-
What is Scouta
Posted on January 22nd, 2007 5 commentsJust 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.
3 responses to “What is Scouta”
-
It’s a great story … Little Creatures is pretty inspiring and it sounds like you guys had one of those life-changing visions. Either that or one to many Pale ales (or is that not your taste?)
Sounds like scouta is going to fill a much needed service on the internet - with so many players providing video at the moment it’s hard to sort through them all. Personalised recommendations is an awesome idea!
And we all know TV is heading down the tubes … -
I am a lucky beta tester and must say this is one of the coolest sites I have used on the net in my 11 yrs on the net so far.
Well done guys! -
Didn’t we share a similar epiphany over some badly cooked chinese-style roast pork!?!?!?!?!
Very happy for you and G.
Roll on scouta-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah.
2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
-
Scouta - recommending audio and video for you « Talking tech on Family 2.0 (a niche of Web 2.0) January 22nd, 2007 at 14:19
[...] More on Scouta..read their blog. [...]
-
Clique Communications: New Media Marketing » Blog Archive » Gone Scoutaing January 23rd, 2007 at 02:19
[...] Yesterday we announced a little more about the web service. Dropping more than a little hint. We’re rapidly approaching release, so you’ll start to hear a lot more. If you’re interested, subscribe to the Scouta blog where I will be more active from now on, or add your email to the Scouta private beta list, and we’ll see about a login in the next few weeks. [...]
Leave a reply
-
Bronwen Clune January 22nd, 2007 at 08:20