Notices by Sam Sethi :pc2red: ⁂ (samsethi@podcastindex.social)

Instead of a marketplace or platform, I think I will start to use the term 'Value Exchange' to describe TrueFans.

TrueFans is a value exchange where creators provide value in the form of podcasts, music, audiobooks, courses and listeners provide value back in the form of streaming micropayments, super comments or subscriptions. i.e v4v

I'm pleased to finally say that TrueFans has been approved and we are now live in the Google Play Store.

This is v1.0, we will be further tweaking the UI this week but it is fully functional with podcasts, music, video, wallets, micropayments, funding tag, activitystreams etc. Any feedback good or bad is gratefully received.

We will also have new versions shortly for Apple TV, CarPlay, Android Auto and FireTV. i.e TrueFans Everywhere.

Google Play Store
https://lnkd.in/eP6XYCaK

@adam @dave

4/4 - TrueFans ActivityStreams measure user attention both quality and quantity. i.e Listen Time, Percent Completed and Value Paid.

The DOWNLOAD as a metric of success is now irrelevant. A download does not equal a listen. But equally 1 second of audio playback as measured by Apple, Spotify and YouTube does not equal a listen either.

Creators/Advertisers want to know who listened to their podcast/advert and for how long. Time listened and Percent Completed.

3/4 - More closely aligned to the attention equation for advertising is resonance. If an advertisement resonates with a consumer and the context in which it’s placed makes sense, the ad has a better chance of driving sales compared with an ad that doesn’t resonate.

The competition for consumer attention has long been measured by the size of the audience and the amount of time spent. Quality and relevance, not just quantity, of attention goes a long way in determining success.

1/4 - McKinsey research have developed an “attention equation”. Attention doesn’t simply equal the amount of time spent; it equals the amount of valuable time spent, driven by focus and intent.

1. The focus on the quantity of time spent—or the size of audience—overlooks a more important issue: the quality of time spent. Not all consumer attention is created equal.

2. There isn’t only more content to consume but also more devices to consume it on—often simultaneously.

2/4 - The Value of Attention.

3. Super attention’ versus ‘super users’: Driving media spend. “Super consumption,” however, doesn’t always translate to “super spending,” and attention can help to explain the gap.

4. The more attentive media consumers are, the more likely they are to spend.

5. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) have established a set of standards in response to growing demand for attention measurement, but results have been mixed.

3/3 - Social Web Sharing

Here is my listening activity for Podnews Daily auto published on X from TrueFans. We also auto post on Mastodon. LinkedIn and Threads next.

Sadly I don’t think people understand ActivityStreams to measure first party data using activity verbs. People also don’t understand how we can use the activity for gamification and publication to the social web.

Maybe in a years time people will catchup???

2/3 - Social Web Sharing

Here is my play activity auto posted on BlueSky. And now with the new BlueSky activity notifications bell you can get a push notification when new content is posted to my BlueSky account. /cc @james @adam @dave

1/3 - Social Web sharing

I just listened to Podnews Daily on TrueFans. I listened to 4min 20s and completed 100%.

This activity was then registered in "My Activities" tab https://truefans.fm/fans/sam?tab=activities

Anyone who follows me on TrueFans will see this activity, as will the Podcast Creator.

My activity was also posted to X and Bluesky and Mastodon.

Equally the gamification points I earned for playing this episode will go towards my SuperFan status.

It has been a quiet few weeks on TrueFans. But we are also going to push live today our new BlueSky integration.

Now you can auto publish your listening activity, comments etc. to your BlueSky account. You choose what verbs we should publish and then authorise your BlueSky account and we will do the rest.

It means anyone following your BlueSky account will see your podcast listening or comments. #discovery.

We already do this with X and Mastodon.

Amazon Is on the Cusp of Using More Robots Than Humans in Its Warehouses - WSJ. -

Trumps remanufacturing plan in USA will not bring jobs for humans.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-warehouse-robots-automation-942b814f

@mijustin @dave @adam We have HLS playback support in our iOS production, desktop and PWA. We have it working on our Google Beta App.

@dave @james @theDanielJLewis

I checked out this new podroll update. This site is a great resource, thank you. We are adding a link to the site in the TrueFans footer.

BTW TrueFans was the first app to support the podroll, could you pls add TrueFans to this page.

We go further than the other apps. We turn the podroll into a 'dynamic' playlist. It means anyone can play the podroll, add/edit it in their own playlist. Being a dynamic playlist it auto updates to include the latest episodes.

Why are more users willing to pay for ad-free quality digital content? What does this mean for the future of advertising if the people who can afford to pay for ad-free content are the same people advertisers want to reach?

- YouTube CEO Neal Mohan spoke at Cannes Lions this week and unsurprisingly he said "people don’t want to just listen”. More worryingly, he also spoke about a new form of branded commercial advertising for podcasts. Will this be more like uninterruptible TV commercials?

1/2 - On this week's Podnews Weekly Review, James Cridland and I discuss key podcast trends.

- Podcasting is a mainstream media in Australia, the US and UK with over 50% of people listening to a podcast every month in each country. Our time and attention is limited so what other media is declining?

- YouTube is the main access point for news podcasts in the US.

- Why are "Downloads decreasing for many podcasts" but podcast listen/watch time is growing?

@adam @dave @james TrueFans 1.0 native app submitted to Apple and Google. In the review process now.

Hey @dave Truefans supports HLS enclosure, alt enclosure and live

PodToo is serving this show as HLS https://truefans.fm/women-in-business/6676791046a595e9f4064525

I think New Media Show is served as HLS

I think all podcasting 2.0 apps support HLS. PodToo has enabled HLS today in the Alternate Enclosure.

Congrats @russell

Hubhopper will turn on their HLS support soon. Who else? RSSBlue. Podhome, Blubrry?

FYI:YouTube supports HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) for live streaming.

However, YouTube only supports Media Playlists for HLS ingestion and ignores Master Playlists, which define different resolutions.

Netflix supports LL-HLS but Spotify does not support HLS.

1/6 - Activitystreams are the W3C standard we need to accurately measure and share podcast listening metrics?

1. The Problem
Counting downloads is a legacy metric of Podcasting 1.0. Like the Monty Python parrot, it's dead - remember a download is not a listen.

Equally the recent proprietary play count measurement suggested by Spotify, Apple and YouTube is inconsistent between these apps and thus not comparable. And with each app enabling auto-plays, did someone really play your podcast?

4/6 - The Solution
TrueFans has already implemented Activitystreams. We have 20+ activity verbs to track listener behaviour such as play, comment, share, follow etc.

Users can choose what activity verbs to display Listeners can also choose to make their Activitystreams public or private.

They can choose to share their Activitystreams to the social web e.g Mastodon, BlueSky, Threads or X. You can also export your Activitystream by picking the verbs and months you want to download an XML file.