Buzzwire Gets $8 Million For Mobile Streaming

Buzzwire is a Denver based mobile startup that streams multimedia content (mostly podcasts) to your mobile phone. They’ve just closed an $8 million series B from Sequel Venture Partners, and exiting investors Matrix Partners and Spark Capital. Earlier they raised an undisclosed A round.

Buzzwire is using the round to deploy the service on major carriers in the U.S. and overseas, although the CEO, Andrew MacFarlane, has only said they have “a deal in place with one of the top U.S. carriers.”

There are a variety of mobile podcasting services out there Podlinez and Fonpods (deadpool) are two we’ve covered. However, these services have emphasized backwards compatibility by playing podcasts on specific phone numbers.

Instead, Buzzwire relies on your dataplan, playing lists of media through your mobile browser. Creation and management of these play lists can be handled through their (somewhat ugly) website on your desktop browser. You can either add in content from their library of exiting podcasts to lists or upload your own. It works well on my iPhone, playing audio and video through the Quicktime player.

Keeping account management on the desktop web was a smart move. The mobile web experience on most phones is horrendous, however, that will change over time. Buzzwire is just a mobile customized website away from a lot more competition from other podcasting services.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.