Odeo’s Audioblogger, which allowed users to post audio to a blogger.com blog via a telephone call, is being shut down as of November 1 and will enter the DeadPool. Existing files will continue to be hosted.
As much as I’ve questioned Odeo’s ADD business (un)focus in the past (see last paragraph here), I have to say that this is probably a smart move and not necessarily a sign of Odeo’s eventual demise. Odeo says “Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions about what to focus on. And we’ve come to the difficult decision that Audioblogger costs us too much in time and money to continue to run.” Frankly, that makes a lot of sense.
In general we’re seeing a lot of smart and humble moves by Odeo recently, not least of which is Founder Evan Williams’ extremely honest assessment of the company at a recent conference. In our opinion Twttr, which competes with Google owned Dodgeball for attention, should be the next to go as the company focuses on the basics.
Our previous coverage of Odeo is here.
I think now might be the right time for me to backup my old audioblogger content.
It is such a shame that such a popular service has to wind up because of cash crunch.
The reality is that Web 2.0 ventures are very costly to run as bendwidth, staff and servers come at a price. Without a good revenue model in place, I don’t see how any Web 2.0 company can go further than what Audioblogger reached, no matter how good or popular the service is.
I disagree on twitter. I think that it is has a brighter future than the audio tools and such…
I strongly agree that Web 2.0 ventures are very costly to run as bendwidth, staff and servers come at a price.
They should put it on ebay
Isn’t that the thing to do these days?
Twittr is a totally USELESS service. It doesn’t even have a “coolness” factor that extends past 5 minutes.
Bandwidth for such services cost too much!
It makes me remember the gold rush: the poor little guys looking for gold got rarely rich (Except a few ones, you know some… diggers.com…
)… But the guys equipping them with the needed material made so much money!!
Life s**ks baby!
Interesting development. I wonder how this will play out with other startups like us that are moving into similar features. Is it because of the costs, or because of a lack of users that Audioblogger is shutting down? I know they are stating time and money as the reasons, but if you have huge numbers of users, then it makes those considerations more of a minor irritant on the path to success of the venture. I’m suspecting that not many people were really using the service. Are there any numbers, Michael?
Carter, I think that # of users are not a good indication of long-term success. If you cannot make money on the users then it’s more than an irritant – it’s an expense and a loss.
I understand your point. Numbers CAN mean that there is a good reason to expect an emerging succesful business model, though. I say that, but unless there is a clear method for monetizing a feature at some point, then time and money (or the burn rate) can sink the ship. I guess that’s what happened.
i don’t think anyone gives a shit about blogging about “audio”
This is sad indeed – i used to use AudioBlogger on and off and found their service to be quite useful.
Any alternatives for these? – i know i can Google it, but if anyone knows of any service close to what AudioBlogger was, it would be useful
I still think that calling in podcasts or audioblogs is beyond helpful. I’ve always been a huge fan of Hipcast.com (Formerly Audioblog).
drew: set up an asterisk (there should be nifty GUI installers for osx/win asterisk@home/freepbx/etc) and set it to dump your calls to mp3. sign up for some free DID service. done and done
I’m planning on taking over this website. I’ve already offered to them $250,000. Waiting for their response.
http://www.soft...ustomer-loyalty
I still don’t get Odeo’s core business … a single feed for all your podcasts? It’s simply not sustainable in the long run, as you watch it grow from 1 podcast to 100 to 1000s, with no practical way to delete it. Forget about marketing, Twittr, humble CEOs. Odeo’s biggest problem is a simple technical glitch. (The fact the glitch remains, however, is indicative of the bigger picture.) I’ve asked Odeo for feedback on this, but no response.
14 people at it’s peak and it needed a venture round?
Audioblogger/Odeo has been a good pseudo-rival over the months, and I’m bummed to see phone recording/posting go, since it’s a wonderful feature for people from all walks of life– people who want to post away from their computers; tv station news teams; people out away from any wifi network; bands backstage and so on.
They were in this space, like us at Audioblog.com/Hipcast, prior to the arrival and wide adoption of podcast technology (read enclosures in RSS), and I respect them for that.
Unfortunately, these systems require infrastructure that costs real money. We’re one of the companies listed as an alternative– noted as having a free trial, since we’re a subscription service– in a sea of freebies and alternatives.
I don’t really want to see all these services/companies implode because of no business models or revenue. Audio and video podcasting is my love and also my industry. Hipcast might not be Web 2.0 (and that’s SO fine by me), but this movement must continue.
I disagree. Twitter is fantastic – id pay for it.
Does anyone know what’s happening with the audioblog project now?