The biggest thing missing for me getting started is a reddit-like "feed" showing where discussion is actually happening. Like the reddit logged-out homepage (/best, not /new).
The value of Podbabble is the intersection of podcast episodes that 1) people are talking about and 2) I have listened to. Right now the only way for me to find that intersection is to start from (2), searching for every podcast I can think of, looking at several of the latest episodes and seeing there's no comments. It would be great to start from (1), so I can see right away which episodes people are discussing and see which ones might be relevant to me.
Also, it seems like the only way to add a podcast to "my podcasts" is with an RSS feed link? Not from a link on the podcast's page I searched for? I'm unsure on what the desired setup workflow is.
100% this ^. I listen podcasts daily, am interested in discovering new ones, and do not create any podcasts. Looking at the home page I'm not sure how to find any content. Definitely not interested in creating an account just to see what's there.
I recommend reading Reddit's origin story. There needs to be interesting content to get the first users to create content.
Maybe the goal is to sell podcasters and get them to bring their audience? Even then I think you need a good home page experience to hook those listeners.
I like that I can read a comment for a podcast I've never heard of before and jump into the exact timestamp being discussed with a single click. I also like that I can read comments without logging in, so I can judge the quality of the discussion before deciding to sign up.
Things that could be improved: the site is a bit slow and I got at least one broken image - I imagine it is getting HN'd right now, though, so I'll check again later. I also agree with the main page being unfriendly - if it weren't for the side bar, I would have probably never tried it. I also wanted to go to a show's full list of discussions, but I didn't find a way.
$29/mo seems high for the vast majority of podcasts, which are labors of love run on shoestring budgets. Of course, it's peanuts for the high traffic sites. Did you consider a Dropbox-like pricing model, e.g., free for low-traffic sites?
Especially if podcasters will bring their audience a free tier can boost growth. Then charge for power tools. Find the things that professional podcasters need that amateur podcasters don't and charge for those.
Promising once it has a volume of users. At first though, I imagine it would attract relatively new podcasts that don't yet have established communities.
That said, until it reaches some critical mass which adds value to creators in terms of discovery and community, asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask.
> …asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask.
Especially given that (1) podcasters would be the primary driver of users to this service, and (2) podcasters will also be doing all the moderation work.
I think the host sign-up flow is a bit odd. I can enter any podcast name and have that trigger an email to the authors of that podcast (multiple times? I hope not).
Seems like it would make more sense that an author could create an account on the site and then link podcasts to it. Triggering an email to podcast authors because I selected their podcast in a drop down feels a bit spammy.
Site QC: I clicked on the Twitter link in the footer. It references podbabble1, an account that doesn't exist. https://twitter.com/podbabble exists though.
I love the idea and monetization model, trawling through the rest of a subreddit to find the thread for a recent episode can be tedious.
Congrats on the launch, I have a couple of questions. Is it only for discussions around recent episodes? Or is it just that the specific podcasts i've searched for don't list all episodes?
It really depends on the podcast. We run it of the podcast's RSS feed, some of which include the entire archive, some just a number of recent episodes. Some podcast players create their own archive to patch this which is something we might need to do as well.
Somehow the podcast library is a bit mixed up with multiple podcasts of the same name. If you look for the "Greatest Generation" Star Trek podcast, the preview indeed shows the Star Trek podcast but clicking it brings you to a completely different podcast of the same name.
Would it be interesting to do this for all knowledge artefacts? Books, articles, blog posts, blogs. It would create a graph of all these works after all they/respond to each other but also who reads what.
I like the idea of this! I don't feel like I'm unusual in that I listen to my podcasts in a player app (Overcast, in my case), and always away from a computer. It would be really cool if this had an API that podcast apps could talk to for comments (maybe the creator of the feed has the ability to include a link to the API in the metadata, making an open ecosystem of podcast comment tools)
To give it a try i typed "sceptics" and selected Sceptics Guide to the Universe which results in redirection to https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined and an error "Error: could not handle the request"
I got the same searching "mindscape" but tried again and it worked. I think it's a race condition in the search-as-you-type system (which also appears to have some flakiness, with searches from previous searches showing up after the latest search arrived).
There's no way of going from a podcast (/podcast/SHOW/EPISODE/UUID) to the show (/podcast/SHOW). I had to manually edit the URL.
Visually, this is more like SoundCloud than Reddit, though that's probably because there's no discussions more than 2 comments deep to notice the difference.
I searched for two podcasts; one failed with an error ('Error: could not handle the request) [No Agenda]. I tested another one, [eggchasers], and that worked reasonably well. My main criticism is that, when a search returns something meaningful, there is not a lot there to compel me to create an account and drill in deeper. If I were designing this, I would seed the 'sign up' presentation to new users with some relevant bits from the conversations which are happening on your site. If there are no current conversations, then some message which would spark my desire to start one.
Also, what value does the acast privacy link for each episode provide that wouldn't alternatively be provided by some header element?
Neat idea! As a podcaster I would love to be able to get feedback on my episodes this way. Have you ever considered adding the ability to embed it on external websites?
Also, I tried claiming my podcast and commenting but neither seems to have worked for me. Perhaps because of high traffic?
Really sorry. I can see repeated attempts for a podcast verification email sent out to a*@**o.org, but the email seems to bounce. If this is you, could you let me know at [email protected] and I'd be happy to help sort it out.
