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Evan has publicly spoken about why the company missed the mark and now a new chapter is beginning for the company. Evan and the other “Odeos” have created a new company called Obvious Corp and have bought back all of Odeo’s assets.

Evan explains the model for Obvious at his own blog.

The Obvious model goes something like this:

* Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independently

What started as a part-time project for Evan is now a full-time effort. He used his own money to buy back the company – which must be at least the $5m pumped into it – and so, I suspect we’ll see a more concerted effort from Evan and the team this time around.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Williams sees that putting out quick products with small teams and seeing what becomes a hit is a better strategy than planning and growing some specific and larger application, and perhaps things weren’t going as fast as the investors wanted.

Mark Evans theorizes this may become common to Web 2.0 companies who aren’t seeing the amount of progress their investors want.

I disagree, I think that this is a pretty unique case as Evan Williams happens to have millions of dollars to pull such a thing off, while the majority of investors don’t have that kind of money sitting around. Sure, there are a few companies out there that have been started in the last couple of years by entrepreneurs who have had previous successes that may give them that kind of capital, but I think generally it’s not going to be something we see on a regular basis.

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Pat is the Director of Business Development at Right Media, the business unit owner for RMX Direct, and the author of the Conversion Rater blog.

Each person controls their own network of friends. When any of them send a text message to “40404,” all of his or her friends see the message via sms…People are using it to send messages like “Cleaning my apartment” and “Hungry”. You can also add friends via text message, nudge friends, etc.

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

[...] There is now a “Reply” button under the audio player on Odeo pages. This way, when you record and share an Odeo with people, they will be able to record a response. (You’ll get email notifications of this activity so you can keep up with the conversation.)

I definitely want to see how Shel and I can implement this feature for For Immediate Release. Our podcast is listed with Odeo so you can also subscribe to it there. We’ve already added an instant-play feature to the podcast blog (just click to listen to a show); if we can also provide a way for listeners to easily make an audio comment there and then, while the impulse to do so is hot, that would be terrific.

Now if iTunes had a feature like this…

Odeo has also introduced a rather neat audio messaging service where you can record a message and send it to someone. And you don’t need to have an account with Odeo to use this service.

Do give it a try!

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

The entire event was based around online audio, mostly in the form of podcasts. A number of speakers were present including Doug Kaye, Jeff Clavier, Dave McClure, John Furrier, David Marks, Eric Rice and others. They all spoke in one form or another about the advent of podcasting, where it’s been, and where it’s going

One noteworthy event was a working demo of Odeo by the Odeo man-in-black, Ev Williams. The beta release of Odeo allows users to play with podcasts and other types of audio files and even make their own.

Jeff Karnes of Yahoo’s search team talked about the Yahoo! Audio Search beta. It indexes audio content on the web, including some hard-to-find music, podcasts, interviews, speeches, e-books and more.

Yahoo said on their YahooSearchBlog that folks who missed the event would eventually be able to get the podcast and listen to it themselves.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The site has three portions: The podcasting portal, the syncing area, and the publishing area. While that is the order they are listed in, it is appropo, because it follows the path of my user experience.

The podcasting portal is excellent. I can’t imagine anything exists out there that is better for finding podcasts. It lists the most popular casts, some of which have hundreds of subscribed listeners, and each show has info and tagging, and lets you download any individual show. You can also see a list of recent podcasts, and there are so many coming through, the list barely goes back a day. You can leave comments for the podcasts.

The sync area is where the subscriptions happen. You subscribe to a podcast program, or choose an individual show to sync up. The Odeo Syncr program is there to handle the whole thing, but I have no freakin clue what it does. It claims to be syncing the podshows, but I have no idea if they are somewhere on my computer, and they certainly are not on my iPod. The options for the program are sparse, and since the site has no documentation, there’s no way for me to figure out what I’m doing wrong. So, so far I’ve downloaded 5 shows, and I have no idea where they are, how to listen to them, and how to get them on my iPod.

The publishing area is locked off. You have to request access. So, that’s out. While finding interesting podcasts is nice, I’m primarily interested in using it to publish podcasts. I want to finally do a show for this site, while not risking all my bandwidth on them (regardless of what Odea eventually charges). If anyone close to Odea is reading this, please try to get my request accepted.

