Wizzard Software, a company that specializes in text-to-speech technolgoy, has announced that it is purchasing podcast hosting service provider, Switchpod.com.

Wizzard plans to leverage its text-to-speech technology to benefit podcasters. Wizzard plans to simplify the search process by allowing audio and video podcasts to be fed through its speech recognition system, creating a transcript of each podcast. This feature will give Wizzard a second competitive advantage by enabling listeners to type in key words and find relevant podcasts based on the full content of each and every podcast episode.

“This will benefit our podcast creators in several ways,” says Weina Scott, co-founder of Switchpod.com. “Once we have a transcript of each podcast on our network, our content creators can achieve greater search engine rankings, allowing more listeners to find their podcast. Additionally, this will provide sponsors and advertisers a more sophisticated means of selecting the podcast shows they feel will be the best fit for their product or service.”

Switchpod podcasters will also benefit from the new offerings by making their podcasts more accessible to sponsors and advertisers. Using Wizzard technology, Switchpod is creating a unique AdSelect system for advertisers to find relevant podcasts on the Switchpod network. With the ability to search through the actual text of all podcasts on the Switchpod Network, advertisers can find the most relevant podcasts to promote their product or service. For example, if Ford Motor Company wants to advertise in all podcasts that discuss cars, a strategic search can now be performed across the entire Switchpod network for all podcasts that discuss specific words at any place in the audio/video content archives, such as automobiles, trucks, or minivans.

Wizzard believes that this feature will give Switchpod.com a strong competitive advantage, making it easier for Switchpod’s podcast creators to attract advertisers and sponsors who want to successfully align their brand of products and services with high-value content and a targeted audience on the Switchpod Network.
“Most importantly, text-to-speech (TTS) and speech recognition are absolute natural fits for podcasting. Converting audio and video into searchable, manageable text is critical to the immediate business success of podcasting,” states Chris Spencer, CEO of Wizzard Software. “Our text-to-speech technology will allow us to automatically create high volume audio podcasts and our speech recognition technology will allow us to attract more listeners and advertisers for our podcasters.”

“We’ve tried a lot of different products and service offerings for our speech technologies, and while we have had some exciting, recent success, we’ve never come across an industry where our technology and expertise can have such a direct impact on the bottom line as with podcasting,” continued Spencer. “We feel Wizzard is set to become an intrinsic leader in the exciting podcasting universe.”

Wizzard believes this new podcast service network will lead the industry by offering competitive advantages to both the podcast community, as well as becoming an attractive new medium for the advertisers and sponsors. The major speech technology feature of this network is architected utilizing the award winning Wizzard Developer’s Tools for Speech Recognition & Text-To-Speech, integrated with the latest, highly accurate speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies from world-class market leaders, AT&T and IBM.