Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 11:28 AM PT

Curse of the “Pod”

PodShow is the latest company to ditch that oh-so-2005 name by switching to the relatively meaningless Mevio this week. Others who have dropped the “pod” include EveryZing (nee PodZinger) and VoloMedia (nee Podbridge).

Can you escape the curse of the pod? It’s not looking too good for companies like podcast search engine Podscope, which hasn’t updated its blog since 2005, or podcast network PodTech, which has seen the departure of all the memorable personalities it’s been associated with (Robert Scoble, Irina Slutsky, Steve Gillmor, John Furrier). Then again, Odeo’s original incarnation fell through, and the second one is way slow out of the gate, so maybe it’s not just the name. Who’s left? Podango, Podtrac? Are you surviving the curse of the “pod”?

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Topic: Startups

Comments (9)

It’s not going to help them, the leadership at Podshow has done nothing but cause pain and suffering for the people that they work with.

Jim Williams — 12:28 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
How’s ol’ VodPod doing?

Mark Schoneveld — 12:37 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
I guess there is still Podcasting News, Podcast 411, Podcast Pickle and that Apple company has iPod, iPod Touch and a Podcasting section on the iTunes.

Tim Street — 12:43 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
Maybe if “pod” is not the first part of your name you’re exempt?

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 1:35 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
We’re still up and running (http://www.podcastspot.com). Though I’ll admit we’ve talked about rebranding on more than one occasion.

Mack D. Male — 6:02 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
The Podcast Network (http://thepodcastnetwork.com) who look to be still going strong, despite a few technical hiccups recently.

Richard Giles — 7:45 PM on April 23, 2008 Reply
The new Odeo site is just weeks away from being released. It has been completely re-architected in all aspects — technology, content and UI.

Consumers are still looking for an effective way to discover fresh and interesting content and producers need an effective means to interact with and grow their audience. The new Odeo is focused on serving both.

Liz, If you would like an invite to the beta, please send me an email and if anyone else would like a preview, feel free to do the same.

eric@odeo

Eric Rupert — 8:06 AM on April 24, 2008 Reply
It would be great to see some real reporting on this story. For example why is there a curse why aren’t these companies doing well when the entire audio and video consumption is going well.

Liz – get on it.

Real Reporting — 11:39 AM on April 24, 2008 Reply
Maybe it has something to do with the flavor-of-the-month naming process? You should also see our story on Mevio where they talk about how downloadable media is less fashionable than streaming media these days.

http://newteevee.com/2008/04/23/podshow-relaunches-as-mevio/

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 1:31 PM on April 24, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (2)

[...] Podshow is changing its name: The sign of a company coming to the end of its life-cycle? The new name is the totally nonsensical Mevio (well, I guess it isn’t much worse than most of the other Web 2.0 namz). But really, who cares – they still have a homepage that makes absolutely no sense for any casual user. All their VC money should have at least bought them a decent designer. Update: For a rather scathing summary that pretty much sums up my own thoughts of what’s going on at Podshow, see Mark Hopkin’s post here. [...]

Wednesday Night Thoughts:Tagging, Podshow… — 7:42 PM on April 23, 2008
[...] Dynamically served advertising into downloaded media is a tough nut to crack, and with the changes in store for these two companies it’s not clear who will be around to monetize podcasts. From early on we had been skeptical that VoloMedia’s approach to measuring offline media use via plug-ins would be effective, given it didn’t give consumers much of an incentive to download additional software just to listen or watch their content. Later an enhanced version of the VoloMedia plug-in added social features to iTunes. Meanwhile, the market for premium streaming video has only grown, while podcasting has gone out of fashion. [...]

VoloMedia at a Crossroads; Ditches Sales… — 5:01 PM on June 1, 2009