Friday, April 17, 2015; 9:02:53 AM Eastern
Introducing Podcatch.com
- I was bored with my podcasts. I subscribed to a dozen different feeds, but was only listening to two shows. Sometimes I'd leave the house with nothing interesting on my phone. I muddled along, thinking this was the best I could do. Then came Serial, and all of sudden podcasting was exciting again. I looked forward to every week's installment the same way I look forward to a weekly Game of Thrones or Mad Men.
- #### A fog of podcasts
- What followed was an explosion of new podcasts, or so it seemed, but which were the good ones? I did what everyone does, I asked my friends. I saw my friends asking. I asked again. Sometimes I found something interesting to listen to, but usually not something I wanted to subscribe to. That got me thinking.
- Subscribing may be the wrong way to look at it. When I want a podcast I don't want to subscribe. I want to listen. All the time between the want and the fulfillment seems like work. Why is this so hard.
- #### I tried an experiment
- Standing on the street in Manhattan, with my iPhone 6 and a good net connection, how long would it take me to find something to listen to.
- In other words, how long after having the idea "I want a podcast" did it take to fulfill it. Standing out there in the cold. Feeling like an idiot, fussing with my phone.
- How long? A lot longer than it should.
- #### An idea from Vox
- Then I read an article in Vox that listed 26 podcasts I should be listening to. There's the answer. Almost. If they had a page that followed all these podcasts, I could go there, click a play button and be listening in an instant. Someone with good judgement chose these shows, and I bet one or two of them are good in any week. But that place didn't exist.
- #### Another experiment
- I asked my friends on Facebook to recommend their favorite podcasts. I figured if we were friends, or friends-of-friends, some of our interests would overlap. But I did more than ask, I engaged. And I didn't ask for feeds, I was willing to do the research to go from the title of the podcast to the RSS feed.
- I set up a river, customized it so there was a player for each item, and linked it up with Facebook comments, so the resulting conversations would feed back into my relationships.
- #### The product
- As Apple says about their products, it has magic. It's simple, it's probably not what you expect, but it really works. When I go there, I find new ideas, feelings, perspectives, entertainment.
- That's "podcatch.com".
- And now it's public. You can use it too!
- "cheesecake"
- PS: This is the product in Podcasting 2.0.