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Comment by peteforde | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised that I'm the first person in an hour to say this: I clicked on the link to SpeakerText and it sure looks like a functioning company to me.

I remember when you started posting a lot, and I've always enjoyed your words. I'm just confused, because reading this feels like someone tore about three chapters from my copy of the book.

TL;DR: if SpeakerText is dead, then why is the site open for business?

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Seriously, SpeakerText's core technology was one of the best ideas I've seen for improving journalism on the web. I had product ideas for them, they were totally on my list of places to try to work at, what happened?

And if they're dead, are there patents? And if not, does anybody want to start a company? :)

Thanks for the kind words. SpeakerText was acquired over the summer.

Unfortunately, having awesome technology and improving journalism on the web are not the same as being able to make truckloads if money.

Who acquired it?

According to a recent GigaOM Pro Sector RoadMap article on crowd labor platforms in 2012 (http://go.gigaom.com/rs/gigaom/images/RoadMap2012_GigaOM%20P...), CloudFactory (http://cloudfactory.com) acquired Speakertext/Humanoid. I haven't seen any other news to confirm that acquisition or the terms, but I don't doubt that it happened.

Full Disclosure: I was interviewed for this GigaOM Sector Roadmap article. I believe the SpeakerText guys were also interviewed for the article.

Cheers, - Isaac

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