Subscriber count is meaningless!

[Ian]

I just noticed that a new statistic has been added to the Podcaster Details pages called "PA Subscribers".

At first I was stunned that Dawn and Drew have 30,000+ subscribers! If it's really true, kudos to them. However then I discovered that all it takes to get more "subscribers" is to just hit this URL over and over again:

http://www.podcastalley.com/redirect.php?pod_id=### (where the #s are the podid for a cast)

Neat stat, but meaningless.
Ian

[robulon]

what, like votes?

;)

[Ian]

:roll:

[jeffoest]

What's most amazing to me is that Dawn and Drew have such a passionate fan base to hit that URL so often (and to have a very active bulletin board and to vote for them here, etc..)... Why is that do you suppose? I just find it very very strange.

No disrespect to their show. I enjoy it and think they are good at it and I give them a listen every now and then. But maybe I'm just not their demographic but I just can't see myself being "passionate" about their podcast (nor anyone else's for that matter).... What gives?

While I wish I had more subscribers, I think if my fans were as 'passionate' about a freaking podcast, i'd be a bit scared..... ;-)

[theFerf]

Man, such ridicule for beta testing some features. :) There will be advanced uses for this, I was just checking to see if worked. It has been removed.

Thanks for keeping me on my toes.

[Version3]

Yeah, it was confusing me as well, because I could not see where I had suddenly gotten 11 subscribers at the same time that the voting was going up. I should have read this first.

Neat stat, but meaningless. what, like votes?


I have agreed with it before, however I must admit that we decided to stoop to just working the system that is in place. I have no idea what will work better than showing them by votes, but until then we actually asked our listeners to come here and vote. Not to beat anybody, but to more or less be "on the map". I'd like to gain more subscribers, and those seem to come from the podcast community. We've got a lot of listeners, but they are all coming from downloading the show directly from the front page of the site. I'd really love to see more subscription based listeners, as we plan to start dropping random video we produce into the feed. If we get good response, we will likely just create a second feed.

I know many don't have faith in the voting, and that others have been involved in "voting scandals" or whatever... I'm worried about none of that. I just wanted to show up high enough in the list that new people would check us out and make it all worth doing.