Podzinger Unleashed! Examining the Second Exodus of Traditional Media
Welcome to Revolution Number 2. The first time around, print publications were pulling their hair out as they tried to make sense of the Internet and how to use it with their written content. Now that people all over the country have high-speed, always-on connections to the ‘Net, TV and radio companies have to ponder the same choices and figure out how to make their stuff accessible online without getting hosed by the fear of media piracy. Fortunately for them, this time around, they have some help.
Many companies like TVEyes and Blinkx foresaw Revolution Number 2 and positioned themselves strategically to capitalize on the impending influx of audio and video content to the Web. But few have the technological lineage to match PodZinger, the consumer-level online media search engine created by the venerable BBN Technologies, a research and development company whose laboratories have cranked out the LOGO programming language, ARPANET (the Internet of the 1970’s), and a little thing called “E-mail” since 1948.
The technology behind PodZinger was originally commissioned by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to make the vast amount of broadcasted and archived media content they receive searchable. BBN created a two-fold solution: one part recognized the sounds of speech, and the other part analyzed the language to figure out what that speech means.
According to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which lets universities and research organizations under government contract that develop new technologies adapt those technologies for public and commercial use, BBN took their media analysis system and “commercialized” it as PodZinger. The original technology created for DARPA focused on searching though three major written language groups: English, Mandarin, and Arabic. To those models, BBN added natural language models for Spanish as well as niche language types like Sports and Finance, and then capped everything off with a fabulous consumer-oriented website.
But to catalyze a revolution, you need more than good technology. PodZinger comes from the word “pod,” as in “podcast” and “zing” which doesn’t really mean anything, but can sound positive as in “a little bit of zing” or negative as in “a real zinger”—both reflecting the positive and negative content of online media. PodZinger decided to start as a podcast search company since podcasting is a very new and quickly growing form of online media distribution. The company currently has white label partnerships with podcasts like Rocketboom, the TWiT network, and commandN.
But the ultimate goal is to tackle all online audio and video, both podcasted and otherwise. From the beginning, PodZinger has been signing partnerships with traditional media companies like WEEI Sports Radio, part of Entercom Boston, which before had no podcasted content. After all, what are podcasts but regular media files linked to by a specially formatted RSS feed.
Reader Comments.
No comments yet
Leave a Comment
Pages: 1 2 next page »
Article Sponsor
More Spotlights
-
Loading ...
Latest News
- Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
- Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
- OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
- Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
- Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
- Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
- StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »
Spotlight
Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...
Features
- Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
- Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
- Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
- Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
- Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009
Reader Favorites
Layoff Tracker
- AOL - 700
- Apple - 50
- Clear Channel - 2,800 total (1,000 currently)
- Google - 340
- IBM - more than 7,800
- Joost - about 90
- MySpace - in June, about 720
- World Avenue - 30 percent of workforce
- Yahoo - 2,220 total, about 700 currently
- Zango - closes, about 90, in addition to earlier layoffs
Classifieds
Recent Comments
- minnickup: Hello, I found your forum is www.adotas.com after I have been surfing the internet to be
- Josette Davids: Great article and an amazing time was had by all at this event. I'm an
- Mike Poserina: There is also a tragic flaw rumored in Bing's ad placement engine. When resolved,
- Andy: Erin, Never mind the commenters who can only see the negative side of things. I thank you
