Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

Buzz visits Odeo
Originally uploaded by dom.net.

Last week, I had another opportunity to visit my friends at Odeo, at the invitation of their crack QA guru Dominic Sagolla. As many of you may recall, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for the good people of Odeo because of my interest in audio-oriented social software. I’ve always had a feeling that the Odeo people will be the ones to eventually hit on the formula that makes audio social software compelling in a way that, say, Last.fm just isn’t, and the previews that Dom showed me of Odeo’s future continue to make me optimistic.

One feature that is of particular interest to me is the newly unveiled “Link to Audio” functionality. As many of you may recall, until recently I ran an “ad-hoc” podcast created simply by linking to MP3s on my server using del.icio.us and taking advantage of the del.icio.us media support. Now Odeo users can do essentially the same thing, with a big difference: instead of publishing the file to the world, they can choose to merely send it to the inbox of one or more contacts in their social network. Since the contacts can then send the same file to the inbox of their own contacts, this feature is a bit reminiscent of the recombinant podcasting idea I’ve mentioned in the past. And, let’s face it, since the sharing stays within the social network, there’s no need for “the man” to ruin the fun.

Based on this and a few other things I saw, I think Odeo is doing an admirable job of reinventing itself in the face of iTunes’ entrance into the podcasting world. I look forward to seeing how some of the other things they’re working on are received by the public.

(Update: P.S.: If you were a fan of my old podcast, feel free to add me as a contact on Odeo.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.