Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Your response’s lack of grace/tact, and how sure you seem of your analysis, do not seem warranted given that you are not a podcast listener. You’re trying to channel Simon Cowell but it sounds like this is the first time you’ve ever heard a song.

Meaningful episode art is seldom used in podcasts, and is seldom surfaced in podcast player list views. I don’t know the cause and effect, but suffice to say that they aren’t a meaningful driver of engagement.

Titles for Running in Production are complicated. They are bland but I can’t see how they could be any better. It’s a solo host podcast, with no recurring guests, by design, so there’s no development of the sort of in-show culture that invites funny titles.




I should have said that I'm not an avid podcast listener. I listen to a few and they have in common that the titles are catchy, and not just descriptive. I also watch a lot of videos that are considered podcasts, even though I don't consider videos as podcasts myself. I handpick the episodes I want to listen/watch however, I don't play them as they come.

Point is, titles and thumbnails matter. After reading the other replies, it even seems it's the main criticism regarding this podcast.

> They are bland but I can’t see how they could be any better

I clicked randomly on "uscreen Is a Platform That Helps Content Creators Build a Business"[1]. This title is awful, I stand by it. It doesn't carry anything interesting about the content and sounds like an ad, like all the other titles.

However, the "Topics Include" section contains something that caught my eye: "BREAKING NEWS: Rails can scale and it’s working out nicely for them as a monolith". "uscreen scaled a Rails monolith to xxx users per day", "Scaling a Rails monolith" or "Rails monoliths can scale" are titles I would have clicked on. And I don't even use Rails.

No idea who Simon Cowell is BTW.

[1]: https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/104-uscreen-is-a-pla...


See IndieHackers podcast titles and content for comparison. I agree, I don't want to listen to OP's podcast but listen to IH's all the time.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: