If you know who FireAnt is, you either love podcasts or you’re a long time reader of this blog. The company built up a cult following in 2005 and 2006 as the podcast directory and player, and competed head on with Evan Williams’ Odeo for mindshare and users.
FireAnt’s assets were acquired by Odeo for $400,000, they companies will announce today. Not the old Odeo, but Sonic Mountain, which renamed itself Odeo after acquiring it earlier this year. For less than $2 million, Sonic Mountain has now put two of the more well know podcasting brands together under one roof.
The acquired assets include FireAnt’s technology, particularly their desktop media player for Windows and Mac, as well as FireAnt’s database of feeds and metadata. Founder Josh Kinberg joins Odeo to lead product development and integration of the Odeo and FireAnt technology.
Everything will be branded Odeo from here on out, so take a good look at that screenshot. If you are a FireAnt user, it will be changing significantly soon.
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Congrats to the new Odeo and FireAnt! Great to see new beginnings for early-to-market Web 2.0 companies that still have a lot of potential.
Look forward to following Odeo’s developments in the coming months…
Congrats go out to Josh and the Fireant team.
I’m a loyal fan of Ev’s work from Blogger to Twitter, and like hearing that new “peeps” are in there giving some much needed TLC to Odeo. Man, I feel old now with the references to 2005/06 and how fast time is passing, what with the Singularity getting near and all… welcome fireant.
This podkast thing will never work!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Hey Fake Steve — it’s FakeFake Steve. You’re right. That online video thing will never work.
Somebody sure got up on the wrong side of the Internets this morning. Here, let me sendyouadrink - dot - com.
I have been using their unreleased version for about 3 mos now and it is awesome. When I make the plane trips back and forth from the east coast, it’s nice to have my shows right there on my laptop to watch or listen to instead of the crummy in-flight movie.
We’re really excited about the FireAnt acquisition. The media player and mobile component are key pieces in the Odeo puzzle. Josh and team are a great fit. Thanks to Ev for the recommendation!
Congrats to the team for making this happen. You have made amazing progress. I am excited for the relaunch of Odeo!
congrats on the acquisition! Hard to do for smaller companies, especially these days , avoiding the infamous TC deadpool.
Maybe this is a case study in how to adapt to market changes and survive, even thrive. I do remember reading about Fireant, way back when… in 2006. Wait….even further back was “who would become the Flickr of Video” before YouTube was YouTube. The web was a different place then. Will check back and see what happens next for odeo. Funny that Flickr still doesn’t have video….yet.
FireAnt has sat since April with no updates, no release of the “beta” player, basically no progress that I can discern. A strange acquisition for ODEO.
I’ve had some interesting comment-conversations with kinberg in the past - check out…
http://techfold.com/2007/04/16.....confusion/
Anyway, good luck to whoever works at FireAnt in their new home.
@ Rod/TechFold
Um, it seems pretty obvious why there’s been few updates if an acquisition was in the works. See the above announcement on TechCrunch. So FireAnt has software technology and Odeo has users… FireAnt has Video and Odeo has Audio… make perfect sense to me.
Duh.
Interesting! I guess Fireant now joins in the Lawsuit fray:
http://tinyurl.com/2aacp3
or how about this lovely tidbit on Podcasting news:
http://tinyurl.com/2bhoee
These guys have no shame!
The new Odeo is clearly make strides to attain the dominance it once had in the podcasting space. As mentioned above, the marriage of audio and video has merit. Now, it’ll come down to the execution of their marketing plan.
What Marketing Plan? Half of the posts here are from company insiders. Free Blogging is all they can afford in their Marketing Plan after spending money that doesn’t exist. Looking forward to December relaunch. Forget about marriage. Odeo and Fireant partnership opens the door for “Home Grown Porn”. Let’s market that baby!
http://tinyurl.com/2wakxu
Regarding Rick Arturo’s comments to Liz Gannes over at NewTeeVee, “Arturo said “he attributes the ill will to an ousted CEO who left on bad terms.”
I am the founder / former CEO of SonicMountain/Odeo. And, I am no naysayer. I own the same percentage of the company that Rick Arturo does. It was completely my idea to purchase Odeo from the onset and negotiated the purchase with Evan Williams directly. I still believe strongly in the ODEO community and potential.
Why would I not want to see SonicMountain, the company I founded succeed? Differences of opinions always existed within the Management of SM/Odeo, and continue to be, in terms of Corporate Governance, investment from reputable sources and having a strong business model in place. Blaming me for the opinions of the comment posters in the Blogosphere is a “cop-out”. Time will tell as the blogging community are very astute.
Lastly, I wish Odeo all the luck in making a go of it! Rick, work hard and be honest to the community. All will then fall into place. For now, the world is watching everything you do.
(note- ‘Don Pogue’ seems to be a pron spam link in that tinyurl.)
I haven’t used Fireant- or other podcast directories- but I do know a bit about selling a startup. I’ve seen how long it can take.
Rod, Chris H. is right. Selling a startup can take an intense amount of time and energy (this isn’t the 90’s boom: getting $400k now can be harder than getting $2000k was then). If you’re in negotiations then you’re limited in what you can answer.
As to lawsuits- well, having recently seen the end of a 18 month lawsuit, all I can say is- ‘win or lose, only the lawyers win.’ And that’s with us winning.
Every day that lawsuit sat like a 20000 pound weight overhead- which was the point of the suit, I figure. But we learned to live with it and as said, we won. Lawsuits are like earthquakes in Silicon Valley- there’s always the threat.
Guess I’m just saying to all the Odeo people here- talk to your fellow techies, and you’ll hear a hundred stories of lawsuits, half of them around M&A time. It’s part of the game. You just have to keep playing.
This is a testament to Josh and the Fireant team having built a truly prescient company…and to their commitment to and support from the videoblogging commmunity. Congrats to Josh and everyone else behind Fireant .
The comment thread that must be angering everyone (if wordpress comes back up):
http://www.podcastingnews.com/2007/06/12/odeo-2/
Reuters summary of Mr. Arturo’s tenure at SiVault Systems Inc:
http://www.investor.reuters.co.....e=snapshot
So, Mr. Arturo, what is the current address of SonicMountain and what is the current address of SiVault? Or does niether company have a real address and you just use a lawyers office for the company HQ?
I love a good start-up success story, but FireAnt isn’t one of these as far as I can tell. They never finished or delivered the beta software as promised, and left many of us wondering what the hell was going on for way too long!
So when I hear that the same CEO who obviously ran FireAnt into the ground and turned his back on his end-users and community for so many months is going to oversee the combining of ODEO and FireAnt into one offering, I can only imagine the train wreck that’s about to happen there!
FireAnt RIP!
SiVault’s history:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed.....016612.txt
We incurred a net loss of $23,900,354 during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005 and $3,406,660 during the prior fiscal year. At June 30, 2005, we had an accumulated deficit of $42,112,412.
How very petty of you. Cyberstalking the comments. Writing posts, linking to them anonymously to more anonymous posts that claim what (?) — that you can comment spam with unfounded accusations non-stop in many places.
It’s called “stalking” and “trolling” and its completely unprofessional, not to mention pure noise and mean-spirited. You have no place in the Web 2.0 community.
It’s obvious you have a demented personal agenda and could give a shit about either of the companies mentioned in this TC post and would prefer to split the baby in half and shit on everything in the process.
Gotta love ex-company rejects who find it necessary to spew negativity. No one cares and eventually it’s going to come out that you were (and are) major assholes. Silicon Valley has heard this story before — so, stop being assholes, ok?
Seriously, give it a rest already and move on graciously!
Chris H., you sound like a company insider from Odeo or Fireant. The Guy from Wantagh has told the truth on podcasting news about these crooks for at least 6 months! I doubt if he worked for SonicMountain.
It is called “Freedom of Speech”! If theses pump and dumpers did not hurt people (which is highly illegal in itself), no one would care. Read what is written about Arturo and his croonies from Sivault. (now called SonicMountain, and now the new Odeo)
Look at the pain his asscoiates caused on the last stock scam caused:
http://tinyurl.com/ywsy9n
Let’s wait and see when the Amergence group (under a new name of course) makes an investment. Next the new “Odeo” issues 100,000,000 shares of stock in a pink sheet company. Press Releases and “features” added (pump it up) to the odeo.com site! No revenue of course. The old management from Sivault Arturo, Moore, ect.. sell everything short. Odeo dies and investors get killed.
The same scam over an over again!
How do I know this? Read up on them! It is their M.O!
I’m not sure why linking to a completely objective SEC filing that is publicly available is Cyberstalking.
Before I hire someone, I look at their resume to see what successes they have had previously.
The folks who are apparently behind Odeo/SonicMountain (Mr. Arturo and Mr. Moore) have a public record from the last company they ran. I think it is more than fair to look at their past record.
Read the SEC filing carefully, and then tell me why this is “stalking”. I think it is more investigative or simply background citizen reporting. Apparently, nobody in the tech blogosphere seems interested in doing reporting, just regurgitating press releases and cocktail party rumors.
I’m not a CPA, but the way I read the filing SiVault raised over $42M dollars by selling stock privately (not through brokers or on a public exchange). They have a number of business that sound high-tech (security software, biometrics, pharmaceuticals, …) but the majority of their revenue came from one customer: The Bridgeport Connecticut School District. The LightTec division was hired to bring Internet connectivity to the Bridgeport schools. A very meat and potatoes network infrastructure consulting engagement, not particularly high tech these days. Bridgeport eventually broke off the contract and they were left with no revenue and no customers, and $42M in losses.
Why do I care? When the SonicMountain aquisition of Odeo was first announced, the mailing address for SonicMountain was in town I used to live in. I was shocked that there was any Web2.0 or VC activity in my old sleeply little subrurban town. That got me curious so I did some quick Google searches and found that the address was a PO box at a UPS store. Then SonicMOuntain announced their new address in Manhattan, when I Googled that I learned that it was the same address as SiVault then I realized that some of the SonicMountain exectuives were also from SiVault. So you do the math… Same address… Same people… I think reviewing the history of SiVault is appropriate in this case and is in no way unprofessional.
Since my curiousity was sparked by the SonicMountain address, I thought for fairness, I would do another round of web searches. It would seem that the SonicMountain address:
500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1650
New York, NY 10110-1650
is an attorney’s office that is used by many clients for a mailing address. (I know there is nothing wrong with that). The following names seem to be associated with this address:
Donald F. Straetz, Executive Director, New York Gas Group
Thomas G. Amon, Law Offices of Thomas G. Amon
K2 Digital, Inc (previously Accelerated Building Concept)
SiVault Systems, Inc.
SonicMountain, Inc
Harry H. Wise III, Esq.
OK so reading between the lines John Roken is in dispute with management because some management nearly ended up getting the company into bed with that strange company that changed its name that was responsible for the Sony DRM software that caused a huge stink, and which may also be suffering from financial irregularities.
Well good for him if he managed to block that deal because the idea that people would trust FireAnt on their computer if it was now owned by the same company that caused Sony so much loss of reputation due to badly written DRM protection software, hmm, well, you get the idea.
Don’t hold your breath for anything exciting to come from the likes of kinberg at fireant. He flat out lied to me and my college friends who spent months working on a video channel for fireant, saying that a new version of the player was coming, that it would connect directly to portable devices and that our channel would be put into the fireant directory. All lies.
Don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner but I checked out kinberg’s personal blog and here’s a guy who doesn’t even bother to update his blog for months at a time and not a hint of video creation to be found. I wonder if ODEO did their homework before hiring this guy on!
I’m pretty sick and tired of these blabber-mouth, self flattering tech CEOs who think they know what film makers want, when they themselves don’t produce nada. Granted my friends and I are just starting out in film making and comedy TV, but at least we try to produce something every day.
“marco” (not to imply anything, but there does seem to be drive-by sniping in this thread. If someone had a project put on hold by the sale, nows the time they’d be putting it into the new company, and not throwing it out for one anonymous complaint.)
As said in #16 I haven’t used Fireant (not my space) so I can’t talk to that, but I do know something about selling a startup.
Part of the reality of startups is that if you have a startup, you can end up putting in 18 hours days for long stretches just to sell it or get the next round of financing. And even with all that, 9 out of 10 startups don’t make it. (Talk to any VC for more.) And selling for $400k is making it- not everyone gets to be Google.
If the company was in sell/ financing mode, then all their focus was going to be on the deal. Plus, as Chris said “it seems pretty obvious why there’s been few updates if an acquisition was in the works”
I don’t care how much they sold the company for, or anything else you mentioned about rounds of financing and what it means to run a start-up.
What does this have to do with making false promises to people like me and my friends anyway?
Nothing personal, but your post really shows how detached you business types are from what matters most, which is making end-users happy!
Its like you live in this bubble of patting each other on the back for a job well done, when the truth is the opposite.
You guys can do whatever you want its a free country and free software, but don’t expect loyalty from people you ignore and lie to.
Hurray for Marco! He has every right to speak his mind.
SF Datawonk seems a bit “fishy” to me. Perhaps it is Josh, a friend, or his obese VP of Marketing? MYOB Datawonk.
Thanks Manuel but I really don’t need support or validation for me and my friends right to speak up.
We also never dealt with any VP of Mktg. and calling the guy obese doesn’t have any place in this conversation whatsoever.
We just had some interaction with the lying CEO named kinberg who talks a game but doesn’t deliver.
“…shows how detached you business types are from what matters most, which is making end-users happy”
20 years ago I might have thought the same- it seems so easy when you haven’t yet had to learn the difference between AR and AP because you didn’t think you needed it.
What makes an end-user more unhappy- a product being late, or a company disappearing entirely? Not even Microsoft was able to get Vista out in time, and it, unlike startups, doesn’t have to spend time fundraising.
Have you ever worked at an unpaid internship? If yes, great, but most people can’t afford to do that. A startup has to have money- unless you’re rich enough to self-finance, the first stage is usually borrowing from “friends and family” (aka “friends, family and fools.” look it up). Next comes angels, and then you try VCs. I’m helping a startup in an angel round right now, and we’ve been working nearly 6 months without it closing yet.
You think startups like the dog and pony shows we try to get to do on Sand Hill Road? I switched from a 9-5 W2 life to a 9-9 1099 life over a decade ago, and every person at every startup I’ve ever been at would much rather be working on the tech than fundraising.
“… seems a bit “fishy” to me. Perhaps it is Josh, a friend, orhis obese VP of Marketing? MYOB Datawonk.”
Nope, just someone ignoring rule 1 of blogs: don’t engage the trolls. The only person saying *not* to speak his mind is the person saying myob.
That sort of statement generally says you’ve never been in Silicon Valley, never been to a Unix conference, never worked in tech. In LA or NYC they might be rare, but here the XXL are standard.
Datawonk, could you possibly be any more detached from reality?
There are no excuses EVER for lying to end-users, none, zippo, nada.
If the company is having financial problems, or is unable to produce finished products, then it should at least have the decency NOT to communicate false information to its users.
The message directly from the horse’s mouth (kinberg) was that new software was on its way, incuding updates to the site and directory. By repeating this over and over for the past months doesn’t make it right or true, especially when you have people like us out here who rely on those promises and spend time creating things, only to discover its all a load of bull.
Your own mantra of defending these liars by saying us users don’t understand business, has given my friends and I endless laughter. Because again, what the hell does this have to do with kinberg lying to people?
It is true that my friends and I don’t live in Silican Valley, but at least we live in the real world where people come first! Either you guys start valuing end users like us or all your doors will be padlocked before too long.
Good luck on trying to raise money for that start up! It must be a hard life having to balance meeting with investors, while you’re here defending why software companies need to lie to end users who don’t understand business!
Get these Mother’fing trolls off this Mother’fing blog!
Fireant had their software acquired by Odeo (see the screenshot above). How is this disrespectful to users? I believe they intend to release it to a wider audience through Odeo. It seems to make sense.
As for “marco” and his “college friends” video channel — where is it? what’s the URL? (you are aware that Fireant does not host videos, right?) This whole comment thread seems to be fabricated by trolls and cyberstalkers.
So what if FireAnt didn’t publicly release their next beta version… how does this prevent anyone from publishing and distributing videos online? Go to YouTube, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Revver, or any of the thousand other sites where you can upoad and share videos.
Or check out other free software apps for subscribing to videos. Check out Miro or iTunes (have you heard of iTunes? I hear its really cool! You should tell your “college friends”
Why are you so caught up with attacking Fireant? Jeez… Get over it already.
Trolls, Trolls, Trolls…
FYI: Cyberstalkers target victims using search engines, online forums, bulletin and discussion boards, chat rooms, and more recently, through online communities such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Indymedia, a media outlet known for self-publishing. They may engage in live chat harassment or flaming or they may send electronic viruses and unsolicited e-mails. [1] Victims of cyberstalkers may not even know that they are being stalked. Cyberstalkers may research individuals to feed obsessions and curiosities that they possess. Conversely, the acts of cyberstalkers may become more intense, such as repeatedly instant messaging their targets. [2] More commonly they will post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards and in guest books designed to a reaction or response from their victim, thereby initiating contact. [1] In some cases, they have been known to create fake blogs in the name of the victim containing defamatory or pornographic content.
When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim’s internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim’s IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. [1]
Stalking does not consist of single incidents, but is a continuous process.
Remember: IP addresses can be tracked. Cyberstalking can be prosecuted.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing and communicating the truth is hardly stalking anyone. What a joke! You think you can threaten people for speaking their minds, or sharing their real experiences with others?
Or do you think that this forum is only for people like you who stand around applauding each other for what you think is a job well done, you and that FEMA guy from New Orleans have a lot in common!
I am really sure that we’re NOT the only users who were lied to by fireant and kinberg, and threatening free speech isn’t going to win you any more minds and hearts out there!
