Disruptive Conversations

My Blue Box podcast on VoIP security hit a fun little milestone today... it crossed over 100,000 downloads this morning.

It still rather boggles my mind that for such a VERY niche subject (and running 45 minutes on average) we've got an overall average of 1,350 downloads per show (and more like 1,700 on recent shows) and according to Feedburner we're now up around 1,100 subscribers to the RSS feed.  It certainly demonstrates to me the power of the podcasting medium to reach niche audiences.

The stats geeks among you may be interested in the bottom half of my post where I talk a bit about the stats.  It's particularly interesting to me that while with recent shows the podcatcher vs direct download stat is about 60-70% podcatcher, the *overall* stats give a slight edge (52%) to direct downloads.  My thought is that this is primarily due to either or both:

1. Listeners going back and listening to older episodes (frightening, but very true!); and
2. People finding episodes through searching for various terms (the beauty of detailed show notes). 

In both cases, they are probably listening directly either via an actual download or through the flash player on the web site.

As I state there, I have to give a huge thanks to the community of listeners we've developed.  I also have to say thanks to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson over at For Immediate Release who continue to let me play in their sandbox as a weekly correspondent and apply what I learn there to Blue Box and other projects.