Pluggd: New Tech Search for Podcasts and More
Posted June 25, 2007 by admin
Management: Alexander Castro, CEO/President
Year Founded: 2006
Headquarters: Seattle, WA
Funding Stage: Angel
Date and Amount of Last Funding: November 2006, $1.65M
Investors: Intel Capital and prominent Seattle-area angel investors, including Paul Maritz and Scott Oki
Partners: Unable to disclose at this time
Customers: Advertisers and publishers are our customers
Competitors: Blinkx, Podzinger, ScanScout
As video and audio offerings grow more and more diverse, companies seeking to improve the medium and expand the listener base spring up. No longer only associated with iPods and Macs , lowly PC users have also come to embrace podcasts and podcasting themselves. And as we've all come to find, where the audience grows – the money goes.
Listeners can use Pluggd to subscribe to podcasts, and soon videos, share them with friends and rate them, with comments. There is a huge directory of podcasts to browse through that's very user-friendly. Pluggd acts like a podcast aggregator and cataloguer. The site places independent and mainstream media producers' content at your fingertips.
What makes Pluggd a standout in the world of search? Their HearHere and SeeHere functions that search podcasts (and soon video) word-by-word, contextually, so you can easily find the information you'd like to hear. The technology, based on speech recognition, allows consumers to better control content they consume and holds great possibilities for advertisers. In fact, The Economist just did a story that mentions Pluggd as a great use of speech recognition, and heralds the technology as a breakthrough with massive potential.
