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PodMatch Proactively Performs a Major Purge of Its Userbase Removing 6,500 Members (Quality First!)

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PodMatch removes nearly 6,500 users from its platform to ensure the highest quality matching of active members on its platform. PodMatch’s #1 focus is quality over quantity and this action drives that point home.

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA – PodMatch, a podcast booking service that automatically matches ideal podcast guests and hosts together to record high-quality podcast interviews, has just completed a massive purge of its userbase. They removed just under 6,500 accounts from the platform that were inactive, low quality, or had heavy amounts of abuse reports against them. PodMatch did this to ensure that the platform remains of the highest possible quality for the members that are using the software properly.

Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch, said, “Earlier this week, I posted on my personal social media about hiring a new team member for PodMatch. Since hiring this person, we’ve gone through thousands of accounts and made the decision to delete nearly 6,500 of them that were not using the platform, spamming, or abusing it.”

It’s important to note that this member purge is a proactive move by PodMatch. They’ve had no complaints or issues with the overall quality. In fact, they are regularly credited with behind of the highest quality.

Alex Sanfilippo’s Social Media Post From May 9th:

A couple of weeks ago, I hired a new full-time employee for PodMatch. They have a very specific behind-the-scenes job that I want to share because it’s a critical position for the company as we move forward.

I believe in QUALITY over quantity. (I’d rather not have the most extensive database of podcast hosts and podcast guests. On the contrary, I only want the BEST guests and hosts!) I’ve been wanting to make sure PodMatch reflects this quality first vision. 💕

So, back to the new hire: This new employee’s job is to go one by one through every PodMatch profile and do a full audit of it from a quality perspective. They check everything from photo quality to spelling throughout the profile and the links. (Also, they’ll submit recommendations for improvement to Alecia so she can pass that along to members who maybe have some room to step up their profile game.)

Ultimately, I want our members to get the most out of the platform. I want to help each of them succeed so they can get their voice out there into the world. 🤟

I’m really excited about this new staff position and believe it will take PodMatch to the next level for everyone using it!

Alex and the PodMatch team received a lot of great responses and feedback from this post. And it caused them to dive deeper into the PodMatch member base to see what else could be done to ensure that it remains the highest-quality platform on the market. Two short days later, Alex posted on social media again – which is the reason for this press release.

Alex Sanfilippo’s Social Media Post From May 11th:

I wanted to let everyone know that PodMatch just performed a massive member purge. In the last 3 days, we’ve removed just under 6,500 accounts from PodMatch.

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to apologize for something.

My heart for PodMatch has always been to help elevate as many independent voices through podcasting as possible. So, I’ve always had this perspective: “The more people on PodMatch means, the more people we’re helping!”

^ I want to say sorry publically. I was wrong about this. I was a bit caught up in the total number of people using our platform, assuming each person was being served equal to the next, but I was wrong.

The right metric I should have focused on was the quality of members, not the quantity of members.

I want to make sure that everyone reading this understands that this purge is PodMatch being proactive. We don’t have a quality issue, and the overall health of the platform is extremely high. I get 5 – 10 messages/emails every day from people commending us on our platform’s high quality. But, deep down, I know we could be doing even better for our members. And that’s the reason for this post, not because we had some pressing issue to fix. (I’m so thankful for this!)

In the last 3 days, we removed 6,500 people that fell into the following categories:

1. Inactive members who have never responded to anything.
2. Once active members who have since stopped podcasting.
3. Members with lots of “Abuse Reports” submitted against them.
4. People who created their profiles to spam PodMatch members.

I want to clarify that we did not delete anyone who uses the platform for the right reasons. (We’re all about helping new people to the industry on either side of the mic!) The 6,500 people we removed were all of the wrong types of people.

I know that most software companies wouldn’t perform a purge like this, and I see the temptation of wanting to watch a member base continuously climb. But, it’s too disconnected from my core values to allow it to happen on PodMatch.

PodMatch will never be the largest podcast guest/host connection software platform. We may even have fewer people using the platform in the future. And that’s a good thing in my mind.

We’re here to facilitate the highest quality, most active, and most value-adding people on our platform, not “everyone.”

PodMatch exists to provide quality over quantity with our matches. Moving forward, this is the metric that we’re going to be focused on more than ever before!

Thank you everyone for your support along the way with what we’ve created with PodMatch. Every day, the platform gets stronger and better, today is an exponential leap toward making it an even healthier platform for everyone who uses it!

We expect this purge by PodMatch to become an ongoing strategy that the platform will use to guide the future health of the platform. Since they now have a staff person going profile-by-profile, we expect them to delete spam accounts as they’re created, and keep an even closer eye on people abusing other members. PodMatch’s purge and shift to quality focus is going to add extreme value to every member and future member of the platform.

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