Hi. This is Kyle Bondo, and this is Timothy Kim O'Brien. And you're listening to PodReck, the podcast to help you survive your podcast. And on today's show, we have cruise director Matthew Passey joining us. And welcome to PodRact. And today, Tim and I have special guest, Matthew Passey. Matthew Passey, of course, from the podcast consultant, That's the podcast consultant.com, hosts of podcast meeting anything and cause pause. And today,
we have him for an interesting topic. We're talking about RSS feed hijacking or as we affectionately refer to it as cast jacking. And, no, you didn't hear that wrong. It does sound dirty. And so the safety word for today is what is it today? Tim, we we need a safety word for this this topic so we don't get too crazy. We gotta keep it in the clean version. Okay.
The safety word is White. It is a grocery store name. White. If you're not from the East Coast, White is a garcy searching that took over, like, Food Lion and a bunch of the places. Welcome aboard. The the USS Pod Rec. Matthew, how are you doing? Pleasure to be here, gentlemen. I am excited to be chatting chatting about cast jacking and whatever other way you wanna describe that sound so much filthy. It does. It sounds very bad. And and really what it is is when people hide jacket your RSS feed. They are kind of dirty scoundrels for doing that. And I I think that to to kind of level set an understanding of what the heck RSS hijacking is,
kinda give us an idea from your perspective, Matthew, why does a RSS hijack even happen? What's the what's the benefit behind doing this for for these scoundrels out there doing this. Sure. So just to alleviate any confusion, it is very common in the podcasting world for directories to pop up. And for them to want to have content in their directory, so people wanna use their podcasting app. And they do that by accessing Apple's API.
So a overcast, let's say, this is a very common podcasting app on iOS device. They come along. They're like, well, people use our app, but we're in harmony content. So what are we gonna do? We go into Apple, we get the API, and all of a sudden, boom. They've got a full directory of podcasts, the 800,000 shows that are out there are now also available on Overcast. And that is seemingly Kosher. Right? You know, it's just another place where people access your content.
If you go into the audio, if you go into the show notes, everything looks and feels exactly the same as what you would expect if you publish your content on Apple. And every time somebody listens to the show on overcast, you, the podcaster, will see that information in your hosting stats. It will say, overcast, 1 download. Oh, everything is cool. What happens with a company like Hub Hopper
is they will Do the same thing. They'll go to Apple. They'll take the API. They'll say, give us all those feeds. And then what they will do is they will make changes within the feed that basically take all of that juicy and important and to the podcaster. Right? Like, seemingly how they can connect back to their audience. They will take all that. They will strip out links. They will change information
and instead of so 1 thing that's in every RSS feed is a link tag. So if you read RSS feed code, it says the name of the show, the artwork,
the, you know, the link to the episode, blah blah blah. And 1 thing it says is the link back to the show. In your case, it would be the link back to Podrak. to my case, it would be podcast me anything. And what they were doing is they were changing that link field instead of saying pod rack.com, let's say, they were pointing it to Hubba Hoppers page that they created for Pod Rec. Essentially,
forcing people that we're clicking on the show to be in this perpetual loop of not getting back to the content creators staying within the Hub Hopper ecosphere. They were doing a couple of other nefarious things, but Basically, the fact that they even went in there and made a single change to that RSS feed is the great crime here that we're seeing and why there's so much outrage and and so much concern with what's going on. It makes a lot of sense. Now, though, why it isn't someone, like,
a Google who is indexing pages end up with that page rather than your page. How does the is there do they beat you to the punch in the indexing war, or how does how does the the primary link for your show end up on Hub Hopper and not Google going, oh, wait a minute. that's obviously not right in correcting itself. Where's the where's the self healing part of that? So the interesting thing here is when Hub hopper got caught in the act of doing this, a few folks reached out including
James Cridlin, editor and creator of Pod News. And was basically like, hey. What are you guys doing? Like, you're, you know, you're changing some stuff around. This is wrong. and their defense was, yeah, we didn't mean to do that. It was just a bug, but they also said, well, we were trying to improve our SEO. And now I I will be fully transparent. I am not an SEO expert. And so trying to explain this
you know, somebody might hear this and be like, well, technically, that is incorrect, and I will say, fine. But to basic to to break it down to, like, the most basic terms, my understanding is that by
having this huge directory of shows and having them link back to each other and back to Hub Hopper. Hub Hopper basically gave themselves their own internal SEO juicing so that their pages, their feeds would take priority over smaller creators who, you know, do not have this huge ecosystem of 1000 and 1000 of pages to, you know, boost them in the Google algorithm.
So my my sense is my guess is that because Hub hopper can say, this links back to this, this links back to this, which is this is like, because they're doing a lot of different things that are boosting their SEO, when Google is crawling the Internet to be like, oh, Potteryx. Well, look at this look at this result all the way up at the top of the results. that's the 1 I'm gonna use because, you know, they sort of artificially
buried the home results, you know, down way below. That makes a lot sense. It's very The event horizon, the gravitational pull of that of that SEO juice is what puts that at the top of the search ranks. That is my best educated guess and assumption as to how they sort of not only hijack your show, but then also hijack your listing on Google. Now my understanding is they don't hijack it anywhere else. Most other places, you submit your feed, you're in charge,
Right? Like, they can't go through and say, oh, hello, Apple. Instead of using Tim's Real Feed, we're gonna use the Hub Hopper Fake Feed of the show. that they can override. But because Google is indexing and searching and crawling, they were sort of able to get in there and manipulate a little bit. What's the so what's the damage here? If Hub Hopper pops up and throws say, yeah. My show's out there, and it didn't it pops up on Hub Hopper's directory.
