Odeo, a podcast directory founded in 2005 by Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter fame that was acquired by SonicMountain over a year ago, has relaunched with a completely new design and slew of features.
The biggest addition to the site is video. Odeo now features millions of syndicated audio and video episodes aggregated from over 500,000 channels. Odeo has partnered with major content publishers like Revision3 and NextNewNetworks, and Blip.tv to fill its catalog.
Odeo has also improved its social side by enabling users to create profile pages, subscribe to preferred channels, and create playlists. Users can browse by keyword or category to get recommendations, leading to better content discovery. Users can also share content via email or embed it into blogs and social networks.
In addition to the content partnerships, Odeo has joined up with a startup called MatchMine to use its MatchKey service. MatchKey is a partner network that takes users’ preferences and distributes them across a network of sites to enable better personalized recommendations.
Odeo is currently working to bring back an upgraded version Odeo’s Studio, its free in-browser podcast recording service (we weren’t impressed with the old version). Its new development team will also add features like the ability to sync with portable devices and comment on videos and audio files. FireAnt, another podcast directory that competed with Odeo before getting acquired by it, was best-known for its desktop media player. Odeo has plans to bring back this player as well and distribute it as a white-labeled media player for enterprises.
We first covered Odeo in June 2005 when it was still in private beta. After about a year of struggling with competitors (most notably Apple’s iTunes), Williams launched a now-well-known startup, then called Twttr, in July 2006.
In September 2006, Williams bought Odeo back from its investors and started a new company called Obvious. Under Obvious, Williams held both Odeo and Twitter as wholly-owned subsidiaries. Odeo was then put up for sale in February 2007 and sold at a loss to Sonic Mountain a few months later. SonicMountain proceeded to acquire FireAnt and Blogdigger, a blog search engine. Odeo has since raised $2.5 million from private investors, and this is the first improvement we’ve seen since SonicMountain has taken over.
Odeo committed a number of mistakes the first time around, several of them openly admitted by Williams himself. Will Odeo’s new development team learn from these mistakes and guide Odeo to a brighter future? They are entering the video space, which is very competitive and is not as forgiving of mistakes. Best of luck, Odeo.
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Congrats on the launch to the Fireant/Odeo team. We used to work with Fireant back in 2005, so looking forward to seeing where that goes as well.
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The new Odeo looks great! Congrats to the new team. I was on the old team and love that the site continues to evolve.
Wow, something NOT about the bloody iPhone 2.0!!!
Are the writers at TechCrunch being paid by Apple because the amount of artilces on here relative to Apple’s market share or even their forecast market share is ridiculous??
My HTC Diamond with HPDSA 3.5G is faster than the new iPhone has better WiFi and GPS, double the screen resolution and has other features which the iPhone doesn’t but what other mobiles have had for the past 14 months.
I can also buy 3rd party applications without being locked into an Apple online store and can buy it unlocked.
This is really Fantastic look and feel. I like it !
A BIG relief…..Thanx Calley for writing something else but not about iPhone 3G.
In the past two days,TC appears to be an iPhone evangelist/marketer.
More than 50% of the posts are flooded with iPhone,iPhone and iPhone…Huh
iPhone is cool but TC is just too obsessed with it.
With the exception of the last paragraph, this reads like a press release.
Great to see the persistence of a web company, especially one as early to market as Odeo. Will definitely check it out. Also, this is an interesting case study for how a tech company like Obvious Corp found it’s “calling” with Twitter while still working on Odeo.
Want to also say, glad this post isn’t about iPhone (although will be standing in line to buy one myself today)
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I’m really happy to see Odeo make a comeback. While podcasting has gone “mainstream” its still tough for independents to get discovered. iTunes is okay, but there are a lot much wider audience looking for engaging shows on the InterWebs
New Odeo is great. {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/T49GGQ7XEU_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”New Odeo is great. ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/bNnp1xD9gQ”}}}
I think Viget Labs (http://viget.com) was behind the newest version of Odeo.
Odeo is slow and consistently freezes up my browser, so not sure what all the hype is about. No good reason to switch from Miro.
Also what passes for news from Odeo is the same exact story they’ve been repeating for so many months now.
I have an idea, why not do a story on them when they actually have something new to report?
Odeo is Booorrriiing!
FireAnt? Who, what, where?
Great job to those in charge of that one who stuck a fork in it 2 years ago and buried it out back in the yard.
What total BS! They keep saying the same thing over and over, that it will synchronize to all kinds of devices. OK so where is it?
Oh right it doesn’t quite work yet, er, uh at all.
Thanks TC and Calley for the coverage today.
Just want to say that the (new) team at Odeo is working hard with the resources that we have to evolve the product and bring more features as fast as budget and staffing allows. We have a long way to go yet to realize the vision that we ultimately see for Odeo. Hope to see more involvement from the community as we work on our next phase of development. I’d love to hear from you any time. Catch me on Twitter – erupert66 or drop me an email eric at odeo.
Thanks
Eric,
Thanks for the update and kudos on your progress.
Question – What is the plan and schedule for fireant? As Stan so negatively points out above, the fireant software hasn’t been released although Odeo has repeatedly said it was coming soon.
Just curious, why not release it?
Odeo is still a painfully slow site at times.
I’m only negative about FireAnt because I’m sick of reading articles about vaporware. If and when there’s a product there to report on and review, fine. But Geez Louise! I thought those days of tech magazines regurgitating company press releases was so over.
btw @13 shelley I had the same experiences so far with the new Odeo, pretty darn slow and froze my browser twice so far.
Good for Odeo. Software development is never easy or simple. Glad to hear they’re giving it another shot. Wondering if there will be an Odeo app for the iPhone (to tie those two topics together.). Waiting in a long line in CA to get one today… need to decide what to do with my iBrick now.
deadpool
Why so much hype? I simply do not understand the buzz on a 2005 podcast aggregator? Let us see if it catches on once again and the bugs can get worked out. Is evan still involved at all?
I’ve been using Odeo for years, and it has had its glitches, but most of the time it worked and I realise it’s a free service. Unfortunately the way they interact with their users is abysmal (or my experience of it is). The forum never worked, the feedback still doesn’t work, beyond the autoresponder, the blog never gets a reply. So, “hope to see more involvement from the community as we work on our next phase of development” is a bit rich.
I’d like to see someone replying to the issues being raised by the users.
OK I take it back! I’ve had a response and they’ve fixed the problem!
Maybe things are looking up at Odeo!
I don’t expect Odeo to be around much longer in any shape or form. Twitter was a great leap.