There's a feature I’ve just launched today — a brand new, ground-up rewrite of Fireside Metrics!
Metrics are one of the best ways for podcasters to understand their audience, as well as monitor the performance of individual episodes and observe the overall growth of their podcast.
Although Fireside’s metrics collection and download tracking system is accurate, the kind of visualizations, data representations, and research tools I wanted to provide to Fireside users just wasn’t possible with the previous system. Additionally, there was no easy way for Fireside users to see all of their downloads at a glance, or download them for sharing or offline review.
The answer: Rewrite the Metrics and Stats features from the ground-up, using the latest, best methods for processing, storing, and archiving this type of data, along with a cutting-edge new charting engine to display it.
I would also need to migrate all the downloads for every episode of all podcasts ever published on Fireside from the archive into the new schema and storage system … several hundred million records in total.
Sounds easy, right?
Fortunately, a longtime friend and colleague at IBM’s Smarter Workforce group offered some valuable advice on the new system’s architecture, helping pave the way for what has become our new Metrics system.
Once I was done designing and building this framework, I wrote special code to reprocess and migrate those few hundred million archived records. I executed this code on several dedicated servers created specifically for this task, which ran 24/7 for about five days to complete the job. After some extensive testing by the team, I’m happy to confirm that the migration was a success, and the new system is ready.
To check out the new feature right now, just click on the Metrics link in the sidebar of your Podcast’s Admin page.
One thing to note: Some of the newly processed download numbers may not match your previous numbers exactly — they may be a bit higher or lower than those previously reported. This is a reflection on our new and more accurate processing algorithm, and is the result of reprocessing each of your Episode’s downloads from the day they were published.
Although we’ve tried our best, I’m sure there will be a few bugs here and there, or edge cases I haven’t considered. Please let me know if you run into any trouble by filing a support ticket.
I hope that the new Metrics will improve your Fireside experience, and make understanding your Podcast’s performance easier and more rewarding.
And just for fun, here’s a short list of some of the other features we’re working on (in no particular order) for release real soon:
- Spotify stats integration
- Alexa Flash Briefings
- Podcast Network Support
- Affiliate Program
- Password protected RSS Feeds and website
- Other things!
So please stay tuned, and thank you so much for being a Fireside customer. None of this would be possible without your input, support, and patronage.
Thank you!
Dan Benjamin