What do I care? I mean, the real damage is most people are not paying attention. Most people are not checking. Most people have no idea. Most people probably didn't read the article in HubSpot, or they're, like, Indian podcasting company. What else? Most people
are not as astute. Like, if you are only using an Apple device for podcasting, you're probably not even checking Google all that often. So for the for the fact that most people just don't even know that this is happening. Now Hub Opera claims that they are fixing this, that this gonna go away. But I am guessing that the damage is done for a lot of people, and they won't even realize that they're not the primary. The bare feet isn't what Google is showing
for some time. Wow. So, Tim, this I mean, this is very close to home. Tim had this happened to his recent show, Create Art podcast, which you just launched off of Podbean. What I think you're in, like, episode 4. He's under his name. That's all good. Yes. Yeah. So what happened with you and Hub Hopper? Well and this is something that we tell all of our listeners to to go ahead and be be vigilant.
It even happens to us, folks. Okay. So what happened was is Matthew put out a great thing on Facebook where we were he was in the podcast meeting group. where he was talking about Google and, you know, the Google page and all that kind of good stuff. And I thought, well, I'm gonna go in check out Google. Because in the past, we have recommended Google Podcast for people that are fairly new to the podcast world, listening to podcast. It's a nice clean interface.
It doesn't really allow that streaming. but it it's very easy to get into. Just like pulling somebody's phone form and showing them how to do it real quick. Quick easy done. I like it because of the interface and and how it looks. And 1 of these days, I'm gonna drop my Samsung phone and get a pixel phone. But So I I I read the I read the article. I I I followed the link to Google Podcast, which I hadn't checked in a while. And, yeah, there's all my episodes right there, rock and rolling.
And then I clicked the little globe button. I was like, well, let me go ahead and look at what my, you know, website looks like because I'm interested in it. I wanna make sure everything is popping up and looking, you know, the way it's supposed to be looking. And there's Hubba Hopper. And I said, woah. Hold on here. Time out. Hubba who is Hubba Hopper? And I replied back to to Matthew's article there, and he directed me to James' article in Pod News, which I am a subscriber of.
And I went ahead and took matters into my own hands. instead of taking him to court. Well, I was gonna say, so you're 1 of those people who reached Dave's newsletter, but also did pay attention, which was why, like, Oh, so many examples. What else? Exactly. We're all guilty of that. Far away. Well and, honestly, there is a lot of news out there. I mean, the podcast magazine is brand new popping out. We've got pod news. We've got a lot of different newsletters and all that.
Plus, you know, work a 9 to 5 job, you know, run my own podcast, cohost this podcast. It it's a lot to take in. And it it reminds me that, you know, if you want to be doing this, you do need to pay attention and then take this stuff in. And luckily, I've got good people out there that I know that have my back. thanks for referring me back to that article there that I slipped right on through. I probably fell asleep while I was on the train going into work.
nothing on James' part. He's a great writer. He's just I get tired. But yeah. So I took the lawn to my own hands, and I went ahead and wrote those guys. Well, first, I contacted PodBeam to see, hey, what was up? And then I went to all the other podcast apps that I have on my phone because I've got about 15 on my phone, and everything was looking, honky, and dory, except for Google Podcasts. and then I went through all of Gagapods stuff. So I went through Pod Rec, I went through get lost racing,
I went through merchants of dirt, you know, Dave Jackson's favorite 1. Dave Jackson, hundred bucks, please. Thank you. And all of those were fine. they just picked on Lillow Create Art podcast, which just debuted in December, I'm on my 4th episode for it, and I'm building up the episodes. But, yeah, they they they took my tiny little guy And a and a and a RSS jacket? Well, I I was curious because you said that you you listed off all the podcasts that are on listen except
create our podcast is not on Lipson. It's on Podbean. Now, Matthew, does that matter? Does it matter which hosting company you're with? They're that deserve protection based on which hosting platform you use? No. Because what they're doing has nothing to do with how you host your podcast. It's just a matter of your RSS feed is a public thing. They could take it, copy, paste it, tweak it, and put it out as their own. Right? That's all they're pretty much doing it. They're they're not getting into your Podbean or lips on the can or anything else. So the protection from this is is what? Or in the except for like, Tim, you're talking about the the vigilance.
I mean, is that all you can do? Is there the legal recourse, or is there a There's there's no, like, podcasting police. The fairest thrill of podcasting. Is that a thing that it's gonna happen here soon? We got Space Force. Why not? FPP. Right? I mean, there's you know, there are the James Cridlands of the world, the Todd Cochran's, the Rob Walches. There are people who are paying attention to this stuff 247 who are
doing their best to protect their clients, their customers. But yeah. I mean, this came you know, this app was I don't know when the app actually started, but the story was just this week. So I mean, this whole thing happened within the span of 5 days. That's pretty quick. And, you know, that's pretty good as far as, like, seeing the problem, contacting them, getting it somewhat fixed.
I don't know if there's legal recourse. That could be a Gordon Firemark question. But honestly, even if there was a legal recourse here in the States, this is an Indian company. They can, you know, just laugh at your, you know, affidavit or lawsuit. They're just looking to be like, Oh, look at that. Somebody's up. I don't care.
Yeah. I don't I don't know. RBANS, I gotta pick up our phone call either, is it? No. I mean, this is 1 of those things where, you know, the collective is the only strength that we have. You know, luminary took some heat as well when they came out. So luminary was, you know, building themselves as the Netflix for podcasting. Right? They were they were gonna put out 50 shows that were exclusive. You had to pay money, become a subscriber in order to access these shows.
Well, but they also had a free version and to fill out the free version they wanted to, steal from Apple in the API like everybody else does. Okay. That's fine. The only difference was they were putting ads in between shows and getting money off people that were listening on their free platform without ever asking us.
never turned to the podcast and said, hey, by the way, I'm gonna monetize your content. You okay with that? Or I'm gonna I'm gonna monetize your content. Can you want a piece of that? Right? Like, Spotify, which does run ads, you have to submit yourself. They don't just pull it out of thin there and add you. I don't think of any other platform that runs ads without you giving express permission or without you getting some sort of cut.
