We’re very proud to announce that The Open University, the United Kingdom’s only university dedicated to distance learning is piloting a dedicated white-label Phreadz server solution to connect many of its remote students and help them get to know the University, prepare for courses, ask for advice from tutors and ‘meet’ each other using the ‘V.I.T.A.L’ (video, images, text, audio and links) multimedia formats which Phreadz supports.

The Open University provides ‘supported open learning‘ to around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students. Around 10,000 Open University students have disabilities. As the students never actually attend a physical place to study together, they rarely actually meet other students on their courses in person.

Using Phreadz as a means to communicate and share knowledge through videos posts recorded directly via their web browsers or mobile phones, or by sharing photos, audio podcasts, YouTube videos, slide presentations and many other multimedia sources and formats which Phreadz supports, we hope that Open University students will learn to get to know each other and support each other while studying for their courses from the comfort of their own home.

While using these new tools and mediums for communication, especially using desktop recorded video, we find that people really get to know each other a lot faster than using text-based emails and forums. However, we also understand that sitting in front of a webcam isn’t for everyone, which is why Phreadz supports all the other mediums available on the web, allowing the students to simply post a photo or an audio clip as part of a conversation thread, accompanied by some text.

For more information about this exciting new pilot system, or to find out more about The Open University, please click here. Visit the online prospectus to find out more about studying with The Open University.

About Phreadz Networks Ltd.
Phreadz is a social multimedia conversation network of videos, audio, photos and slide presentations posted and shared from people at the desktop or from mobile devices like the iPhone and most Nokia Series 60 handsets, creating a multitude of branded forums tailored to vast range of topics, from News, Music and Movies to Karaoke, Kosovo and Cooking.

Phreadz supports the creation of posts and replies from video recorded through the web browser, multimedia uploads from desktop and mobiles and also posts shared from YouTube, Blip.tv, Flickr, Seesmic, DailyMotion, 12Seconds, Qik, Vimeo, Viddler, SlideShare, CollegeHumor, TEDTalks, BBC News, ABC News and many more.

Phreadz makes it easy to share posts and threads to your blogs, microblogs and social networks with integration with Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Drupal, Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live, Flickr, TwitPic, Twitter and the myriad of networks supported by ping.fm.

Phreadz was founded in early 2008 and was built in its entirety by Jon Kossmann (aka ‘Kosso’ on the internet) after building Podcast.com for a Boston-based startup and many multimedia news projects for BBC News Interactive while working there for over 4 years.

Phreadz was seed funded for its first server by the proceeds of a blogging product built by Kosso, which sells in Second Life called ‘BlogHud’.

Phreadz has a business model of providing and managing dedicated ‘white label’ servers and solutions based around the core services which Phreadz provides. It has proved to be profitable.