Ever since we started Streema, we knew we would need to develop a very large database with a lot of information about radio stations – and today we want to tell you a little bit more about how we build it. Essentially, we get our information from three main sources: our Community, an Automatic Aggregation System, and Outsourced Services.
Community
These are our users who every day request a radio station, report a wrong description or give us any feedback, for example. These users are, in many cases, the best source of quality information, because for example, there’s no one better than a radio owner to inform us which is the correct stream or the correct description of their radio station. They also take the time to let us know about a new genre, a radio acquisition or any missing information. We are really thankful to all of our users but specially want to thank Steve who has reported and helped us improve the information for hundreds of radio stations from Canada and the USA.
Automatic Aggregation System
Over the past decade, the web has evolved in a lot of ways, and one of the biggest ways is how information is delivered. At the beginning one of the most popular formats was RSS but recently Twitter and Facebook have replaced it in many ways. We’re working hard to integrate Twitter, Facebook, and other sources of information so that our users can have access to all of that via our radio profiles.
Outsourced Services
Not everything is so easy and fun, because sometimes neither our users nor any automatic aggregation can find the information we need for thousands of radio stations, so in those cases, we have to use other services and get help from other people. To do that, we use services such as Mechanical Turk and oDesk, where people willing to help us can find the information we need quickly, such as slogans, descriptions, telephone numbers, twitter accounts, or anything else we request. We want to thank all the people who have worked with us via these services, specially Teresa and others who are doing a great job at, for example, finding radio show information.
At Streema, we’re working hard today to build the most complete and comprehensive online radio platform, which mostly includes radio stations for now, but in the future will also have radio shows, hosts and more. We hope you help us to make it better and enjoy the journey too. 😀
Stay tuned!
The Streema Team
