A New Home for a Meteoric Podcast

After their first kickstarter raised $170k the podcast / radio show 99% Invisible still had an aging tumblr hosting their content. The show's audience was growing rapidly and they new they needed something better for hosting their content. As fans of the show my friend Justin Chuan and I were thrilled to build their new site. We already knew what features we would like in a site and after a few meetings with the show creators, Roman Mars and Sam Greenspan, we knew what features they needed to support the podcast. Together we determined the best solution for hosting their content, provided them with URL shortening, and discussed how these would best fit into their social media sharing strategy. We also found them a scalable hosting solution that would allow them to continue to grow their traffic. The staff have gone on to help found Radiotopia, with 99% Invisible as a member show. This hugely successful podcast group touts 8.5 million downloads per month.

A Media Player that Lets You Browse

The show itself is delivered via audio files. But the website hosts supplemental information for each podcast and there is a backlog of episodes to browse. We wanted something that would let you listen to the show while browsing the site, but didn’t like the pop-up players that are popular on other sites. We found a plugin solution we were able to theme called SCM player This allowed us to build the experience that we wanted within their budget for the site. You can play and que episodes while browsing the site without interrupting your stream and without the need for an annoying pop-up player to manage.

Design by Justin Chuan and development by Dan Vallentyne