AudioMicro Acquires Audioo, Launches Outrageous New Voicemail Sharing Service
AudioMicro, a Los Angeles-based online marketplace for royalty-free music and sound effects, yesterday acquired Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Audioo, an online voicemail sharing service. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
AudioMicro has relaunched Audioo as an online site where people can search, browse, and listen other people’s voicemail messages.
The Audioo site (www.audioo.com) enables visitors to browse and listen to voicemail by area code, sort voicemail by category, including drunk, funny, and sexy, and share voicemail with others via Twitter and Facebook. Users who submit a voicemail to Audioo receive text transcriptions of uploaded messages. Transcriptioning is performed by voicemail-to-text provider PhoneTag.
Audioo is free, and open to all major wireless carriers. Audioo aims to monetize the service by first building the largest, searchable archive of the human voice, and then matching the aggregate data with contextual advertising.
Users can submit messages through a variety of methods: Google Voice subscribers can upload directly through a Mozilla Firefox add-on, or users can upload voicemails to the Audioo site, email an audio file to Audioo, forward messages from a handset, record a voicemail through a computer’s microphone, or leave a message at 1-405-4-AUDIOO.
All voicemail submitted to Audioo through June 30 will be judged by Johnny Brennan, creator of The Jerky Boys duo and best known for his prank phone calls and other comedic skits, as part of a contest called “Jerkin’ with The Jerky Boys.” The winner of the funniest voicemail submitted during the contest will win an Apple iPad.
“Audioo users are already sharing every conceivable type of voicemail, including drunk-dial calls, the ramblings of crazy ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, and much more,” said Ryan Born, CEO of AudioMicro and Audioo, in a statement. “The service has only been up a short while, but some of the voicemails already posted are just insane.”