Odeo Finds A Buyer: SonicMountain

May 10, 2007 | 

Paul Glazowski


In February of this year, Evan Williams, the mind behind Odeo, a podcast-centric startup, put his business up on the auction block. Here we are several months later, and he’s got a buyer: New York-based SonicMountain. The new owner of the audio aggregator allegedly forked over just north of $1 million in cash for the whole nine yards.

Upon hearing this news, many of you familiar with Ev Williams and his ideas might be wondering whether Twitter, the abomination public blog is changing hands as well. According to Michael Arrington of Techcrunch, Twitter is “no longer part of Odeo, so it will not be included in the acquisition.” I don’t know how to feel about that. Perhaps indifferent is the right way to go.

So, sold for about $1 million in cash, eh? A bargain? I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. On the one hand, Odeo has stood for quite some time as one of the biggest – and many have said one of the best – online aggregators of podcasts on the Web. On the other – turning out most unfortunate for Odeo – people like to have their podcasts to go, and thus the site has been sitting buried beneath the monstrosity that is iTunes.

That is likely why it’s been sold off for so little. (Relatively speaking, of course. One million dollars is a very significant sum to most people here on Earth.) I only hope to see SonicMountain do something worthwhile with the website. According to the company’s front page copy, “Odeo.com will become the portal through which [they] unveil new tools and utilities that improve the podcasting experience….” A bit of a nebulous item to affix to such significant news, no?

SonicMountain prefaces the blurb by explaining it’s own business model:

“SonicMountain is a digital media search and delivery company with a passion for podcasting. Through strategic acquisitions and innovation, we are set to create the ultimate podcast experience.”

With iTunes as a benchmark, the phrase “ultimate podcast experience” should be meant literally. Nothing less.

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