for those that are dedicated users of the website.
The same can be said for those that actually list their shows here, we provide opportunities for them to have rich media listings by uploading their branding into their show profiles and to have detailed show descriptions while at the same time not putting advertising around their listings.
Many podcasters take advantage of these branding opportunities, and complete their show profiles so that when people are looking for content they are able to find it through their completed profiles.
So while we think we have afforded both listeners and podcasters with a great opportunity by being listed on the site we also want to know what you think. The RawVoice team is going to be meeting soon to lay out our 2008 goals, and we want to hear from you what you think we need to do to make Blubrry a richer experience.
Send your comments to ceo@rawvoice.com and I will present them to the team in the next couple of weeks.
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January 19th, 2008 Todd
I want you to pay very close attention to the graph. The increase in Zune listeners in the first 2 weeks of 2008 tells me several things that people need to be aware of that are publishing podcasts at this time.
“Stats Provide by RawVoice Stats Service”
In the first two weeks of 2008 the number of people consuming my personal podcast with the Zune is WAY up. Over all my show download numbers are up about 15%. This is the largest growth my show has seen in a very long time.
What this proves is that when you put Podcast front and center in the Zune Interface like the Zune team has, and make it a integral part of the Zune MarketPlace people are bound to check podcast out.
Where Apple has largely failed in iTunes is that they have made podcast hard to find and a buried feature within the iTunes Interface. Today it is nearly impossible to find content that is fresh, the iTunes podcast interface is a wasteland of thousands of podfaded shows and huge numbers of single podcast episodes put up by network marketer’s.
The iTunes interface makes it virtually impossible for listeners to find shows that are not featured on the front page.
The Zune Marketplace growth is amazing. These are new listeners as I am retaining the iTunes portion of the Audience and picking up huge numbers of new Zune listeners.
- iTunes 38.7%
- Zune MarketPlace 21.3%
- Juice 12.5%
- Firefox 4.7%
- Internet Explorer 4.1%
- Nokia 3.0%
- Zencast 1.2%
- myPodder 1.2%
If this is any indication of things to come it could be very well that the majority of my podcast audience will originate from the Zune Marketplace in several months
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January 17th, 2008 Todd
A week or so ago one of our podcasters on an advertising buy very publicly bashed us for supposedly under paying him. After having done a double check on his download numbers we publicly replied that we felt we had paid the podcaster fairly.
This public bashing came after I had been in Vegas for a week with little sleep, and no other forewarning. It really caught me by surprise as the podcaster was still in a current ad buy and we were not aware that the show producer was unhappy.
I instructed Angelo to digg into the stats system and make sure we had not made a mistake. He over-viewed the data and backed up my conclusions.
The podcaster was not yet satisfied and frankly neither was I because we have worked hard to make sure our podcasters are treated with absolute fairness, and his demeanor was something that we never expected or had seen before.
With so many people using the stats system we knew the accuracy was very high. After all we built that Stats service to eliminate issues like this.
After getting back from Vegas, getting some sleep and digging into the issue some more we discovered were the issue was. When I went to review the podcasters follow on monthly data it simply was not in the database under the expected keyword. The subject show had no new downloads in the follow on month which was weird because they were still in an ad buy.
Turns out what happened was that both of us were right and both were wrong. Angelo figured out that the podcaster unknown to us started using a new keyword in his stats redirect, thus all downloads were being counted on the new keyword and because each keyword has its own dataset. I had no idea they had made the switch.
Originally I calculated his payment on the old keyword not knowing about them using the new keyword. This is why I had been so adamant that our numbers were right. Well it turns out our numbers where exactly right for the old keyword but the podcaster should have been paid on the new keyword.
Tonight I instructed Barry to cut the podcaster the difference we owe him, and we are putting in some measures in the stats system that will track when someone changes their keyword in the future.
We pride ourselves in taking care of the podcasters first and foremost, and while this is the first time something like this has ever happened it was not something we had ever anticipated. I am the CEO of this company and the buck stops here, and while we should have anticipated something like this happening we did not.
Some tips for Podcasters, if you think their is a issue in your payment, please contact us early and spell out in detail why you think the payment is off. We will go the extra mile to make sure that you are satisfied and get exactly what your show is supposed to get.
Todd Cochrane
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