What is Scouta

Just over a year ago, Graeme and I were chatting over a beer and pizza in a great pub/restraunt called Little Creatures in Fremantle, Western Australia. It was approaching summer, and Fremantle is the type of place you head to soak up the spring or summer atmosphere. The sea breeze always invigorates the mind.

I’d recently finished writing a book, originally called the Whole Internet Guide to Podcasting (subsequently cut down to become the Podcasting Pocket Guide) for O’Reilly, and we were lamenting the fact that it’s hard to find good quality podcasts that were really relevant to “me.”

It’s not that there isn’t a massive amount of content to choose from, or that everything is crap, it’s just so hard to filter everything for personal tastes. So, we came up with an idea to create the 21st Century “television” guide: a guide that recommends relevant online video and audio for individuals.

In hindsight, we successfully predicted a massive boom in content generated by the general public (some called it User Generated Content, but I hate the term “user” in the context of someone contributing to a community). Just look at YouTube, an awesome site that provides video for almost any subject. You can find all sorts there, but to find something of quality about a very specific topic is a little trickier.

So Scouta was born to recommend personally relevant online audio and video to you. Tell Scouta what you already watch and listen to, and we’ll tailor the recommendations to your tastes.

But more about that soon.

If you’re extra-keen to have a look at Scouta, then sign up for our current beta at the Scouta home page.