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September 14, 2007
Odeo (Sonic Mountain) Acquires FireAnt
Today it was announced that FireAnt's software and technology has been acquired by Sonic Mountain, a company that also recently acquired Odeo. I’ve been asked to join the new team, serving as VP of Product Development, and will be heading up FireAnt's transition (among other projects) as we re-launch Odeo later this year.
First of all, I want to say Thank You to everyone in the videoblogging community who supported FireAnt along the way, especially Jay Dedman, Daniel Salber, Erik Radmall, and Clint Sharp, who were instrumental in launching this project. We met a lot of wonderful creative people, and made some really important lifelong friendships. It’s been an amazing privilege to contribute to this dynamic and innovative community, and especially to have been involved from such an early stage. I also want to thank Jonathan Weiss, Drew Reynaud, and Jesse Boley who continued FireAnt’s technology development over the past year, which was demo’d at Video on the Net in March 2007.
Update: I also want to give a very special Thank You to Jen Myronuk, who devoted the past 8 months to helping FireAnt overcome some extremely difficult circumstances. Without her involvement and focused determination, we could never have achieved this milestone. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to work with Jen -- and even luckier to call her my fiancee.
When we first launched “ANTs Not TV” at Vloggercon in January 2005, there were about 20 active videobloggers – we knew each of them personally and worked with most of them to create those magical RSS feeds with enclosures. It was amazing to see all these video channels updating over time and to watch them in a unified experience. There was nothing else like it. It was clear that something powerful was happening. It was a new kind of television, and yet it was not like TV at all – it was open to anyone and the possibilities seemed endless.
And it began to spread… thanks to the many talented and creative video producers, educators, and evangelists.
While FireAnt had its share of struggles along the way as a start up, I’m encouraged that the ideas we helped pioneer have grown incredibly stronger over the past few years. This “Not TV” (now more often called “Internet TV”) is really changing the media culture, and it’s having profound social effects. The medium is enabling new voices and conversations. The playing field is being leveled – the barriers between “Internet TV” and “TV” are disintegrating.
So it’s up to us to create what we want to see and share… We don’t have to rely on Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone to create our culture. Thank goodness!
I look forward to watching your videos (and subscribing!). When I get back to producing a more regular videoblog (or whatever it’s called), I hope you’ll subscribe and leave me a comment :-)
Best,
Josh
Posted by jkinberg at September 14, 2007 2:21 AM
I am the Founder of 
