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Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

podbabble.com

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Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#41

Post by sjostrom7 »

wolframhempel wrote: post #22
Sakos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's odd to give sole control of moderation to podcast creators. It quickly leads to creators sanitising feedback to prefer only positive feedback.

That's fair and its something we will have to get right over time. But its also tricky to find an ethical monetization model for social media. You can sell your user's data to advertisers, or you can sell control or you can find some other channel. We're e.g. playing with the idea to add a live podcasting feature that allows user's to comment and tip during a show a la Twitch.

Agreed with the other user - if you can get livecast + tipping going that'll be your hook. Hosts will then have a specific reason to plug your platform. Best of luck, very promising!

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#42

Post by closedloop129 »

wolframhempel wrote: post #18
rnernento wrote: post #17

Reddit never started by taking me to a giant signup page for a paid subscription. As someone who was mildly curious and might have checked it out of you presented something interesting I immediately left, maybe think about making the base landing page more interesting in hopes of gaining traction with users and then make another landing page for people you want to sell the service to.

Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. ( https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021... )

The main point is not whether it's free or not but that the main page is a landing page. If you visit Reddit, you immediately see content, you are one click away from reading comments. Registering is optional and comes naturally when you want to write a comment yourself.

To convince your visitors, your site is just a landing page. It requires commitment to an account before it is possible to judge the site.

I don't have the experience to judge if that is a good strategy. But if you want to be the Reddit of podcast discussions, then you should show the discussions to the visitors and only request accounts from those who want to write comments.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#43

Post by tuwtuwtuwtuw »

MarcellusDrum wrote: post #9
tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do people discuss specific podcasts there? Never visited that subreddit before but the top entries seems to be discussion about podcasts, not discussions about content in podcast episodes.

Popular podcasts have their own subreddits that discuss each episode. Having a separate app/platform for this is going to be hard to sell.

The person I replied to was comparing it to r/podcasts and bringing up the subscriber count there.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#44

Post by cupofpython »

Sakos wrote: post #20
wolframhempel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. ( https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021... )

I think it's odd to give sole control of moderation to podcast creators. It quickly leads to creators sanitising feedback to prefer only positive feedback.

>It quickly leads to creators sanitising feedback to prefer only positive feedback

I dont see this as a big issue. It seems to be a place for podcast community members to gather and discuss instead of making yet another discord. If you dont have positive feedback for a podcast why comment at all to begin with? The podcast medium is entirely built to taste and fits well with being a bubble (despite bubbles usually being a negative thing).

The hidden issue would be power to cover up a scandal, so I would hope that for serious issues users can report a podcast and site admins can handle it appropriately.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#45

Post by rnernento »

wolframhempel wrote: post #18
rnernento wrote: post #17

Reddit never started by taking me to a giant signup page for a paid subscription. As someone who was mildly curious and might have checked it out of you presented something interesting I immediately left, maybe think about making the base landing page more interesting in hopes of gaining traction with users and then make another landing page for people you want to sell the service to.

Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. ( https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021... )

I'm not criticizing your business model, I'm just saying as a user who doesn't care about your business model and is just curious about podcast discussions your homepage isn't optimized for me.

If you focus on building a userbase first it will be easier to sell the service later.

As a user I have a billion things competing for my attention, if you don't make it super easy for me to get to useful or interesting content I'm going to move on and that's going to hurt you overall.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#46

Post by wolframhempel »

closedloop129 wrote: post #42
wolframhempel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. ( https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021... )

The main point is not whether it's free or not but that the main page is a landing page. If you visit Reddit, you immediately see content, you are one click away from reading comments. Registering is optional and comes naturally when you want to write a comment yourself. To convince your visitors, your site is just a landing page. It requires commitment to an account before it is possible to judge the site. I don't h…

We had a lot of discussion about it, but it's a chicken and egg problem. We just launched, so there isn't much content to show straight away - and we felt it's worth explaining the concept. As content grows, we want to shift to a "content only" view for the homepage.

It's important to stress that Podbabble doesn't require accounts to view discussions - in fact, you can even comment anonymously without creating an account. If you click on any of the comments on the homepage or choose a podcast via search you'll immediately taken to its discussion page without any barriers.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#47

Post by rnernento »

wolframhempel wrote: post #46
closedloop129 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main point is not whether it's free or not but that the main page is a landing page. If you visit Reddit, you immediately see content, you are one click away from reading comments. Registering is optional and comes naturally when you want to write a comment yourself. To convince your visitors, your site is just a landing page. It requires commitment to an account before it is possible to judge the site. I don't h…

We had a lot of discussion about it, but it's a chicken and egg problem. We just launched, so there isn't much content to show straight away - and we felt it's worth explaining the concept. As content grows, we want to shift to a "content only" view for the homepage. It's important to stress that Podbabble doesn't require accounts to view discussions - in fact, you can even comment anonymously without creating an acc…

I think if you ever want there to actually be content you need a way to grab users and make it easy for them to start generating it.

When you say "it's a chicken and an egg problem" you're spot on. That's the problem for every new social network or user based platform trying to launch. Until you have a ton of users and content I would argue it's the only problem worth worrying about.

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#48

Post by infinityio »

wolframhempel wrote: post #18
rnernento wrote: post #17

Reddit never started by taking me to a giant signup page for a paid subscription. As someone who was mildly curious and might have checked it out of you presented something interesting I immediately left, maybe think about making the base landing page more interesting in hopes of gaining traction with users and then make another landing page for people you want to sell the service to.

Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. ( https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021... )

Personally, I'd recommend making more of the homepage the actual site, in the style of Reddit or HN's homepage - hopefully, the content that will be surfaced will explain it better than marketing does (and make it seem less closed off!)

Re: Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

#50

Post by swal_ »

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?

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