Having discovered Evoca through Sherrod Brown’s use of the service to enable campaign supporters to post audio endorsements on his website, I emailed the company’s CEO and co-founder Murem Sharpe to find out more. She is a technology entrepreneur and former Fortune 500 executive who worked on Capitol Hill during college and post-college.
PDF: Does it cost anything to use this service?
Evoca offers a free account with up to 60 minutes of recording. If someone has more to say, for $4.99 per month, we offer up to 200 minutes of recording time. We also offer transcriptions and translations through a simple click and order. Pricing varies by language. Members also can sell and purchase premium recordings.
PDF: Where are the audio files stored and who owns them? Are there assurances that the files can’t be misused, or is that risk inherent?
The audio files are stored on Evoca and are owned by the person who creates them. Evoca.com acts as a venue for users to create, organize, share, and search audio recordings and does not own any of the content that is hosted on the service. A member can choose to make a recording public or private. All public recordings can be downloaded and the HTML code we create for each public recording can be copied/pasted into any blog or website. Private recordings are, well, private. Our privacy settings also apply to albums and groups.
PDF: Are you aggregating the files that users post publicly? It looks that way from your home page, where I saw at least one audio file related to Sherrod Brown. Do you do that by tagging or some other method?
Evoca offers flexible ways for users to share and aggregate content. One of the simplest is via an RSS feed that is created for every user on Evoca. The RSS feed acts like a podcast, so that any public recording that is hosted on Evoca can be pushed to listeners using RSS readers such as iTunes. Additionally, Evoca provides a simple HTML code that allows a user to post the Evoca player on a blog or website.
PDF: Can you point me to other uses of Evoca in political campaigns, here or abroad?
Certainly! In the heated political race for Ecuador’s presidency, the leftist leader, Rafael Correa has been using Evoca to post interviews and recorded rallies on his website. With over 200 minutes of recorded audio hosted on Evoca, Rafael Correa’s campaign committee uses this service to add a new way of reaching its voters globally–through voice: Campaign website with recorded interview. El Comercio, Ecuador’s leading newspaper, also uses Evoca to post both party’s debates.
PDF: Are you privately-held? How long have you been around?
Evoca is privately held and was founded in 2005. The service launched in public beta in March 2006. The Spanish language version was launched in August and there have been a series of new features launched this fall, including Phone to Web and Evoca Browser Mic (recorder that can be embedded in a website or blog such as used by the Brown campaign).
Technorati Tags: Ecuador, Evoca, puppy, Sherrod Brown