And so for Luminary to just do that, that was pretty upsetting to a lot of people. The people saw it, made a big stink. And within a week, 1000 of podcastes were demanding that their stuff get pulled down. It's been a few months. They've had to cut their price. They've, you know, lost their president or their CEO. Somebody had to get replaced. Like, the collective is probably the biggest strength in this that we are not gonna stand for your do you guys curse on the show? Yeah.
Mixed signals, mate. We do. He he edits him out. Oh. We're not gonna stand for your Tom Foolery. Tom Foolery. Excellent word. Excellent word of the day. Tom Foolery. Maybe that maybe that's the safety word. That's the safety word for quadrants. Podcast. You say that too loud, and that's it. End end of session. That's their CFO. Tom Phillips.
So was Hub Hopper? Did they have ads? Were they Were they pushing ads on that on that content or just changing your stuff enough to to go to their site so they get traffic? But, I mean, you think about there's gotta be a motive besides getting content. What was their motive? What what are what are they what are they hawking? No. I mean, their motive was to get people on the platform and to keep people on the platform and to, you know, get higher
SEO rankings on the platform. I don't really know what they're you know, monetization model was gonna be in the long run. Like I said, email podcast app. I wasn't gonna use it. I had no interest. Like, I I
It didn't really Modify is what Swedish. So Sweet. Yeah. But, I mean, with a they've obviously made a very massive imprint here in the US. I don't know if Hub Hopper really even cared about this market or I I look, maybe they could. I I don't know. My interest was, you know, there's a story that said this, and then I saw the the hijacking. I was like, oh, that is weird. So and then also after Tim commented about what happened to a show, like, I went and checked out my shows
to make sure the same thing that that nothing was happening. And then, yeah, I mean, I was following what James was saying about the the fixes and things like that. But yeah. I mean, I can't imagine anybody's ever gonna use this app. I don't know why anybody is watching new Comcast Player apps. I just don't get it. Well, Tim, where's your show stand now? The the show stands, I I contacted Hub Hopper and used my mad twin dad voice
on that. I won't use it on the show here because we'll probably get kicked off the squad yet. But I I I I did let them know. Hey. And they kept they kept coming back at me saying, oh, well, we're just providing a service. We're just trying to, you know, be nice in the in the podcast world. And I said, That's fine, and, Andy, I did not submit my stuff to you guys. And what has happened now is Google Podcast
is shooting me over to your website, not to my website. So you're stealing traffic from my website and you're putting it over on your website. you have altered my RSS feed, which I'm very, you know, protective of. And and I got that protection from Todd Cochran
of all people because, you know, I know we're talking about him earlier when he was talking at Indy PodCon last year about, you know, protect, you know, your RSS feed. This is this is yours. You know, that was kinda ringing in my head while this is all going on. What they're trying to do with Hub Hoppers trying to do is, you know, get
get people get eyes in front of the screen, in front of their screen, not in front of your screen. So where we're sitting at right now is I told them I said, listen, you know, cut the crap, knock it off. So they went ahead and took down their mirror page, And now you get a you still go to Hub hopper, but you get a 404 error. And then when that happened, I said, hey. How about you fix this and do a redirect
back to my website. Just do a redirect on your website and shoot it right back to mine. And at that point, it's radio silence. They refused to do it. And, you know, it's Google has contacted me because I contacted to Google, and they're looking into it to see what they can do. But, basically, it's gonna be until Google's, you know, goes ahead and reindexes everything.
that, hopefully, it'll be corrected the next time that that happens. But we're talking almost a week now, and I just checked it before we started recording here. Yeah. Still going to HubSpot for 4 hour. Wow. I don't get because I moved with Podbean, I can see
who is and whatnot who, but I can see the apps that are accessing my RSS feed, my podcast, and Google Podcast is now 1 of them, which is fine and Danny. But let's say, after this episode, I blow up and, you know, and and it becomes a fantastic thing. And all the people that I've trained to use Google Podcast try to go to the website from there. ain't gonna happen. They're gonna go to this hub hopper 404.
My my big sync with it is, this is my podcast. This is my baby. And it it's a little baby. It's just starting up. but you guys have now, you know, put your little stamp on. You you've tattooed my baby, and I'm not I'm not I have tattoos.
That's fine. I tattoo myself. But don't tattoo my baby with your name across its forehead. No. Because I I that that's that's that's no bueno. There kids. No. That's not gonna happen. -- poor world. There is a thing about velocity and having the gravitational pull. Maybe that's my word of the day. of having so many people go to your website, having those traffic numbers. And looking at their website right now, they they said they have get the app. Apparently, there's an app for this too that's got already 6000 downloads
on on Google Play, and it's got 4 out of 5 stars. So people are and it says teen. It's teen friendly. I get the sense that if they are capable of hijacking feeds, and driving people back to their website that they could probably also, you know, artificially inflate their download. Yeah. You would fake reviews in there. it's almost like they it's
it's strange because a lot of that content looks like it would be very ideal for people from India. I mean, a lot of it's in it's in Hindi or in in English as well. There's a couple different mixed languages in there. There's there's content for Muslim Buddhist.
murder mystery. I mean, it's got everything in there. So I can imagine it's it's it's almost like you wonder if they tried it to see if they could do it. And knowing that now they could do it, what a deal. Did that prove to them something, you know, was there an intent there? It was Eric
I I like there's a there's a philosophy out there that says that 90% of things that happen are usually due to ignorance, and it's at 10% that's actually gonna level it. Everything else is just dumb stuff that people do and, you know, it happened. But there's a little bit of malevolence in there. I would say that maybe they just did something dumb. They didn't know they were gonna do this and, you know, oops, It's a happy accident because, you know, at the scale of cloud,
happy accidents can be, you know, thermonuclear. I'd be curious to know how many feeds this disrupted. I would really like I would be interested just to be the statistic just to find out if it was just feeds that came from 1 particular section or 1 particular still 1 category or where did they I'd be curious.
