The ever-increasing reach of Facebook is undeniable. The social networking site has added many new features over the years to extend its ability to connect people and deliver different forms of content. One of Facebook’s latest endeavors, Facebook Live, has already been used by many podcasters as either a broadcasting tool or a way to provide supplemental content. And while Facebook Live may prove to be useful to independent producers, it’s also being used by large brands. This interest is likely what led Facebook to review some of its metrics and reporting practices. The company recently published a blog post on its Facebook Business site addressing changes it has made to these systems.
The one item that may be most interesting to podcasters is Facebook’s new policy for measuring video completion. Video completion is Facebook’s stat for showing that a video has been watched all the way to the end:
When partners upload their videos to Facebook, the full video length is recorded, but when the video delivers to people’s devices, the length of the video can sometimes be a fraction of a second shorter or longer. This occasionally happens when the audio and video track don’t line up, owing to differences between video players and devices. While someone may watch a video to completion on their device, the audio may continue to play for a bit longer. This particular issue caused us to undercount the metric ‘video watches at 100%’ (previously named ‘video views to 100%’). Moat found this and reported it to us. We are now updating how we read the video length to address this issue. This may result in roughly a 35% increase in the count of ‘video watches at 100%.’ For example, if ‘video watches at 100%’ were 1%, they would now be 1.35%.
(Note: Moat is one of Facebook’s third-party measurement partners.) According to the above paragraph, Facebook will be tweaking its “views to 100” metric retroactively, so producers may see a noticeable increase in this category when viewing their stats.
A different Facebook feature that probably isn’t used by many podcasters yet, but might be used more in the future, is Instant Articles. There are also changes coming to how Facebook measures interaction with Instant Articles:
Instant Articles is a way for any publisher to create fast, interactive mobile content on Facebook. We also provide publishers with insights to help them understand how their content is consumed. We’ve determined that the average time spent per article had been over-reported by 7-8% on average since August of last year. This was caused by a calculation error: we were calculating the average across a histogram of time spent, instead of reflecting the total time spent reading an article divided by its total views. We have now fixed this issue.
Here we have a case that’s the opposite of what happened with the video metrics. If you’re already using Instant Articles and saw the “average time spent” metric go down, that happened as a result of the changes covered in the above paragraph.
These two examples just barely crack the surface of all of the changes Facebook is making to its metrics and reporting system. Click the link above if you’d like to learn what else Facebook is working on in this area.
Every year, things slow down a bit at Apple during the holiday season. And 2016 is no different. Last week, Apple sent an e-mail to all registered iTunes Store content providers to let them know what Apple is planning for the rest of the year.
No single company is still talked about more when it comes to podcasting than Apple. Since its addition of podcasting to the iTunes Store in 2005, most of the podcasting news made by Apple has revolved around podcasting apps and distribution. But that changes this month as Apple will actually be an active 
The Canadian Broadcasting Company, better known as CBC, was one of the earliest public broadcasting organizations to adopt the medium of podcasting. Many CBC shows have been available as podcasts for years. And while those shows are still technically available as podcasts, the CBC is now trying to block some podcast-consumption apps that carry CBC podcast feeds.
We’ve all been there. You’re listening to a podcast or audiobook while you’re out for a walk or driving a car. You hear some amazing piece of information you’d like to save for later. But you’re just not in a place where you can easily take down some notes. Maybe you take a screenshot of your device’s mobile player at the time where you heard the audio you’d like to save. Or you try and make a mental note of this important location within the audio. But most of the time, you simply forget about it altogether. A new app called RememberMe that’s currently in development is looking to change that by giving you the ability to 
It’s no secret that audio editing is a task many podcasters must begrudgingly embrace. While modern digital audio workstations have come a long way to make audio editing easier, these applications are still lacking in tools that truly speed up or automate the process. A skilled audio producer will be able to see some obvious correction points when looking at waveforms within an editing program. But for the most part, when it comes to editing spoken word tracks, it’s necessary to listen to all of the audio that’s been recorded.
It seems like it’s been only a few months since the Podcast Movement 2016 conference wrapped up in Chicago. The 
The WordPress web publishing platform has been used by podcasters since it began to receive widespread adoption about a decade ago. WordPress began as an open source project and it has remained that way. This has allowed the platform to cater to a variety of plugins and extensions that have made WordPress one of the most powerful and popular content management systems in the world.
Apple has probably empowered the medium of podcasting more than any other company. The Cupertino-based technology giant gave podcasting its first big boost when it added podcasts to the iTunes desktop application in 2005. Thanks to the popularity of Apple’s breakthrough portable media player, the iPod, iTunes had become a ubiquitous destination for consumers looking to easily acquire new audio. And when those users suddenly found a podcasting directory chock full of free content next to their favorite music store, they began consuming podcasts in droves.