Pluggd‘s HearHere technology allows people to search
inside podcasts – i.e. jump to an exact position in audio or video. Pluggd presented at
DEMO and Alex Iskold caught up with their CTO
and co-founder Jonathan Thompson for a quick interview…
R/WW: What is your company about?
Jonathan: Pluggd is a company focused on helping consumers discover, consume and share
internet audio and video.
R/WW: Why did you start this company?
Jonathan: We saw that audio and video on the internet is reaching critical mass, but
there is still a lack of tools that help people find and consume that content. These
tools exist for the text-based web (e.g. Google) and are needed in the audio/video space
as well.
R/WW: What are your major accomplishments so far?
Jonathan: Creating one of the largest podcast directories available and developing the
HearHere technology (which we plan to make generally available by the end of the
year).
R/WW: What are your major challenges?
Jonathan: Resources. 🙂 As CTO, my focus is on recruiting the best and brightest
software engineers to help us build out the breadth and depth of our vision.
R/WW: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?
Jonathan: Making HearHere generally available is my immediate focus. Beyond that, we
have plans around social media, search and advertising.
R/WW: What is the most important thing for a start up to be
successful?
Jonathan: Be scrappy. Be tenacious. Be passionate. Hire the best.
R/WW: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?
Jonathan: Techcrunch, Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm, O’Reilly Radar.
R/WW: Which web 2.0 things are noise and which are signals?
Jonathan: Signals… the lowering barrier of entry that allows anyone to create,
publish and remix all forms of content (both text and rich media); the growing
availability of data and services that can be used in new, exciting, and often unplanned
ways.
Noise… web 2.0 companies that haven’t established themselves as sustainable
businesses by creating unique solutions to a problem or developing differentiating
IP.
R/WW: Did you feel that participating in DEMOFall was useful to Pluggd?
Jonathan: It was great! We couldn’t have hoped for a better reception from the press,
the investors, and other attendees at the event It was great to see that something we’ve
worked so hard on created such buzz and that everyone who saw it immediately ‘got
it’.
R/WW: Can people play around with HearHere before it’s generally available?
Jonathan: Yes, we demoed live code on our production servers that is available for
everyone to check out at www.pluggd.com/demo.