Yeah. I I I my guess, my assumption is that it had to be more than just a happy accident. Okay. They'll elaborate on that. What do you think? What's what's your what's your what's your Spidey sense telling you? I think if it was just a happy accident, they wouldn't have had to have 2 different responses for why it went down the way that it went down. Right? because first they claimed, oh, it was a glitch. It was a bug. We didn't mean to do it. And then they claimed, oh,
it was because we were trying to get SEO. Well, it's 1 of the other. So right there and then I'm already suspicious of, you know, what you're doing. And, yeah, I mean, also, if you're just trying to run a website like so many others are doing, why not just pull the feeds the way everybody else is doing? Simple. Done.
Well, like Yeah. Exactly. Like, why did you have to it it just it doesn't something doesn't add up if they're gonna do both, you know, for it to turn out the way that it's turned out, I I just don't buy it. Well, if you go back into the into the podcast, the archives, and you start to look at the companies that have done this, 1 in particular is cast box back in 2018,
where they were pulling feeds and making changes. They were removing links from from podcast or websites, and they were what else they were? They were they're changing RSS feed. There was, like, about a couple of little some some sketchy stuff going out of cast box. Right. And then later on, Himalaya last year was accused of doing some some RSS feed hijacking or including feeds into their application that was it was not that people didn't want. It sounds like either revision you know, either either we're not learning from history or it's rhyming a lot. is there a is there a strategy that some of these companies employ to that think that, like, you were talking about earlier, that pulling in the feeds and then sort of twitching with the feeds. Do they think that no one's gonna catch them? Is it is it ignorance of the community? Or do they just not care?
My sense is that these guys probably weren't paying enough attention to the community to even know what went down with CasBox. Right. Like, I I don't think that, you know, somebody doing the set of India is necessarily looking around going, I just read pod news and
maybe we shouldn't do it that way. Like, here here's what I could tell that these guys are kinda ignorant what they were doing and or don't care. So James posted you know, he always posted a tweet that says, in today's episode, you know, today's issue, you know, 3 headlines. And the headline was another company gets caught hijacking
RSS feeds, and he tagged Hub Hopper. And Hub Hopper, their Twitter account just retweeted it. Like, they were proud of it. Like, oh, check us now. We got another mention in positive. It's cool. Blah blah blah. Yeah. Like, you can't be that I I yeah. I I just can't imagine that somebody who doesn't who's like that, who who isn't paying that much attention.
to what they're actually reading over there, knows about all these other problems in the past, and probably was just like, whatever, we could do this. These feeds are open source. Why not? Who's gonna catch us? And what can they do if they do? That's my sense. That's an interesting observation about that. I mean, thinking about I guess you could argue it either way. You could also argue that because they don't attention that maybe it is just -- Whoops. -- just knowing that that that happened on Twitter. I mean, that adds another element to the story that it starts to make them look a little bit more mischievous
in this regard. Juan, I guess the other thing that was always really interesting about the whole story too was that James had to he couldn't get a hold of them directly. He had to go out and actually reach out to their investors. in order to get them basically to respond to the story. So, like, the whole thing feels kinda shady. If you're gonna make a company, if you're gonna make an app and then make it nearly impossible for people to connect with you. I don't know. Just feels icky.
Now and they may have learned something from James because they when I reached out to them twice, they within a day, they were emailing me back and giving me non answers and, you know, well, we're just now trying to be part of the community. turn to be a good neighbors and all that kind of stuff.
And so I I don't know if I just hit a magic email or something like that or if it was because of James' influence. But, yeah, they responded me within a day just like Podbean did. You know, they responded Podbean responded to to me within 8 hour 8 to 10 hours, and that was good. Google, I was shocked. The the the beohimath
of Google, and they must be listening to our podcast because they responded to me, and that was good. I you know, it's funny you say that because I reached out to Google -- Mhmm. -- about the problem that I was having with my show, and I haven't gotten a response yet. Oh, wow. Well, see, you gotta use that mad twin dad voice in your email. You have to. You definitely have to. Not enough. It's true. Well, I mean, you know, if you got perfect kids, you don't need to use that med twin dad voice. But my kids yeah. I I I use it all the time.
I use it against my wife. I use it against Kyle here. You know? I get stuff done. It's weird that you got a response from Google, and Matthew did not. That's just it's Well, I mean, part of the I guess, part my problem too that I was having with Google was of my own making. Like, it wasn't really Like, the problem that I was having wasn't really Google's fault. Mhmm. So it could also be that they're just like, oh,
go away a little nuts. Yeah. I mean, it it it like, the good news is it got fixed. So, like, I'm happy that the problem is actually solved. But yeah. Like, I didn't actually get an email back from Google. I was like, oh, we're so sorry. We will take care of that right away, sir. It's kinda like Apple. Apple. I get I get some emails like that, and we were setting up the the network page for GagglePod.
There's a lot of those, like, 24, 48 hours go by, and then you get this email comes back and says that that I didn't do something correct. So they're like, oh, we have to tell you that you're dumb and here's what you're dumb. So if you could fix this dumb thing, we might actually do something for you. It's like, ugh. Yeah. Do you think their auto email, like, you know, form filler just starts with, hey, dummy.
