Foneshow has built a telephony-based distribution platform for short-form audio (primarily news/talk radio and podcast programming). The platform leverages the cellular telephone network and enables users to subscribe to, access, publish, share, and consume short-form audio programming immediately from virtually any cell phone. The system features the very rapid propagation of programming from the creator to the consumer. Patents are pending aspects of our technology.
Audio communication is the single most popular channel for distributing information around the world. Imagine being able to receive instant media content wherever you are--everything from breaking news to favorite podcasts to social messaging to updates from your professional network, real estate information about a house you're driving past, or the latest political anecdote forwarded to you by a friend. Foneshow has developed a content platform that lifts media enjoyment out of the computer and transforms it into a mobile experience. Foneshow's technology is available to essentially all 219 million cell phones in the US and 2.7 billion cell phones worldwide.
The internet video and the DVR (YouTube.com and digital video recorders like Tivo) have already proven the market for user-controllable, instant access to on-demand media. The way Americans consume video programming--and the very nature of television itself--are being transformed by these technologies. There have been no such equivalent transformative audio technologies created to disrupt the radio industry. While there have been some steps taken in audio on the computer desktop (RSS distribution of podcasts), most radio and audio programming is consumed away from the computer. No one has successfully made the on-demand model work for mobile audio. When we are successful we will transform the radio industry from a broadcast model (where everyone gets exactly the same programming at the same time) to a narrowcast model (where each listener gets exactly the programming they want exactly when they want it).
Foneshow was founded in late August of 2006 on Ballston Beach in Truro, Massachusetts by Erik Schwartz and Nic Wolff, two technology industry veterans and lifelong friends. Nic and Erik had been kicking some of the ideas around for a while, wondering why they never listened to podcasts. In late summer 2006 they developed the ideas that would become Foneshow. They started coding in September of 2006 with alpha launching later in September. The foneshow.com domain was registered in October 2006. The company was organized as a Delaware LLC in November of 2006. In August of 2007 Foneshow closed a series A venture capital round with CEI Community Ventures, Masthead Venture Partners, and Small Enterprise Growth Fund of Maine.