Major Updates: Week Ending April 25th, 2025

New features and functionality:

1. Podsite changes:
   1. 1. Contact form:  Paid users can now activate a Contact form with pre-filled question types to drive listener feedback, guest appearance solicitation, and sponsorship opportunities. The goal is to drive the type of inbounds to you that will enable audience engagement and monetization.
         
         • User authentication: Users must create a DeepCast account for authentication purposes in order to Contact you to reduce spam and bots as well as mitigate "bad actor" activities (e.g. harassment, phishing). This user authentication is also used for DeepChat and Listener Comments.
      2. Custom Domains: Paid users can set up a custom domain for their Podsite. This helps podcasters drive even more brand authority around a top-level domain independent of podsite.fm/xyz and enables portability of traffic at later dates if you should ever move off of Podsites as your podcast website tool.
      3. DeepChat: Our most AI-y feature yet! Listeners can "chat with a podcast" or chat with an episode. Responses can include "who said what" to differentiate between the opinion of host vs. guest, create cross-episode takeaways, and more. Links in podcast-level chats direct users into specific episodes (more back catalog engagement and listens!). Episode-level chats drive even deeper engagement with transcription-level citations. This is active engagement with your show at its best!
         1. Citations: We are aiming to add as many citations as possible to reduce concerns around "hallucinations" but also to give you and your fans more shareable objects to spread the gospel of your podcast.
      4. Listener Comments: Based on popular demand... Listeners can post comments on your episode pages. Create more fan-to-fan interaction and awareness as a stepping stone to community. This engagement moves from passive to active—just what you want to develop deeper relations and more opportunities to connect.
      5. Sharing quotes on Episode Pages: Fans can now share quotes—whether episode top quotes or chapter-level quotes—directly to their social networks with one click. (Currently text-based posting to LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Threads, and BlueSky.)
      6. Improved Image Support on Custom Pages: Custom Pages now have more granular control with respect adding and configuring images.
2. Creator Portal features:
   1. 1. Consolidated “Episode Description”: Reduce the copy/paste and synthesizing the most podcast search-optimized episode description by using the new Episode Description as you run new episodes through the Draft feature. Or use it after publishing to your RSS host to update your current episode description. No need to copy from long summary, insight X or Y, add quotes—one object to copy from the S
      2. DeepChat Queries: You as podcaster can see the inbound queries fans are asking of your show as a whole or specific episodes. Pretty amazing view into your listener's mind: what are they asking and what "why" can you infer from that? Are they suggesitng they want a guest to be repeated? Do they want more themed episodes? Do they tend to ask questions more of your episodes with guests or your solo monologue episodes? Are they asking questions about products that you could use to secure sponsorships? The possibilities!
      3. Episode Search: This is a major quality of life improvement for most. You have pages of episodes and you don't want to toggle through in 20 episode increments. The Portal now supports searching episode titles.

Major Updates: Week Ending March 21st, 2025

New features and functionality:

1. Podsite changes:
   1. Custom Pages: You can now create any number of custom pages for your Podsite. Want to add an About Us page? A page about your organization? A one-off page for a promotion or context? You can do all of those with a simple "what you see is what you get" editor. You can also order the pages as presented in your navigation bar. All pages are editable and can be unpublished or deleted.
      • Customize for you: You know what additional pages you want given your show's goals. You might want a featured guests page, a product page about products/services you offer, or a thesis for the show, or... You get the idea!
   2. Color Themes: Choose from 14 color combinations—or a subtle variant of each—to differentiate your Podsite and make it more closely reflect your branding.
      • Brand alignment: It's key across all of your properties -- social channels, YouTube, podcast art, Podsite, blog, etc. -- have brand alignment in terms of look/feel (such as color!), tone/voice in your copywriting, similar font faces, and more. Consistency is key for that awareness to really register.
   3. "Lite Pages": Your Episode List on your Podsite will now also include episodes that haven't been processed using the DeepCast Creator Transcription and AI secret sauces. These pages are fully funcitonal in terms of presenting your RSS feed episode metadata, an in-line media player, and providing links to all other players including Apple, Spotify, plus more (as well as those you add manually).
      • One Authoritative Page: Add all of your content in one place, with your branding, your messaging, and more. Even without the Creator AI bells and whistles on "unprocessed" episodes, the "Lite" pages provide SEO discoverability and 'try-before-you-buy' playback opportunities for your prospective fans.
2. Creator Portal features:
   1. Portal theme colors overhaul: The permanent dark theme wasn't cutting it. It made things hard to read under many lighting conditions, it made it easy to miss things, and it wasn't helping anyone. So, the color overhaul we landed at is much more legibile and accessible.
      • Ease of use: Ideally this means you can do more of what you want through the Creator portal, and faster! 
3. Other changes:
   1. Monthly Pricing: In advance of a more comprehensive tiering structure (Free, Starter, Standard) which will also support month-to-month subscriptions, we rolled this out silently.
      • Try (the premium features for a month) before you buy (for a year): The free account gives you an indication of the free and (soon-to-be called) Starter offering, but you may want to upgrade to the full offering to get a sense if the incremental value offered is worth the cost—and not have to commit to a year in the process.

