Explain how 'trending' is determined

[keunes]

Hello,

I proposed to replace the iTunes podcast suggestions in AntennaPod with suggestions based on the Podcast Index. One of the arguments was PI cannot provide a list of podcasts popular in the user's country. However, there is a 'Trending' end-point now, so I assume we could use that.

How is defined, though? What makes a podcast Trending? (It'd be great if that could be described also in the docs.)

Trending
get /podcasts/trending
This call returns the podcasts/feeds that in the index that are trending.

Thanks!

[daveajones]

Currently, the trending rank comes purely from how much traffic the api sees for a podcast. If it's being queried a lot, it's rank goes up. It's not very elegant. We are working with two groups currently that are going to start providing us actual curated ranking data that will make that rank better.

If AntennaPod wants to start handing back popularity/ranking data to us that would be wonderful. We can work with them to set up an API endpoint for them to submit that back to us.

[keunes]

We are working with two groups currently that are going to start providing us actual curated ranking data that will make that rank better.

Nice! What do they provide? A ranking based on the number of subscribers? Do they report actual numbers; is it real time? Is it 'global' or country-level data?

So many questions. Might be a topic for one of the dev meetings.

If AntennaPod wants to start handing back popularity/ranking data to us that would be wonderful.

Agreed. Caveats: there's no central server so no aggregated data, but user-by-user. That has serious privacy implications. Would most certainly require a user opt-in, and one that's not scary and not annoying.

[daveajones]

Nice! What do they provide? A ranking based on the number of subscribers? Do they report actual numbers; is it real time? Is it 'global' or country-level data?

I have those same questions! They are still building out their systems so we don’t even know yet. All we would really need is subscriber counts. Something like =n would be just fine.

[keunes]

(largely note to self) As a follow-up on this, here's some points of improvement for this end-point: AntennaPod/AntennaPod#5986

[josh-ashkinaze]

Hi, is it still the case that the trending rank comes purely from how much traffic the api sees for a podcast? I am wondering for a research project.

P.S: Even if it's hard to get other data, I can see using the change in API calls at least as a more nuanced measure of trending.

[daveajones]

Yes, this is correct. It's a curated list of apps that influence the ranking. This is also the "popularity" score in our weekly database download.