Many of you may have noticed yesterday (or maybe not if you are here in the US and were enjoying the Memorial Day holiday) that Odeo was down for several hours. We are still working to understand the root cause of the problem that allowed one troubled server to affect the whole site's performance. We are working diligently to get odeo stabilized and ready for the roll out of new features and apologize for the outage. Thanks for hanging in there with us and, as always, feel free to drop us a comment or suggestion to
future@odeo.com
Posted by Eric Rupert at 5/29/2007
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Hello:
Welcome to Odeo and the first Blog update from the team at SonicMountain. My name is Eric Rupert and I am the COO at SonicMountain and the person responsible for assembling the technical team and managing the improvements to Odeo.
I would like to update you on some of the improvements that we have been working on since completion of the acquisition 12 days ago.
You should now notice that the feed crawler is back online. During the 6 weeks or so prior to the closing of the acquisition, the feed crawler was taken offline due to technical issues affecting performance of the site. Immediately following the acquisition, we made some adjustments and turned the feed crawler on again to start refreshing the feeds. Within 48 hours or so, the feed crawler began to again impact site performance. We immediately began working on other options and over the next two weeks or so, you will notice that feeds are being updated, however, at a slower rate. We have throttled the crawler temporarily while we work to test the modifications that will allow the crawler to scale to meet the increasing demand from the growing user base as well as increasing volumes of new content.
We know that the feed engine is a critical component to the system and is the primary concern of podcast creators. We have seen many requests recently in the ticket system for "when will my feed be updated". Let me assure you, we are focusing our attention on the feed engine and will continue to work on it to ensure that each feed is updated in a timely manner.
Several people have asked, "What happened to AudioBlogger"? Several months ago, the team at ODEO went through a mandatory IP renumbering at the colo facility. As a byproduct, the AudioBlogger system, ceased to function. While the application is not working, the data is there and we are rapidly working on a fix that involves bringing the audio content into the main Odeo database and setting up a responder from Odeo to respond to requests for audioblogger content. What this means is that your current blogs with embedded audio will begin to function again. We have not made a definitive decision on whether to try to resurrect AudioBlogger or to just preserve the existing content. I would like to hear from you about it.
If you are an IE-7 user and not signed in to the site, you may have noticed that you have to first "click to activate this control" before pressing the play button to listen to content on the site. We realize that this is confusing and is unfortunately a byproduct of IE7. If you have an account on the system and are logged in, content will "auto-play" when you reach the page. We are currently working on making the behavior common for both types of visitors.
In the coming weeks we will be unveiling a new search tool that will give you access to not only the Odeo site contents but also, up-to-the-minute content at many sites around the web.
Stay Tuned and please feel free to send suggestions on how to enhance the ODEO experience to
eric@odeo.com
Posted by Eric Rupert at 5/21/2007
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We announced a couple months ago,
over on the Obvious blog, that we were looking for a new home for Odeo. The reason was, we weren't giving the site the attention it deserves, partially because our other product,
Twitter, was overwhelming the resources of our tiny company. We also knew there were companies out there who were better positioned to invest in and improve Odeo.
We're happy to announce that we've found that new home in New York-based company, called SonicMountain. SonicMountain has acquired Odeo and has big plans for the site. The official press release follows:
Odeo acquired by SonicMountainSan Francisco, CA/New York, NY (May 9, 2007 ) — Odeo, one of the largest and most prominent podcast aggregation web sites, announced today that its assets have been acquired by SonicMountain, Inc., a New York based company focused in the digital media hosting and search marketplace.
Odeo is among the first commercial podcasting sites, launched in July 2005. According to Hitwise, "Odeo is the only vertical podcasting site that has emerged from the pack: It has received five times more traffic than its nearest competitor." In addition to being an audio aggregator of free web audio content and podcasts, Odeo enables listening, downloading and subscription of podcasts, along with synchronizing libraries with iTunes and other podcatchers.
"A critical aspect of the transaction was the commitment by SonicMountain to retain the integrity and spirit of the Odeo community," says Evan Williams, CEO of Obvious, LLC. "During the selection and due-diligence process it was important that the buyer be committed to Odeo's growth and improvement."
SonicMountain intends to incorporate exciting enhancements to the Odeo community within the next few months. Improvements in content organization, search, discovery, plus podcast hosting of both audio and video are only a sampling of upcoming upgrades planned for the site.
"We are extremely grateful that Evan Williams will be acting in an advisory capacity during and post transition," says Jack Roken, CEO of SonicMountain. "Evan's proven success with Blogger, Odeo and now the rapid rise of Twitter are examples of the creativity and influence Evan has on the social aspects of the web. We are eager to build on the solid foundation he has created."
About ObviousObvious, LLC is a web product development company, based on San Francisco, California. Founded by Evan Williams, co-creator of early blogging tool, Blogger.com (now owned by Google), Obvious is currently focusing on its latest creation, Twitter.
About SonicMountain, Inc.Founded in November 2006, SonicMountain Inc. is delivering the next generation social media platform for the podcast community and marketplace. Through unique search technology and recent acquisitions, SonicMountain will re-launch its technology through Odeo, a leading podcast destination site.
SonicMountain is a privately held company based in New York.
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If you have questions or concerns about what this means, please
contact us. SonicMountain would love to get your feedback on Odeo and how you'd like to see the site evolve.
Posted by Ev. at 5/10/2007
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