Yeah. I I actually they probably they have templates because they've been accused of they've launched PR stuff in the in advance of doing something that looked just like other PR stuff where you could see their their placeholders. So they they have we know they have templates. It's just I imagine they probably answer some of these questions, like, so many times or just like, oh, god. Here we go. Here's another 1. Well, I also think the problem is because Apple, this isn't a revenue generating
arm of the company. Yeah. Until recently, they really didn't have it equipped correctly for how important of a platform it is. Right? Like, to us podcasters, Apple Podcast is the most important platform that you can be on. It's important because it's currently the place where most people listen to podcasts. And it's also important because so many other platforms that people use, the overcast of the world, the podcast, addicts, whatever,
tap into that API. And so I don't think Apple appreciates the responsibility that they have for the podcast, the ecosphere because they don't really make any money off the podcasting ecosphere. That does appear to be changing. They do seem to be making some hires and
you know, ramping up things a little bit, so it might get a little bit better. But it doesn't shock me that their customer service in the space is a little wonky because you know, why are you gonna why are you gonna spend a ton of money on people to know what's going on in this platform that nobody is paying for either us as the
content creators or the audience, the users. Right? Like both sides of that equation are free. When you have other people spending $1500 on a phone who Yeah. You probably wanna make sure that that person's happy first. Mhmm. Yeah. So hopefully, this the next next higher rounds is not like Chad for the mail room. Get to know, hey. You get to go to the podcast team. Congratulations.
Right. Right. Yeah. I know. It's it's yeah. No. Definitely. I I I would hope that's the case, but who knows? Yeah. We we bumped into it to to put creating a provider page on on Apple was interesting because they let us do it. It was a a whole email thing. They let you do it. They let you as long as you put the the author tags incorrectly, you get the page together, and I was expecting
after going there. If, you know, the minute they tell you that it either gonna approve you, you start going to look at hungry and gimlet, and you're like, oh, I'm gonna put a pretty background. I have my go logo there. It's gonna be a it's gonna be awesome. And then then you get their approval, you're like, okay. So how do I change the background? They're like, oh, you don't.
You little fish. you don't get to do anything. Mhmm. And I asked an email back, I said, you know, what's the process for getting the administration in the back end or do I send you a a specifically branded graphic and you guys do it? They said, when your shows have become more popular, we will let you know that you can do this. Well, right. That's like you did now have those creator
icons. Right? Yeah. Show the hosts and the guests and things like that. And, you know, you see people on the Facebookers all the time. Like, where do I change that settings on Lipson? How do I add my picture? It's cute. What I'm interested is that is this industry is is very complex. There's a lot of things that I mean, I bet you
that that after people listen to this episode, that they'll have a a bigger appreciation for what even RSS hijacking or cast jacking even is. But they didn't even know it was impossible. And, like, we Tim tells them all the time. Check your feeds. I mean, you put your stuff in there, go and see what's going on. I mean, they have it have it in their schedule. look at your feeds all the time to see what's going on. See what they look like. I mean, inspect your own stuff. Be a steward of your own show. and there's so many people. We meet them every single week that say,
oh, I'm supposed to do that. I just submitted it and I just thought it was happening. And then Like, we can't find your show on this. I did it on Stitcher. We can't find your show on Stitcher. No. I did it. I swear. Then you go find out that. Well, man, they didn't. I'm I'm I I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I'm going to admit this anyway. Oh, alright. It is it is worthwhile
and a good lesson. But 1 of the things that I love doing as a podcast consultant is allowing people to learn from my mistakes. So I'm gonna let you learn from my mistake here even though this is gonna expose, you know, how irresponsible I was. To your point, yes. Like, put a put a calendar event once a quarter Go check your feeds. Go make sure that your show is updating an Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast.
Wherever you have placed your RSS feed, make sure it's doing its thing. So the other day, I am
working on some back end stuff, tweaking my websites, changing some links, making sure I my personal shows. Like, my my clients, I do a good job of checking and everything, but I I don't pay that much attention to mine. So I'm finally adding some new it's the podcast me anything. I haven't done in almost a year. Cospods. I just did a slew of episodes. I haven't done those in a little while. And I'm looking at my back end stats, and I'm noticing Both of my shows in Spotify
are showing an error. I'm like, oh, that's that's weird. Now, a little backstory, when I launched those shows. I launched them originally on Podiums, and then I decided I should switch them 1 over to Lipson, 1 over to Simple Cast. And then recently, I moved them both over to Captain evate. I'm out. And so But a pin in that 1. I wanna hear that story in a minute. Like, you keep going. Sure.
And so I had done an Ursa. I had done a redirect when I went from podium to Lipson in simple cast, and I thought I had done 1 when I went from the other 1 to captivate. but so I'm looking in Spotify and I'm looking at my show going, it's not it hasn't updated in a while. So I go to manage the feed and I go to change it. they're both showing the old podium feeds.
Like, not only had did they not transfer to captivate now, but they were still 2 hosting companies ago. Oh, wow. And it makes me wonder if when I canceled Podium because it was 1 of those things where I don't I I don't remember if you could just put it in the back end or if you had to email support and ask them to do it. But I guess my show never redirect. So here I am looking at all these platforms, realizing these 2 shows are dead everywhere except for Apple where I manually went in and updated the feeds because at the time, I was, you know, doing it. So I was like, oh, this is easy. Done. Done. So I realized that both of these shows had not been updated properly in a whole bunch of different places.
And even even if I was putting a content, nobody could access them because it just wasn't there. Mhmm. So now I've gone through, went back, made the show is working in all the various places that it should be working, using the newest feed, and lo and behold, it it's back up and running. And in fact, I don't think Hub Hopper could have hijacked my show if they wanted to because my feed was so wrong that they probably hijacked the wrong feed. Yeah. I mean, sucks to be them on this 1.
