Ideas bubbling Claire, yes that's the one downside. I have more ideas than I have time
in the day, but I love it. Enable better discovery of podcasts, allow interactivity from the
fan to the creator and creator back and then monetisation, allow the fan to pay the creator
or the creator sometimes to pay the fan.
Listen to Fanzone, your bite-size guide to getting the most out of the TrueFans podcast
app. In each episode we'll discuss an aspect of the app and hopefully answer any questions
you may have about it. Plus, when you listen to Fanzone in TrueFans, you can earn as you
listen and use your earnings to support your favourite podcasters.
I'm Claire Waite Brown, independent podcaster and all-round podcast enthusiast.
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO and founder of TrueFans.
Sam, we're going to talk a bit about you this time.
Ooh.
I know. This podcast series is all about the practicalities of how to use and get the most
out of the TrueFans app. But I think it's also useful and interesting to understand
the person behind this initiative and the experiences that they have had that make them
believe they should be the one to make it happen.
That's you, Sam, by the way.
Why me is the question, I guess, Claire. So I've been involved in the technology industry
for about 35 years. I started out with Microsoft, Netscape. I've run global corporate companies
like Gateway Computers. And I've done five startups before this. And if anyone knows
TechCrunch, then I was involved in starting TechCrunch.
So I've got a very strong, deep, technical background and I love finding new technologies
and new ways of doing things. And podcasting has been very much a 20-year project, but
it hadn't changed much. And so in the last two or three years, Podcasting 2.0, the upgrade
to what podcasting can do came about. And I was really excited to find out more about
it. It was brought to the market by Adam Curry, who invented podcasting. And he came up with
some of the new ideas. I really liked them. And the best way of implementing those is
to build something. So I decided to build the app and I loved what it was actually doing.
And it's so different to what other apps do. And so over the last two years, we've been
building TrueFans and now we're ready to tell the world about it. And I think you'll find
that some of the things that it can do will make podcasting not only just easier for you,
but a lot more fun and rewarding.
And are you still excited for what's happening with TrueFans now and what can be happening
in the future? Do you still have ideas bubbling?
Ideas bubbling, Claire. Yes, that's the one downside. I have more ideas than I have time
in the day. But I love it because audio doesn't change. We don't affect the audio itself.
So for example, a creator produces the podcast and we don't make that audio any better or
worse. It's what the creator delivers. But what we wrap around it is ways of discovering
and helping you guide through that audio. So chapters are a great way for you to jump
to sections of that audio. Transcripts are great ways for you to read along with that
audio. But as a listener, you might also want to do things like write private notes as you're
listening or you might want to share some of the information in a clip to your social
media network. All of these things are now possible using TrueFans.
Brilliant. And one other thing I just wanted to mention about you and about TrueFans is
that you are committed to making it easy for everybody to connect with listener and creator
alike enhancing what can happen with podcasts.
Yeah, I mean, my three goals are to enable better discovery of podcasts, allow interactivity
from the fan to the creator and creator back and then monetization, allow the fan to pay
the creator or the creator sometimes to pay the fan. And it's about podcasting that pays.
We're looking at all the different ways that we can help generate money, but also fans
to use their time and attention and get rewarded. Sometimes it's in tokens, money, and sometimes
it's in exclusivities, things that the creators may offer them where the other fans will have
to wait, they might get it early. So there's lots of different ways that we want to make
people's use of TrueFans rewarding both as a creator and as a fan.
Brilliant. Thank you so much.
Thanks Claire.
Thanks so much for listening. There are lots more episodes of Fanzone for you to get stuck
into and that show you how to make the most of the fab features that this forward looking
podcast app has to offer podcast listeners and creators alike. We'd love to hear from
you. You can send us a comment on TrueFans, more about that in the Fanzone episode on
comments or email support@truefans.fm.