This looks like it's still in the early days but are there any plans to integrate with other podcast providers? I usually listen to podcasts via Spotify and it could be cool to see the comments streaming by like they were lyrics or the chat on a Twitch stream.
I’ve wanted to find a podcast app that would allow me to easily pause, select a segment, and then tweet (preferably with auto transcript) or share on FB.
I assume that I could make an anon comment here and then share a link to my comment on social media?
EDIT: someone mentioned that podcasters have to pay for access — if this is true, would it mean that I could only comment on certain podcasts? This would be a huge limitation for me, and would make me very unlikely to spend much time on the site.
I would recommend letting people comment on any podcast, but if podcasts want to show up on your topical lists then they have to pay. There are probably other better ways to feature gate; this is just one idea.
How does this work? I went to an episode of Nerdland, posted a comment, saw a brief loading icon and the input area emptied itself and... poof, nothing happened. Reloaded page, no comment. Tried posting again, but no comment appeared.
Is the commenting system overloaded? Do I need to login first (it doesn't say so)? Does it need to be able to talk to Stripe the payment network to place comments (TrackerControl app shows that as the only detected tracker while using the site)? I didn't include links or markup, so if it was detected as spam (again: there's no mention of that, no error, no nothing) then I'd not know why.
I wish your homepage made it easier to more quickly engage in podcast discussion. Right now, my feedback is that it takes too long to get to proof of value, your UI is confusing and it's not clear to me what, or how, I can get to 'discussing podcasts'.
Yes, loading is quite slow. I typed in a name and the search result showed almost instantly but it took over thirty seconds to actually get to the comment section. There's no reason you need to embed a player for the episode on the comment page. If I'm going to go to a web page and comment on a podcast I've already listened to the podcast.
[+] [-] unholiness|3 years ago|reply
The value of Podbabble is the intersection of podcast episodes that 1) people are talking about and 2) I have listened to. Right now the only way for me to find that intersection is to start from (2), searching for every podcast I can think of, looking at several of the latest episodes and seeing there's no comments. It would be great to start from (1), so I can see right away which episodes people are discussing and see which ones might be relevant to me.
Also, it seems like the only way to add a podcast to "my podcasts" is with an RSS feed link? Not from a link on the podcast's page I searched for? I'm unsure on what the desired setup workflow is.
[+] [-] cheriot|3 years ago|reply
I recommend reading Reddit's origin story. There needs to be interesting content to get the first users to create content.
Maybe the goal is to sell podcasters and get them to bring their audience? Even then I think you need a good home page experience to hook those listeners.
[+] [-] edgyquant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] probably_wrong|3 years ago|reply
Things that could be improved: the site is a bit slow and I got at least one broken image - I imagine it is getting HN'd right now, though, so I'll check again later. I also agree with the main page being unfriendly - if it weren't for the side bar, I would have probably never tried it. I also wanted to go to a show's full list of discussions, but I didn't find a way.
Overall I like it.
[+] [-] getpost|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheriot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedcheeslet|3 years ago|reply
That said, until it reaches some critical mass which adds value to creators in terms of discovery and community, asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask.
[+] [-] CharlesW|3 years ago|reply
Especially given that (1) podcasters would be the primary driver of users to this service, and (2) podcasters will also be doing all the moderation work.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuwtuwtuwtuw|3 years ago|reply
Seems like it would make more sense that an author could create an account on the site and then link podcasts to it. Triggering an email to podcast authors because I selected their podcast in a drop down feels a bit spammy.
[+] [-] gman83|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getpost|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swal_|3 years ago|reply
Congrats on the launch, I have a couple of questions. Is it only for discussions around recent episodes? Or is it just that the specific podcasts i've searched for don't list all episodes?
[+] [-] wolframhempel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maweki|3 years ago|reply
Not a good look in terms of data quality here.
[+] [-] SheddingPattern|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamil7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolframhempel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangoor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qhrrrasd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unholiness|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zren|3 years ago|reply
Visually, this is more like SoundCloud than Reddit, though that's probably because there's no discussions more than 2 comments deep to notice the difference.
[+] [-] alaxsxaq|3 years ago|reply
Also, what value does the acast privacy link for each episode provide that wouldn't alternatively be provided by some header element?
[+] [-] I-M-S|3 years ago|reply
Also, I tried claiming my podcast and commenting but neither seems to have worked for me. Perhaps because of high traffic?
[+] [-] wolframhempel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcluck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|3 years ago|reply
I assume that I could make an anon comment here and then share a link to my comment on social media?
EDIT: someone mentioned that podcasters have to pay for access — if this is true, would it mean that I could only comment on certain podcasts? This would be a huge limitation for me, and would make me very unlikely to spend much time on the site.
I would recommend letting people comment on any podcast, but if podcasts want to show up on your topical lists then they have to pay. There are probably other better ways to feature gate; this is just one idea.
[+] [-] Aachen|3 years ago|reply
Is the commenting system overloaded? Do I need to login first (it doesn't say so)? Does it need to be able to talk to Stripe the payment network to place comments (TrackerControl app shows that as the only detected tracker while using the site)? I didn't include links or markup, so if it was detected as spam (again: there's no mention of that, no error, no nothing) then I'd not know why.
[+] [-] costcofries|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waylandsmithers|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] causality0|3 years ago|reply