FireAnt, 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 
),
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.
