Sep
14
Odeo Acquires Fireant
September 14, 2007 |
Odeo has acquired Fireant. Interesting move, as it will allow Odeo to feature video content. I still don’t know anybody who knows the site, but this might change, as they seem to have more upgrades planned. The site always looked better than Podshow anyway.
New York, NY, September 14, 2007
Odeo (formerly SonicMountain), a leading audio podcast aggregation website, today announced its acquisition of the technology assets of FireAnt, an RSS video aggregation website and desktop media player. Odeo plans to expand its operations by incorporating FireAnt’s software under the Odeo brand and relaunching a new platform with next generation audio, video, mobile device support, and media search technology.
A public beta relaunch is scheduled for December 2007.
Originally created for the emerging videoblogging community, the FireAnt desktop media player supports all popular media formats including Quicktime, Windows Media, Flash, Real, MPEG-4, DivX, and MP3. It also enables the synchronization of downloaded media to portable devices - including Apple’s iPod, Sony PSP, Microsoft Zune, Creative Zen, Archos and mobile phones.
FireAnt offers users a powerful desktop video experience that connects to the rapidly expanding market of portable media devices.
“The FireAnt acquisition greatly accelerates ODEO’s move into the burgeoning online and mobile video community,” says Odeo President, Rick Arturo. “It’s clear that users are looking for a portable video experience, so they can view media where and when they want. FireAnt gives Odeo that capability in an easy-to-use environment”.
FireAnt’s Co-Founder and CEO, Joshua Kinberg will join the Odeo team as the Vice President of Product Development. “This is a great opportunity to bring FireAnt’s core technology to a wider audience via Odeo,” said Kinberg. “We recognize the permanent shift in how people consume digital media. Odeo is well positioned to deliver a compelling user experience and enable content to be more accessible across multiple formats and devices”.
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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 our comedy video channel for fireant. He told us 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.
I do not know much about the credibility of Kinberg at Fireant. I do hear that the “New ODEO”/SonicMountain/Sivault is being sued in multiple states for fraud and rumors are flying of major criminal investigations into their business dealings.
see from TechCrunch:
Guy from Wantagh
September 16th, 2007 at 10:17 am
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 (president of Odeo)tenure at SiVault Systems Inc:
http://www.investor.reuters.co…..e=snapshot
So, Mr. Arturo, what is the current address of SonicMountain/Odeo and what is the current address of SiVault? Or does neither company have a real address and you just use a lawyers office for the company HQ?