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SONR is a Terrible, Terrible Idea That Simply Won't Work


I seem to be going through a love-hate relationship with web apps at the moment. I wasn't going to post about this one, but I just spotted a post by Richard MacManus on the subject and I think he got it very, very wrong. The service in question is SONR, a frankly under-baked service that (allegedly) allows you to track your podcast statistics. Richard writes:

I get a lot of product pitches by email every day, but few of them are really compelling enough to grab my attention. But this one did, perhaps because it is a product that promises a much-needed media tracking solution. In this case, podcasting statistics (and later video-blogging). From the SONR homepage:

"SONR (Sonar) is a media tracking tool for content providers. Specifically geared towards podcasters (and later, publishers of video content), SONR's goal is to provide detailed information on how listeners interact with your content. Currently, most podcasters only know when a listener has downloaded their content, but with SONR's media player, providers can now track how much of their podcast was listened to and what the user did while listening."

...This is something that has been needed in podcasting for a long time - ways to put metadata into your podcast AND track usage. I know Marc Canter for one is going to be very pleased about that!

Well, the second I heard the words "podcast tracking", I was interested. Those who have been following this blog for a while (yep, all three of you!) will know that podcast tracking is a thorny problem, largely because the MP3 format isn't suited to tracking. Services like Fruitcast and Podtrac can track downloads, but nothing more. Only Audible has a tracking service that actually delivers accurate statistics, but it gets around the issue by using a format that isn't MP3. In fact, back in November 2005 Dave Winer, Mitch Ratcliffe, Greg Yardley, Jeff Jarvis, Om Malik, Doc Searls and a whole load of other smart folks had a fascinating debate on podcast metrics and Audible's efforts in this space. It's a well-understood topic, and one that has been discussed at length. So here's my beef: SONR will be virtually useless when it comes to the podcast tracking issue.

Here's the huge, huge catch that Richard mentions only briefly: to use SONR tracking, your listeners need to use the SONR media player on a website. Which raises the obvious question: what use is that to anybody? Isn't the whole point of podcasting that it's portable and time-shifted? If you're listening to an audio file on your PC without subscribing to an RSS feed, is that even a podcast? How the heck is this supposed to fix the podcast tracking issue? As far as I'm concerned, SONR is next to useless. It's a completely unneccessary diversion that will take us no closer to accurate podcast statistics. But maybe I'm mistaken - am I missing something here?

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