Improper conflations between "platform" and "host"

[theDanielJLewis]

I see some potential misuses of the term "platform." For example, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and such are platforms. But Captivate, Fireside, and such are hosting-providers.

Also, there can be easy confusion with the word "host." For example, is "podcast host" the person hosting the podcast, or the company hosting the media files? The way I distinguish these two things is using "podcast host" to refer to the person and "podcast-hosting provider" to refer to the company.

[daveajones]

Would changing:

<podcast:id platform="[host slug]">

to:

<podcast:id service="[service slug]">

...clear up the confusion?

[theDanielJLewis]

What do you actually want the data to contain? If you want the ID for that podcast on each app/platform, then I think sticking with platform would be best.

[daveajones]

What I want is a list of the identifiers on each platform to be listable in the feed. I want to be able to read the feed and extract the itunes id, the blubrry id, the google id, the captivate id, etc. Basically any service, host or directory that feed is listed in should be able to be shown with this tag so that the whole world can stop scraping iTunes and the other directories to get this info that the feed owner/host already knows.

[theDanielJLewis]

Yes, I think that should then be platform or catalog.

[daveajones]

I went with “service”. I know it’s not the most accurate in all cases. But it seems the most flexible.