By Scott Kirsner | September 5, 2005
It was a milestone of some sort last month, when venture capitalists made the first two serious investments in podcasting start-ups. But did the milestone signify that podcasting is on the verge of dethroning radio -- or that the buzziest technology trend of 2005 had just jumped the shark?
In early August, PodShow raised $8.85 million from a group of West Coast investors that included Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Ram Shriram, an early supporter of Google and a member of the search site's board.
A few days later, Odeo cofounder Evan Williams announced on his blog that his company had raised money from Charles River Ventures of Waltham. Before starting Odeo in December, Williams had helped build Blogger, an early blog-creation and hosting site Google eventually acquired.
Odeo didn't say how much it had raised, but the Charles River partner who made the investment, George Zachary, told me it is ''in the same order of magnitude as the PodShow amount."
The entrepreneurs at PodShow and Odeo harbor big dreams for podcasting.