So, even though I can’t really do anything yet with Odeo, none of this should be taken as me saying the service is bad. The stuff that does work is great, the stuff that doesn’t has a great start. The whole thing just looks like it is going to make listening to podcasts real easy, and help popularize the medium. I can’t wait to see how it develops.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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He’s authored numerous best selling business books, he also has a personal blog and now a book blog too, but don’t expect a purple cow podcast anytime soon.  Why?  Three reasons, according to Seth:

1. First, you can’t browse a podcast. Which means that you won’t know what you like until you get it.
2. Problem two is that listening is a real time commitment. I can surf 300 blogs in the time I can listen to just one podcast.
3. Which leads to the last bit of bad news: you can put up a blog post in two minutes, but it takes an hour to make a podcast.

Some valid points here, but I think most of these issues will be put to bed soon enough.  For example, you can’t browse a podcast?  That’s a real pain, in fact it’s something I’ve complained about too.   Enter Media RSS.  As this syndication format gains momentum, I think this promises to open up a rich layer of metadata that will change how we zero in on audio content.  Also, I think some of the more sophisticated podcasting services on the horizon (cough, Odeo) will enable content slicing and hopefully chaptering too.

Regarding the time commitment, there’s really no workaround there except for those pockets of time where you’re un-tethered from the PC.  For many (for me) that’s the in between times during the day when you’re not plugged into the Net – like a work commute.  And therein lies arguably one of podcasting’s biggest advantages – the content travels with you, anywhere, anytime.  Blogging (even moblogging) still suffers from portability and access limitations.

Finally, the immediacy of blogging vs. podcasting can’t be overlooked, it takes 30 seconds and an opinion to be a small publisher, not the same for podcasting.  But again, I think that will change soon.  Case in point, look at what the folks at Audioblog are doing.  Their service has the promise and potential to drastically lower the barriers to entry for podcasting.  Others will inevitably follow suit.

So Mr. Godin don’t shut the door on a Godincast just yet.I think help’s on the horizon.

Update: Godin responds and dives deeper on “the math of the situation.”  You could put this another way and ask at what point will there be dimishing value, dimishing return for the podcast creator in the long tail….when there’s a million podcasts?  Ten million?  To Godin’s point, that’ll be dictated by the creator’s end goal.

On a side note, Godin is (coincidentally) interviewed in a podcast today.  Go figure.  You can listen here.

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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Odeo To Simplify Podcasting

For the non-techie, podcasts are still primarily reserved for the digirati elite classes, those that know how to work the switches of linking, of software, of feeds, and MP3 mechanics. And then there’s getting people to listen to it. Content and distribution ain’t exactly kid stuff.

Odeo will be a website designed to simplify the process by providing a central “pod,” if you will, where podcasts can be found, subscribed to, or created in a user-friendly, geekless way. Williams is already known for his earlier jet-setting endeavors in the world of the web log. His blogger.com was key in the blog outbreak, eventually to be scooped up by Google.

For a cut of the action, Odeo will find advertisers for the podcasts and allow podcasters to charge a subscription fee.

While the real future of podcasting is unknown, it is taking off exponentially faster than blogging did in its beginnings.

“It took years for blogging to reach the level of awareness that podcasting already has,” says Williams, aware of the 25-fold increase in podcasts since November of 2004.

The obstacle right now for the future of podcasting is that there is no real standard, universally accepted format that will help it go mainstream.

Odeo will help a bit in that department, as it won’t require specific tools to use the site.

Williams is banking on the expansion, and foresees that podcasts will one day out perform web logs.

“Think about how many people in the world don’t sit at their computer all day, which is still the primary audience for blogs (I’m speculating there, but still…). And the fact that a ton of those people do spend hours in the car, or around the house, or in the garden, all places where they could consume audio, I think the potential listening audience is huge, indeed,” Williams said.

Downloadable in only MP3 and AAC formats at first, Williams hopes podcasting will become a simple platform for free speech.

“Our focus is on humanizing a very promising technology. Making it easier for those already doing it (listening or creating). And getting many more people involved by creating a great experience.”