Usability improvements & Critical bug fixes

1. Quote Cards easier to find: The "Quote Cards" (image versions of Top Quotes) with micro-sites were hidden away on the Insights tab. You can now also find them (somewhat more logically) on the Social Posts tab, too.
2. Transcript downloads: Improved clarity on what button to click to get diarized transcripts, VTT files and SRT files for any given episode. The UI is now clearer, as is the text on the button. Definitely take advantage of these transcripts with your RSS host.

Major Updates: Week Ending March 7th, 2025

New features and functionality:

1. Podsite changes:
   1. YouTube Embed: You can now embed a YouTube channel, playlist, podcast, or single video on your Podsite homepage. In the Creator portal, navigate to the Podsites page for further instructions on how to add video to your Podsite.
      • Meet the customer where they're at: Many listeners are interested in video, if you have it. If you do have it, be sure to share it! The more ways to engage with you the better.
   2. Additional podcast player links: You can now add podcast links for iHeart, Amazon Music, YouTube, and SiriusXM. These are manual for now, but we'll work on automating their retrieval over time. These link updates also show up on your podcast/episode pages on DeepCast.fm.
      • Reach & Discovery: Make sure that everyone can find you on their listening platform of choice.
        • Need help getting your show added on a given podcatcher/podcast player? Reach out to us on Intercom (the little chatbot in the bottome right of the screen).
   3. Media player on episode pages: Each episode page on our Podsite now includes a simple media player for in-line/in-the-moment playback. This pulls from your RSS host's URLs, like any other player, so you'll get all ads and playback credit per usual.
      • Another teaser: The listner has made it this far, solet them play a bit while digging into summaries, takeaways, and more before they jump off to their player of choice to continue listening.
   4. Topic tags/links: All episodes now include Topic tags that are linked for further topical discovery on DeepCast.fm. If you are a paying user, and you wish to do so, you can disable the links and leave these simply as descriptive at-a-glance tags.
      • Ease of use: Let potential listeners very quickly wrap their head around the topics you're discussing to see if it pique's their interest. That's all the headspace some potential listeners have at any moment—topic clouds!
   5. Link to DeepCast.fm listing: The "Listen On" block will include a link to your DeepCast.fm podcast page so listener's can discover and engage with your show content that might be unique to the DeepCast.fm experience, vs. what's on your Podsite.
2. Creator Portal features:
   1. Manual Sync (Standard users only): Need the DeepCast RSS poller to grab your feed ASAP?  Need to get at those insights & transcripts now? Hit the Synchronize Feed button and your episode should be ready for use in Published Episodes in ~5 minutes.
3. Other changes:
   1. Podsite URLs in DeepCast.fm: When you publish your Podsite, the Podsite will now be added as a Website Link on your podcast page on DeepCast.fm.
      • More of you: After a listener discovers you on DeepCast.fm, let them visit your primary/authoritative website (the Podsite) to get at everything else you have to offer!

Usability improvements & Critical bug fixes

1. Fix Quote Card sharing: We refactored how you can generate the Quote Card images to make them much easier to create and share. Remember, quote card sharing is available on the Insights tab under Key Quotes. Just hit the arrow on the far right. (This improvement rolled out a week ago, but we wanted to make sure you were aware.)
2. Transcript Updates & Summary/Insights generation: Updates to transcript speaker labels will trigger a regeneration of all DeepCast insights.
3. Podsite & DeepCast.fm—Re-Order & Edit links: Link names can now be re-ordered for your hierarchical preference (more important at top, least so at the bottom) and you can edit link names & destinations after the fact.
4. Fixed Facebook sharing bug: Fixed a publishing bug when trying to post a Quote Card to Facebook.
5. Link updates: We migrated our "marketing site" to Webflow (a low-code CMS) and a number of links were miseed during the migration. Got 'em now...we think!