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Podcast Alley
In any new medium the first question I ask, and I suppose most people ask, is "what's most popular?"
Not that popularity is always a proxy for good, but in a world with a huge number of choices, you've got to start somewhere.
So in podcasting, my natural inclination was to find out what was most popular.
The closest thing to a top 10 list is Podcast Alley. It's a good site. I haven't done anything close to an exhaustive sample of the most popular podcasts, but some of the ones I like score well on Podcast Alley.
I like the idea. But I don't like the methodology (at least as I understand it right now). I believe Podcast Alley uses online voting as the method to determine popularity. That seems very prone to error and abuse.
I would love for someone to get in the middle of the podcast feeds and see which podcasts are being subscribed to the most. Feedburner can do that for the podcast feeds they host, but that's not the entire market by any means.
But even then, that's not really enough. What we really need to know is what podcasts are getting listened to the most. A subscription doesn't mean a listen.
I suspect that technology can solve this problem. And I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who is working on it.
In the meantime, I recommend Podcast Alley as a good starting point for anyone interesting in finding good Podcasts to listen to.
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» Podcast Alley from carpeaqua
There is a website that came online in the past few months called Podcast Alley. Like iPodder.org, Podcast Alley gives a listing of all available podcasts. Unlike, iPodder, Podcast Alley lets visitors vote on their favorite Podcasts. This has... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 14, 2005 8:39:53 AM
Posted March 9, 2005 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Well, I think even what you are describing is not sufficient to filter things out so I get the "good" Podcasts. I want to know not just that XYZ podcast is good in general, but that the show #314 is exceptional.
What's needed is a show by show rating mechanism coupled with an Automatic Collaborative Filtering system (Netflix for Podcasts). This would allow me to subscribe to XYZ's podcasts that are 5 stars.
I started mocking up some code for this (made an app that would monitor the ratings you gave tracks in iTunes), and in the scheme of things a website to do the ACF isn't so big a deal.
The stumbling block I can't get past is that human nature being what it is, EVERYONE is going to want only the top rated podcasts. I'm not sure that a sufficient number of people would listen to the unreviewed podcasts and rank them so that others would benefit.
Posted by: Michael Buckbee | Mar 10, 2005 12:20:57 AM
Good points!
A lot of thought has gone into this already. Measuring actual podcast use is technically feasible, but practically impossible. Issues like privacy get in the way of what we'd ideally want to know.
Ranking by votes could be interesting, However, unless it's limited to one vote per person, and is from a representative sampling, it's unlikely to be very meaningful.
The Podcasting News Top 10 takes a different approach, ranking podcasts based on click-through activity in a large podcast directory. This is far from a perfect solution, but it seems like it should be more useful than several alternate systems that are being used.
Here's the URL if you want to check it out:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/03/nasa_show_top_p.html
Posted by: Podcast Chick | Mar 10, 2005 12:39:01 AM
Heh heh. There is an easier alternative to writing a new bit of software (although that sounds good!)... If you're looking for a good podcast check out http://www.mangolounge.com. Its a kind of comic easy listening show... its the only think I've found that's been worth listening too!
Posted by: Bob Nice | Apr 1, 2005 5:25:05 AM
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