FireAnt Acquired by SonicMountain/Odeo

By Jason Jennings    September 14th, 2007

FireAnt logoFireAnt, the desktop media player video blog/podcast directory, was acquired by SonicMountain today. SonicMountain also acquired Evan William’s company Odeo, which was a site dedicated to podcasting tools. SonicMountain rebranded to Odeo after the acquisition. From what I understand, the FireAnt branding will disappear and be incorporated into the Odeo brand.

FireAnt is a directory of podcast and video blogs that boasts 22,602 channels and 1,310,661 episodes and growing daily. With FireAnt you can create an account/profile, make playlists, add tags and ratings to episodes, and share these with friends. It almost seems like a social network for podcasting and video blogs.

One of the unique things about FireAnt is their desktop media player which is available for Mac and PC. I was not able to personally test it (though I would love to, hint ;) ),FireAnt Desktop Player but their media player can supposedly play all formats and will convert and sync videos with your mobile device. Now that I have an iPhone, this could be very useful to me. The player also has a built in torrent system and you can subscribe to, download, and watch internet TV channels (video blogs). The user interface of the desktop application look great.

So, with the acquisition of both Odeo and FireAnt, it will be interesting to see how these two holdings are merged together. Unfortunately, podcasting has never gained the mainstream popularity it can take to be huge, but incorporating internet TV into the mix could make things interesting. Another downside for SonicMountain/Odeo is the lawsuit that has been filed against the company in New York. Apparently there are 15 different counts in the lawsuit, but details on the specifics were not available.

Most Commented

  • Jenny M
    Too bad they were bought by a bunch of 60 year old plump and dumb stock scammers.
  • Mark Rivera
    kinberg lied to us so don't believe a word he says. my friends and I spent a lot of time building a college comedy video channel to be included in fireant. it took months to get the feed moderated and then they never made it available from the website. booo! bad form!!!
  • Mark Rivera
    kinberg lied to us so don't believe a word he says. my friends and I spent a lot of time building a college comedy video channel to be included in fireant. it took months to get the feed moderated and then they never made it available from the website. booo! bad form!!!

    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.
  • Mark Rivera
    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, saying 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.
  • Oh good, they might actually release something now. Considering they decided to take down v1 because v2 is coming "very soon." I'm pretty sure that coming soon graphic has been there for over a year.

    Miro came to the rescue! :D
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