Orem , Utah – September 14, 2006 – Podango, a Web 2.0 company that enables independently owned podcast stations for niche markets, today announced beta version of its services are now available.

Commenting on the announcement, Rebecca and Roger Merrill, Station Directors for the Podango Leadership Place station said, “We are thrilled we can begin to bring listeners some of the best thinking on leadership and life balance. Podango’s services provide a productive way to capture all of the best podcasts on this topic and present them in a way that can be easily integrated into people’s lives. Most importantly, Podango Castbacks let the audience provide input, making the whole experience more interactive.”

Services Now Available
The following services are now available on Podango’s beta release website, giving Station Directors a complete platform to create and manage their own podcast stations.

Podcast Surf™— allows podcast listeners to see and interact with their content. Podcast Surf is supported by a Web page that is automatically created as a companion to the podcasts distributed for every station, showing the podcasts related to each day’s programming. The Podcast Surf page contains a transcription of each podcast, relevant links and references for the important names, places, people, terms, sites, and vendors mentioned in a podcast. It also contains instant access to the community forum, Castbacks, and ratings for each podcast.

Transcriptions—Text transcriptions of podcasts are provided to Station Directors by Podango to greatly increase new visitors coming to Podango stations from search engines. It also has been shown to increase the likelihood of listening from those visitors. Transcriptions also make Podcasts more useable through embedded hypertext links to people, places, concepts, products, etc.

Marketing—Podango’s marketing services help Station Directors build their audiences through several co-op marketing programs including search engine keyword buys, email programs, affiliate relationships, press releases, blog mentions, natural search engine optimization, sponsor and strategic partner links, and home page spotlighting.

Search Engine Optimization—Podango's site structure and built-in search engine optimization help Station Directors aggregate textual content for Podcast Stations and format it so that search engine spiders give higher page rankings. The overall Podango domain traffic, with the combined attraction of all Podango stations and partner links also add to page rankings.

Advertising—provides the tools to profile audiences, measure listenership, and promote ad spot opportunities to a growing set of station sponsors.

The Podango Dashboard—The Dashboard gives Station Directors the key metrics they need to in an easy to understand format. The dashboard is constantly updated with marketing, customer, and revenue metrics that can be displayed in daily, weekly, monthly and annual views.

Castback™— encourages community involvement by providing a simple way for listeners to record their comments about a podcasts and provide it as part of future podcasts (Coming Soon).

Easy Payment System—handles all the payment side of the business including, collecting revenues, distributions of funds to partnering podcasters, receipts from sponsors, fees from the affiliate program or the payments for traffic generation activities. Payment is a PayPal-style fund distribution system that allows Station Directors to monitor results and activate decisions from the Dashboard. (Coming Soon)

Pricing
Podango services are free to qualified Station Director Candidates who have a driving passion to serve a niche market with great content and conversations. If you are interested in becoming a Station Director, request an application from info@podango.com. Transcription costs will be charged to the Station Directors, but only paid from sponsorship revenues generated.

About Podango
Podango, a web 2.0 company, delivers free hosted services for the management of independently owned podcast stations. Station Owners, also know as Station Directors, use Podango to program a schedule of leading market specific podcasts free of charge for station audiences. Station Directors bring to their audience the benefits of a knowledgeable mentor who delivers high-quality content surrounded by moderated discussions. Podango Stations solve the growing podcast information overload problem by allowing Station Directors to sift, sort and prioritize the mass of podcast information for their audiences and leverage the value of community contributed content. Beyond distributing multiple leading podcasts, each Podango Podcast Station also incorporates community intereaction tools to enable an enhanced community conversation. Listeners, podcasters, and advertisers all benefit from the Podango Station model because of the concentration of great podcast information into a target market niche. Podango Stations are simple, tailored and targeted. To learn more about Podango visit www.podango.com, or contact us at info@podango.com .

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Contact:
pr@podango.com