The RawVoice Statistics system that powers the Blubrry, TechPodcasts and PodcasterNews media download statistics has been updated to detect the Zune user agent.  The Statistics system now detects over 70 different Podcatchers, web browsers, operating systems, phones and web bots.

Other clients that we are now indicated in our Statistics system include VadixBot, YodaoBot, PodPuppy podcatcher, RSS Radio podcatcher, and the uTorrent bit-torrent client

We’ve designed the system so it is easy for us to detect and add new user agents as they start to appear in the community.  We add the user agent to our system once we observe over 1,000 requests from that user agent in a given month.  We take detecting the clients and platforms seriously. 1,000 is very small compared to the millions of requests we handle every month.

We audit the user agents on a monthly basis in order to include the most comprehensive statistics system possible.  The entire process allows us to better support our podcasters in our communities.  During our last user agent audit, we indirectly discovered that the new Zune Marketplace uses the normal RSS image rather than the itunes:image.  We will be sending out a reminder to our community members to make sure both of their RSS images are up to date.

Are you using the RawVoice Statistics system at one of our communities?  If so, please leave comments to this post with your thoughts of the system along with any recommendations that you may have.