Swoot is making podcast listening into a social experience

A new app for podcast listening is available since this week. The new app is called Swoot and the app turns podcast listening into a social experience. The motto is: "Podcasts with friends :)"

Swoot stands out from other podcast apps with its social networking elements and recommendation feature, which allows users to suggest podcasts to friends.

"We are incredibly excited to introduce Swoot to the world," said Curley, co-founder of Swoot. "Podcasts are possibly the most important medium of our time, but existing podcast apps are a lonely and lacking experience. We built Swoot so people can connect with their friends, discover shows together, and never miss awesome podcasts again. Our mission is to give podcasts the home they deserve."

Pete Curley and Garret Heaton are the cofounders of Swoot. They previously founded HipChat, which sold to Atlassian in 2012 and was then acquired by Slack in 2019. To date, Swoot has raised a $3 million seed funding round led by True Ventures. Swoot was founded in 2016.

According to Swoot, 25 percent of podcasts played by users are influenced by friends, demonstrating that listening in Swoot exposes shows to larger audiences.

"We've already seen a few episodes go viral across the entire network, showing the power of social networking for podcasts and enabling the best content to reach a huge audience," said Curley. "This is unthinkable with today's podcast ecosystem."