What is Huffduffer?
Shortcut for illicitly inhaling (huffing) toxic chemicals? Nope.
New version of Duff Beer featured on the Simpsons? Not quite.
As a longtime fan of podcasts, there’s something that podcasting definitely hasn’t had – an easy way of sharing or having a fun discovery tool. It’s always been a difficult process as well as social aspects have been lacking. Unless you’re lucky enough to have an aficionado tweet or status their favourites on a constant basis, it can be hard to find new stuff.
Here’s where Huffduffer comes in. It’s a silly name, but it actually means something, unlike most cutesy names of the Web 2.0 ilk – it’s the pronounceable way of saying HF/DF, which is an actual term which is a triangulation method that uses two or more radio receivers to find the location of a radio transmitter. Very apropos for it’s task – finding podcasts.
So of course, I’ve signed up. What does it do? It makes your very own personal podcast feed. That’s right. No muss, no fuss, you drop the MP3 file links in, and voila. People can subscribe and find the newest stuff you’re interested in (a tip – if the link has tracking code on it by someone like podtrac, leave it in – it’s important so that the creators know how many people are downloading and how).
I’m not thinking this is for “cardinal” feeds – which are the basis of the content – but great as “adjuncts” for fans or maybe if you’re a network highlighting the best clips or shows in your network. You can add tags, a description, and see others who are HuffDuffing (Either one of the key sounds, huff or duff, when shortened, are going to be unfortunate shortened terms – “I Huffed That?” Either you’re doing something that kills brain cells or referring to The Hoff, David Hasselhoff. And I’m not sure what “I Hoffed It” would mean. Feel free to expound in comments).
The power is in taking audio content – in podcast form or not – and creating something useful, a soundscape of the things you like or you think others would – and then using the ubiquitous RSS format to distribute that information.
I must admit, as someone who likes good user experience, I really appreciated their signup process. that alone should be copied by others. It’s got a great screen that I had to share below that speaks in.. *gasp* human speak. You can click the image for a larger version.
Sharing integration is not complete with other services such as Facebook or Twitter as of this writing but there is the ability to link and embed, and there is a Firefox plugin and the iTouch mobile experience works well (haven’t had a chance to look at it on a Blackberry, but it’s a well done mobile site – you’ll be using cut and paste for this one so far until there’s a better way – and frankly, on the iPhone with it’s walled gardens, Huffduffer being a mobile site experience might just be the best way to go).
The ability to add in-depth with the notes is really valuable, too. It gives the potential for much more context and content usually only found in blog posts, or it also can be a short blast. I’d suggest being a bit descriptive if you like something and want to turn others on to it.
As to the traditional podcast feeds, it creates an iTunes-acceptable (not submitted to store but able to subscribe to anyway) feed as well as your standard RSS feed for iTunes, Google Reader, Firefox, or whatever else. Then, you can subscribe to the feeds of your friends and find the new stuff that they like.
In short, it’s a simple site that I could see in the future having a lot of potential for sharing, comments, etc. Simple disqus integration might be nice in the future, to make podcasts a much more social experience with commenting in easier ways as many podcast sites and blogs have very poor comment support.
It’s not perfect, it’s obviously new, but I think it’s a good step in the right direction to make podcasting more social.
Check it out at http://www.huffduffer.com and subscribe to my HuffDuff here.
I’m so glad you like the site (I built Huffduffer)—thank you for the kind words.
It’s funny that you mention comments. There was a commenting system on Huffduffer for a while but it was hardly ever being used. In retrospect, that make sense. The moment at which you’d want to comment on something (i.e. when you’re listening to something) is unlikely to be when you’re actually on the website; the killer app for Huffduffer is commuting, jogging, travelling, etc.
I’ll see about adding Twitter integration but I’m wary of adding to the deluge of auto-generated tweets that are already clogging up twitter streams.
Thanks Jeremy for stopping by!
I get what you’re saying about comments – there’s a part of me that thinks that should be on the podcast creator’s site anyway. I’m really torn on that, because my experience with Youtube comments, et all is an exercise in banality, but media measurement people and advertisers seem to love them even though they’re useless content-wise.
I think you’re right to an extent about auto-tweets, but that sharing functionality is part of what users love about services like Grooveshark and Pandora (not saying that’s your competition, but they both deal with audio online). If I like a podcast – it only makes sense for me to be able to one-click it while I’m adding it to my Huffduffer and tweet it out or send to Facebook with a link to my post and my comments. From a user experience perspective, allowing people to take their awesome recommendations to where they are is valuable for them and for the site.
Now, I know with RSS, there’s lots a million ways to make it so that every time I changed the feed, it tweeted or popped it into Facebook somehow. However, most people are simply not that savvy (or are just lazy) and need the buttons there and maybe even widgets in the future.
In some ways, it goes down to what your goal is for the project – and don’t take any of my comments as anything but (possibly) constructive (or ignore my idiotic rantings) because you’ve done a great job.