Well, go back to so you said something very interesting there that I'd like to explore for a bit. I got a little rabbit hole. is we move from pod in to lipson and simple cast and then to captivate. Now we've been told that this may be 1 of these podcasting methods that people who do side on which platform they're going to be on, whatever hosting company that is, they don't ever move. They decide they stay there forever.
explain your thought process for how why you move to those places and then eventually to captivate and and kinda debunk that whole people don't actually move Garbage? Sure. So in my old life, when I was working on the newsletter pod to pod, So pasta Bob was a week weekly podcasting newsletter that was,
you know, every week, we would just spew out all the head lines. It wasn't well written. It wasn't anything that creative. It was just a bunch of headlines. And as pod and we used to do a podcast, pod to pod where I would get to interview all these cool people and whatnot. I got to interview Mark Steadman, the creator of Podiums. I liked him. I liked his platform. He had a really good network plan. He had a couple other features on there that I thought were crucial that I liked. And so
I signed up at the time to have my show hosted there. So, like, alright. Cool. Like, no problem. lo and behold, there were a few problems that I was having with the platform at the time. And since I managed podcasts for so many of my clients, I decided, well, you know, I I should walk the walk. Right? If I tell my clients that I need TVs in these platforms, I should certainly be hosting my shows on these platforms. So lo and behold, most of my clients use lip synch, so I moved 1 show to lip synch, and then a lot of my other shows are are shifting over to simple cast. So I put 1 on simple cast. Right? This way, if a problem comes up for them, it comes up for me, and, you know, we're sort of all in the same boat. Okay. then Mark Asquith comes along with captivate. Mhmm. And I started to take a look at it. And I was
really impressed by the platform that they had put together. And I was starting to get a little upset with simple cast. They went from 1.02.0. And in that change, I think they lost their soul and spirit and were not as simple as they once were. I was running into a a host of little problems here and there, little quirks that just seemed silly, and I I just didn't really think that they were paying as much attention
to the creators as they could have. And and I'll be asked, I didn't raise that much of a stink. These shows weren't that active, so I wasn't worried about it. But I kept getting these bills for separate hosting from Lipson and then from Captivate,
and these were 2 shows that I wasn't doing anymore. I was like, god, this is annoying. And so at 1 point, I I moved over cause pods to captivate because as a producer, it's good to check it out. It's good to test these platforms and know what they're doing. You know, be able to make an intelligent recommendation to my clients, so I always like to try the new things. Move on show over to there. Immediately like the results, thought it was great. few months later, you know, based on what their plan was and how many downloads I was getting, I was like, why am I paying for hosting twice? What I can pay for it once? you know, have 2 shows, manage it all in 1 place. It looks clean, marking the team where it's coming out with new stuff. So I just brought my other show over there.
just recently, maybe within the last 2 to 3 weeks. And, you know, I'm I'm okay with it. Don't get me wrong. I still love Lipson. I think Lipson is a great product. I think Blueberries are great products. I have a lot of clients using that. Big fan of Captivate.
And there's other hosting companies that do a good job too, but these are the the 3 really that I'm focused on. And for my own personal Saturday Saturday, I thought, why not just, you know, keep it all in 1 place, 1 dashboard, manage my shows, manage my client shows. So, yeah, I I made the switch again and redirected correctly, I think. I hope. Right.
Yes. With confidence, it is correct. So I believe at the end of February, your calendar due date for kicking your stuff quarterly of a little pure. So you'll call you'll call it back on the other day. I should eat my own dog food. Uh-oh. I really should eat my own dog food. really interesting. And by the way, Mark Ashworth, a a hundred bucks a hundred bucks. There we go. I think that was a giant commercial for capsule beads.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's a great platform. You know, if you check out my shows and you look at the there's a little captivate button on there. There's an affiliate link. It's totally worth it. I The 1 I would say there the 1 caveat to it is if you think you're really gonna hit you know, fire. If you really hear me to get off the ground and have huge downloads out of the gate and I'm talking 10,000 downloads per episode,
and you're producing weekly, like, you will pay more. And I don't even know what that's gonna look like to really pay more for downloads. I do still have the fact that Lipson has you pay for storage versus bandwidth.
And, you know, I think Lipson still has more features than Captivate currently does, but Captivate keeps adding new ones. Libson has been reliable. Right? Like, they've been in the game for a long time. You you can't go wrong with that sort of long term liability. Same thing with Blueberry, long term reliability. If you were running a WordPress site, like, I think you have to look at Blueberry first and foremost,
but I I like the player for captivate. I think there's a few features that nobody else does. It's slick. It's clean. And the back end, I think it's more simple than what simple cast is today. You know? it's a little bit closer than, like, what they used to be. Interesting. It's like, I I used for a nah the nah pod pomoh, I used wooshedka because it was just free and cheap and I was gonna, like, do 30 episodes and then not ever go back to it. And it was almost too clean. There's, like, nothing there. It's like it's it's just a it's an empty kind of thing for for Wooska.
Gotcha. Where do you go to other ones? Like, Tim just try that. So we're doing do the same bagel you're talking about is Tim just started with Podbean. And then this happens this RSS hijacking thing happens with pod you know, he's on Podbean. I'd I I don't know, Tim, did that put a a a bad put a little burrow in my saddle? But, I mean, I I understand. It's not Podbean's issue.
It's It it's Hub Hopper's issue. So if you're out there and thinking about doing Hub Hopper, see my hashtag, stop Hub Hopper RSS hijacking. or stop pub hopper.
because I, you know, I I I work on the Twitter and all that good stuff. But it it's yeah. I I enjoy Podbean. I like the stats that I get from it. I like the fact that I can take a look at Podbean for 9 bucks a month. have unlimited audio on there. And I can see the apps that are being used, and we're gonna be talking about this in our Vopoda meetup in a couple of weeks here, different different platforms that you can use. But I enjoy that. The website templates look nice.
