We haven’t written about podcasts here for a while, but now that Facebook is in the game, we thought it’s probably a good time for a refresher.

Podcasts on Facebook.  Yes, after years of waiting on the sidelines, Facebook is rolling out podcasts –you can now listen to podcast episodes on Facebook.  There are only a few to start, including those from names like Joe Budden and Nicaila Matthews Okome, but it’s probably a safe bet that FB is testing the waters and will launch many more in the days to come.

FB rolled out the podcasts alongside its launch of its Clubhouse clone features for social audio.

Spotify buying Podz.  The latest salvo in Spotify’s strategy to dominate the podcasts space is its recent purchase of podcast discovery platform Podz.  Spotify has 2.6 million podcasts on its platform currently, so it just makes sense to enhance the user experience by making it easier to actually find something you want to listen to.  Podz helps make that easier by using machine learning technology to generate 60-second clips which preview key moments from podcast episodes.  Sounds like a shorter analog to what movie trailers are to movies.

Podz tidbits.  Podz raised a $2.5 million pre-seed funding from M13, Canaan Partners, Charge Ventures, and Humbition to build its product.  The machine learning model that Podz created was trained on more than 100,000 hours of audio.

Coincidentally, Spotify’s purchase of Podz closed shortly after the debut of its own Clubhouse clone, Greenroom which happened yesterday.

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