Acast spam, spam multiple platform updates, spam, Gumball, spam, Websub, spam but no chapters, no transcriptions just lightning comments. Artwork

Podnews Weekly Review

The last word in podcasting news.

Every Friday, James Cridland and Sam Sethi review the week's top stories from Podnews; and interview some of the biggest names making the news.

Support the show at https://weekly.podnews.net - or hit the boost button! Sponsored by Buzzsprout: start podcasting - keep podcasting!

All Episodes

Podnews Weekly Review

Acast spam, spam multiple platform updates, spam, Gumball, spam, Websub, spam but no chapters, no transcriptions just lightning comments.

March 17, 2022 • James Cridland & Sam Sethi • Season 1 • Episode 66

MONTY PYTHON: Spam Sketch

SPECIAL GUEST:

Marty Michael - CEO & Co-Founder Gumball

Gumball has raised $10 million to expand its podcasting host-read advertising platform. The company was built by the team behind the Headgum Podcast Network.

NEWS:

Podcast host Acast is still spamming podcasters, even co-founders of rival podcast networks, or hosts of shows that ended three years ago. Libsyn's Rob Walch correctly notes "Friends don't send emails starting 'hello friend' (as Acast's do), and they don't spam".
Hypocritically, Acast actually offers its customers a tool to obfuscate your email address in your RSS feed, so that it will "help our podcasters avoid unwanted spam". It's a problem the company is more than aware of, then. "Email marketing is one part of our marketing strategy", said Ross Adams, the company's CEO, when we last asked.
Oscar Merry has suggested Lightning Comments as a potential solution for cross-app commenting: using "boostagrams" as a method of sending comments. We like this idea; and the spec is simple enough for us to code it; so, you'll find a "comments" section on every update in Podnews's web version. You can also see those comments in the Fountain app.
Podnews are also, as of today, permanently supporting the socialInteract tag for Twitter (and will probably pull in those comments to the page, too, at some stage).
A new version is up: 1.0.0-beta. This release comes with bug fixes and an exciting feature: WebSub! From now on, Castopod will push your newly published episodes directly to open subscription hubs, meaning that they will get broadcasted instantly after publication.
A gateway from WebSub to PodPing. WebSub.watch allows any WebSub-enabled podcast to push notificat