versus when you go into ellipse and you've got that, you know, kind of very generic and you can you if you know how to gussy it up, you can gussy it up. I don't know how to gussy it up. Kinda curious to find out what the more advanced version is. because I have a feeling I'm gonna be I would be highly disappointed. I I think what would be highly disappointed as well. Most of these platforms, once you go from I I mean, I I have a lot of
fear and anxiety about any free platform. There's another 1 Red circle that's out there that I took a really close look at that I thought was nice mostly because they offer dynamic ad insertion technology. And so if you're running a show and not that you're looking for other people to sell ads on your show, but you personally wanna put ads within your own show that can be a really, really useful tool to have. They're not IAB certified yet, so I'm
certainly you know, suspect of that, and their platform is free to use, which always makes me wonder how long are you gonna stay in business. And if I move everything over and you just shut down 1 day, you know, wear out. Wow. You're a high Right? This keep cutting the heads off and 2 more keep popping up. Yeah. And I mean, soundcloud, like, we're good on them for getting some more money, but why don't you go ahead and update your categories first? Like, for ridiculous how
how behind the times there, and how many people still use them. And and their stats are a joke. But when you heard, they're the number 1 podcasting platform on the Internet. I don't think that's true anymore, especially when you look at the other 1 that might be weighing us down. Oh, it's so true. But, boom. but I'm bummed. I got my moments. The subtlety. Oh, the subtlety. I think we owe Matthew a hundred bucks for that 1. Yep.
Yeah. Check the mail. Why do I get paid for that 1? Because we we often charge you for mentioning 1 hand. So Yeah. You could ask for all our episodes a couple of times. We're where you got billed. And we we figured out who our clients are is we just send them invoices. And if they send us money, that's the that's your clients are.
Very simple process. not no complexity. You just, you know, point people out and, you know, send them a bill. So I think our goal, we have a we had their prediction show at the beginning of the year. Whatever our goals was, someone will send us a $100. Someone out there will take it seriously. In fact, that DC Podfest this year or this last year Dave Jackson walked up to me and says, I think I owe you, like, $900.
He's a good egg using his thing. I mean, that's that's the other thing I will say about the, you know, most of the hosting platforms, whether you use them or not, whether you agree with them or not, like, make sure that the people who are working for those platforms are good people. Mhmm. You know, the whole team at Lipson, 2 Robs, Dave, Elsa, all good people, folks at Blueberry, Todd, and Mike, especially Mackenzie, who you see from a lot, all good people, all genuinely care. Market Captivate.
I was a big fan of Aaron Dodd over at SimpleCast. He actually I just saw on LinkedIn he's leaving. Wow. To go somewhere else, so I feel less guilty now about not using that platform. Most of the other folks that I've met over there are good people too. I I you know, I'm I'm not trying to disparage anyone. But but, yeah, like, just make sure that the companies that you're working with, like, you see them. Right? Podbean, you always see Jess and
oh, sorry. Jen and Shannon. at all the events. Right? Like, if you're using a hosting platform or you've never seen them in a podcasting event or they never pipe up in a Facebook group, like, you know, are they in it for the right reasons? Are they in it to help the community? Are they are you just a paycheck to them? To finish that idea off, then does IAB certification and maybe even having secure socket layers or what they call a encrypted
URLs for for RSS feeds. Is that really kind of the point of the realm now? Is that really where some of these podcasting hosting security wise are going? You think that's a a a is that a cost advantage for I don't know if it stops. It doesn't really stop RSS hijacking it per se, but does it predict you from other things? I think if you're not working with a hosting company that is IAB certified or trying to get IAB certified,
you're not working with a company that's taking this seriously and might not last. Does does is IAB certification necessary for every podcast?
No. Right? Like, I'm never gonna sell ads to cause bots. I'm never gonna reveal my stats to anybody. Doesn't matter if I get 1 download or 1,000,000 downloads. It doesn't matter if I lie about either number. Has no impact on the content I create, the reason why I deal with the people that I talk to, and hopefully, the impact that I can I can have for them. But the fact is that the platform that I'm hosting it on is going to have shows that wanna monetize, wanna sell advertising,
And then frankly, I wanna know is just taking this all seriously. And so if you don't need IAB cert you know, stats, Fine. Whatever you wanna do. But your hosting platform should be trying to provide
industry standards so that the clients and the customers who do need it are are there. And again, just to make sure that they're taking it seriously. Right? Like, if your platform didn't have the new podcast categories when Apple rolled them out, right, if they didn't send you an email within a couple of weeks saying, either we've got them or we're working on it. What are they doing? Right? Like, why are you with them? If they're not paying even like, if they can't pay attention to those little things, then what are they gonna do for you and you have a real problem? That's that's my 2¢ on that aspect.
As far as socket, whatever you mentioned before, I don't know. That's way above my take. Right? It's the i n d. Yeah. That's the That's here's that's what it's h t t v s. It's the -- Oh, yeah. -- as near gap. That's encrypted feeds. Yeah. But where, like, that's why I don't run my own RSS feed because for me, like, I don't have time to understand, like, I'm not an expert in coding. So that's why for me it's worth to spend money on good hosting.
to ensure that my feet is always compliant. It is safe. It is secure. It is, you know, Apple is happy with what we're doing. Spotify. Right? Like, those guys are talking to
the players that I need to communicate with, that frankly, as individuals, we would not be able to communicate with. The whole point of using a lip tint or a blueberry cap screen is because they are working on your behalf to make sure that your show goes off of that a hitch. So, you know, as long as I feel confident if they're doing their job, I can do mine, which is try and make great content. Not saying I do, but I can try.
caveat. Oh, I don't sell yourself so short there. My clients make great content. You have you have some for using the content yourself. Yeah. In fact, some of that content, what is let's let's that's gotta, like, review that as we're as we're wrapping up the show here. Uh-huh. because you're you do the the podcast consultant. What is the podcast consultant? It's kinda like your elevator pitch. What Why would someone want a podcast consultant?