I share Marco’s sentiment 100%
I was a user of fireant who had the very same experience in dealing with this company and its CEO.
Please refer to comment #19 I posted here three days ago when I heard about the ODEO announcement.
Marco-
What you seem to be saying is that you were building a third party application for a product expected to be delivered in Q107 or Q207, and instead it was delayed due to M&A activity until the future. You didn’t get good information about the delay. If they could have told you earlier and didn’t, then that is pure time lost.
Of course that’s harsh- it has to hurt. From your perspective it doesn’t matter why the delay. Me, I’ve dealt with startups that not only delayed, but went kablowee- gone, bankrupcy. My code wasn’t reusable, and 3% of zero is zero. I think that’s harsher. But that’s like veterans at the nursing home telling war stories- it must get boring to you youngsters.
Now that theyr deal is out, go ask them why what happened, happened. Can’t hurt to ask. (While you’re at it, ask why fireant is now a cooking show.)
And that those kind of delays and changes are common obviously is just making you dislike the risk of silicon valley. More stories I could tell about startups where original stock got diluted to zero, even though we were the ones who there from the ground up, and then our shares got ground up.
If we don’t care more about end users silicon valley will get shuttered. Go read a Red Herring from 1999- it’s already happened, and it always will.
Let me get this straight, you want us to go back to someone who lied to us and ask him to tell us the truth about why he lied to us?
Datawonk my good friend, nothing personal but I think you may be in need of finding your own old age home soon!
I don’t mean to be rude but your assumptions are from another solar system! Either you haven’t been reading the threads or you’re just so self absorbed in your silicon valley life that you’re just not able to see anything from any other perspective than from your business head.
Who cares what fireant is now? I don’t. My friends don’t. And I’ve got to get up early for class so, nighty night!
“business head.” Ha. I’m guessing you’re CS or Eng, no? Haven’t they given the lecture yet where they tell you what percentage of you will still be doing pure CS/Eng after 10 or 20 years? They told you that most of you will become something other than coders and engineers, that most of you’ll become project managers and management.
You don’t believe them. I was taking pascal and fortran programming when I heard it from my professors, and I didn’t believe them. Doesn’t make it less true.
But seriously, you spent time- months, you seem to claim- on a project, but you don’t care to find if any of it is salvageable? You don’t want to do a post-mortem, so you can learn what went wrong? Your prerogative.
You appear to be talking as if you think project timelines are written in stone, the way a class schedule is. As if delays, sudden changes, or project cancellations are the exception.
As if for your next project you want to say: “The last project I did got delayed or canceled- I don’t know which, because I didn’t look back to find out. But I want you to guarantee that you’ll never delay or cancel anything I work on. Deal?” Good luck with that.
@sfdatawonk
“Marco Rivera” and “Sandy Oldham” are NOT REAL PEOPLE. This is single cyberstalker making up bullshit people (claiming to be “users” although NO RECORD of them even exists). This is complete and utter fabrication — the very definition of “cyberstalking.”
“Marco” where are your videos with your “college friends”? They don’t exist because you don’t exist.
You only seem obsessed with attacking the CEO of Fireant.
“Marco Rivera” and “Sandy Oldham” are fictional characters written for the sake of malice. They have posted elsewhere, the same posts, in attempt to discredit Fireant and the people involved.
In reading blog posts from people involved with Fireant (Jay Dedman and Clint Sharp), it’s very clear the same shameful business guys who stole the FireantTV domain name from the company are continuing to act unprofessionally, keeping up their abusive tactics designed to intimidate and slander.
Posing as FAKE “users” and posting on several blogs with mal-intent is not free speech. It is harassment and cyberstalking.
There is no excuse for this type of behavior, especially from supposed “business guys” who should know better.
Trolls on a blog (if this is your real name), you couldn’t be more wrong.
An associate of mine asked me to take a look into a prospective investment in that company. With smaller companies especially, prior to spending the time and money on due diligence, I like to come in as a potential customer or end-user to learn about the product offering from the trenches.
It is not an opinion that the fireant website sat idle for months, nor that the CEO made promises for a beta version that never shipped, these are facts that as much as you folks internal to the company don’t want shared, really did happen as public record.
Please read item #10 from this same blog:
rod / techfold.com
September 14th, 2007 at 8:47 am
FireAnt has sat since April with no updates, no release of the “beta” player, basically no progress that I can discern. A strange acquisition for ODEO.
I’ve had some interesting comment-conversations with kinberg in the past - check out…
http://techfold.com/2007/04/16…..confusion/
@40
You appear to be a stalker? What is your real interest?