Odeo, a podcasting community that was one of the darlings of early podcasting coverage in the mainstream media, is looking for a buyer:

In the last few months, we here at Obvious have been increasingly focused on Twitter. As a result, our original product, Odeo, has not gotten the attention it deserves.

It does not cost us much to run‚Äîin fact, AdSense covers the hosting‚Äîbut on the web you need to constantly improve, or fade away. We’ve put too much into Odeo to want to see it fade away. And it still has tons of potential. But we’re not improving it fast enough.

It seems likely Odeo is worth more to someone else than it is to us at this point, so we’re looking for a new home for it. We’ve been having some conversations with potential buyers, and this is our attempt to put the word out more widely in the most expeditious way (and without involving investment bankers and the like). If we don’t get any attractive offers, we’ll continue to run it.

To clarify, what we’re talking about is selling odeo.com and studio.odeo.com, including all code, the domain, brand, database of three million MP3s, etc. Not a company, but a site and platform that could be ramped up to something much bigger.

Traffic snapshot, last 30 days:

* Unique visitors: 684,951
* Pageviews: 3,012,921 (does not include RSS, MP3s, or Flash widgets)
* Flash plays: 1,523,963
* Logins: 76,106

We’re open to a variety of scenarios‚Äîfrom cash offer to an equity position. Our main concern is the ability to focus on Twitter and to see Odeo live on in some legitimate form.

If you’re interested in Odeo and can make a serious offer‚Äîeither in cash or the ability to invest in it while we retain some equity‚Äîemail me (ev AT obvious) for more details.

Last year, Odeo’s CEO Evan Williams candidly revealed how his startup podcasting company screwed up in a speech at a tech conference. Now Williams is being surprisingly candid about his interest in selling Odeo.