If you are a business, a brand, an individual, someone who wants to have a podcast out there, You want it to sound professional. You want it to be something that you could be proud of, but you also just don't have the time to put in all the effort to make sure it does all that, that's what we're here for. We help folks launch edit, produce, publish, promote,
and in many cases profit off their podcast. And for many of my clients, all they really have to do is just talk into a mic. I'm not saying that podcasting is difficult and that everybody needs a producer or an editor like myself or thousands of others who are in the podcast editors club or in the other Facebook groups who will be at the podcast editors conference coming up in a couple of weeks. But there are folks who I sort of equate, it's like mowing your lawn. Like, anybody can mow their lawn. It's not that difficult. But for some people, that hour every weekend to mow their lawn it would be more valuable for them to use that hour to spend their time with their kids or work than what it costs for somebody else to do it. And so if your time is more valuable to you than what it costs for us to produce your podcast for you, give us a call. Right? Like spend spend your 9 to 5 making money the way you make money. and we'll make sure you have a great sounding podcast that you're you'll be proud of and that will help your brand. And you can find in the show notes the podcast consultant.com
if you wanna do that. And that's a good segue to the second 1, which is a a little more niche for you. And you had some I know you had some complexities with the naming of this 1, but Cospods. Yeah. So originally CosCast, and I I was doing well. The podcasting business and I I had a moment of crisis where I'm like, this is great. You know, I'm making money doing podcasts. This is a lot of fun. I I can't believe this is real. but I also had a moment. I was like, I help rich people get richer,
which is fine. Like, I've I'm no problem with rich people getting richer. Like, everybody should be successful. I don't work with bad people, so I'm not you know, I have no problem with them helping them, you know, do better. But I just didn't feel like I was giving back In any way, shape or form, and I thought I could do more and feel a little bit more satisfied that I was helping in a positive way. So I was talking to some folks about podcast, and I was seeing nonprofits, and when I struggled. And I was like, alright. Let's help him out. So cause casts originally now cause pods. Basically, if you're out there, you're doing a podcast specifically for a good cause, whether you're part of a 501c3,
talking about your medical ailments, talking about social justice, you know, just trying to give voice to the voiceless. Recently did an interview with a guy who goes out and talks to homeless people. in the Pacific Northwest. Really cool podcast. Another 1, LGBTQ voices. That's a really good 1. a few folks who have medical ailments and nobody was talking about it or podcasting about it. And so what I do is I allow those people to tell their story Why they're podcasting?
Learn about their journey specifically as a podcast. Right? What mistakes they made along the way? What have they learned? Ideally, some advice for the next people who might be thinking about the same thing, but, you know, aren't sure they wanna pull the trigger. And then we try and get more people to listen to their show, and we put donation links to either their cause or their favorite cause that is related. So, hopefully, we can drive more awareness and maybe even a little bit of funds to to good cause That's awesome. And you've and this has basically been an entire episode of of of podcast me anything.
And, yeah, I mean, podcast me, I think I just I I need a platform so where I have an excuse to talk to people in the podcasting space. So it's always good to have a podcast about podcasting. So, yeah, it's just I love being able to talk to you guys, Tod's, mics, Rob's. I just had a I was doing a trip up to Boston Got to talk to Karen Yankovich, a LinkedIn expert, Pod Vader of LockDown Sports, met a brand new guy, Steve Meeter running podcast, New Hampshire,
doing some pretty cool things up there. So, yeah, it's just nice to have a platform to talk to people. I mean, yes, you can have a podcast, put up great content, grow an audience. That's all well and good. But sometimes just having a podcast opens up doors and conversations that you
never would have had. So Well, like, I don't know. Like, I I know I I'll see you guys at conferences and whatnot, but we never would have just, you know, chatted about this whole hub hopper, hubble, blah, blah, blah. So Hubblew. That's how I got auto corrected on Facebook about this 1.
Right. Like, we we were back and forth a little bit on Facebook about, but we never would have talked about it. But The fact that we have microphones and, you know, wanna have this conversation, you know, here we are an hour later, having a good conversation, laughing, learning,
exploring. It's just it's a great way to converse with people. So that's why I keep podcasting anything around formally pod to pod, formally. Oh, what was it to first time. Oh, man. I had another 1. He was -- No problem. -- renaming everything. Yeah. The Pada podcast. Pada 1st. That's was my first podcast about podcasting. That's funny is this is a podcast about podcasting, talking to a podcasting consultant who has podcasting, who's also talking about podcasting, on a podcast about podcast.
See, that's it. That was fast. That's a lot of popping peas. Someone's gonna have to get rid of Larry Gail. Adception. That's what that was. That was Podception. Yes. It was. So, Matthew, it's been awesome having you on the show. It's always a joy talking to you too. So, folks, we wanna definitely thank you for listening to our show this this fine, fine day. Folks, we're talking about cash checking here. We're talking about RS says hijacking.
It happened to me. It could happen to you. Be careful out there like Matthew was saying. Set it up in your calendar. checking once a quarter, once a month. Also, get in those Facebook groups. Get in those Facebook groups. check out the information that is being passed along in there. That's how I found out about it, and it wasn't even directly related to the issue that I would that I had that I didn't know 1 that I had. So folks,
use those Facebook groups, use pod news, use all the newsletters that you have out there. to survive your podcast. And until next time, we definitely wanna thank you for listening to Pod Rec here. You can find us on pod rec.com and you can email us at poddirect@gmail.com.
And, you know, if you wanna be, like, our Patreon supporters here and pop us up a couple of bucks we do have the Patreon links on the website there for you. So again, we wanna thank you for joining us, and we hope you have a fantastic day. And see you next deposit. It took me forever to actually grow a beer that I was comfortable with. I'm not giving it up when you broke something for it. I'll never that. No. Because that would imply that you're an adult from that time.
Zinc. Yeah. I'll be your old there's no point in it going on anymore. Get off my lawn. This podcast is part of the Gagapod network. Find more podcasts like this at gagapod.com.