Bargain buys week continues, as SabSe Technologies acquires jaxtr.  Sab-who?

Under the deal, SabSe will continue to maintain and expand the jaxtr service under the jaxtr brand alongside the SabSeBolo brand.  SabSe believes that jaxtr’s consumer services will complement its SMB portfolio and help to accelerate sales and market presence.

However, jaxtr seems to have plateau-ed at around 10 million users and there’s a whole bunch of other mobile VoIP players with the same me-too business plan of “save money on international calls, send free SMS messages, join our community” blah blah.

SabSe bills itself as a “leading developer of value-added applications for telecom providers” founded by HotMail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia, and serial entrepreneur Yogesh Patel. The company currently offers a free conferencing service targeted to the Indian market, SabseBolo (A Hindi word that means “Talk to everyone”, FYI) and a hosted PBX offering. As is typical with the freebie crowd, “free” conference call users can upgrade to paying plans to add additional features and functionality.

Driving SabSe’s offering is a platform designed to provide telephony apps as a service (TaaS, a spin on Saas) and there’s the typical web-based API for third-party development.  SabSe lists AirTel, Tata, and Celcom among its customers.

Yesterday, Natural Convergence bought NewStep Networks

JingleMe.Com (Sunnyvale, CA) – After recent attendance at the Social Networks and Dating Conference held in Miami Beach, FL. Jan/2009, JingleMe has announced the expansion of its partnership and revenue sharing program with social network and dating sites.

JingleMe.Com provides a phone widget that allow Private, Secure, and Anonymous phone-to-phone connection service between two parties. It is designed specifically for Social Networking or Dating site members. A viewer clicks the JingleMe widget and enters his/her phone number. The JingleMe system will automatically call and connect the caller with the called party. No phone numbers will be visible at either end. The called party’s contact information stays private, and the caller’s number is anonymous.

JingleMe’s simplicity and ease of use is further enhanced by its features to protect privacy. No phone numbers are visible or displayed. The called party has an option to hear the caller’s name as provided via a recorded voice before accepting the call. The called party has an option to anonymously reject the call or “block” the caller. Users can select best day of the week and best time of the day to receive calls from friends or admirers. A real-time call reporting feature is available to review call detail records.

JingleMe.Com is continually looking for partners and is aggressively pursuing its revenue sharing partnership program with Dating sites and Social Network sites alike.
For partnership program request, contact: partners@JingleMe.Com

http://www.JingleMe.Com

For the past few days, the VoIP community has been indulging in a bit of soul-searching. The debate: Is VoIP dead? To pragmatists such as Alec Saunders, the answer is yes. In his well-reasoned polemic, “2008: The Year VoIP Died,” he succinctly writes, “Voice over IP is just a transport and signaling technology. It’s plumbing.” Harsh, but true!

Of course, on the other side of the debate are folks such as Jeff Pulver and Jon Arnold, both with deep interests in the success of VoIP, who seem to think that VoIP is in for a renaissance. Pulver argues that we are going through Internet Communications Continuum, or “the continued evolution of the IP Communications Industry. In my case, this continuum represents all forms of IP Communications, including: VoIP, Instant Messaging, Presence, IP Signaling, Internet TV, Unified Communications, Social Media and more.”

They continue to think of VoIP as a revolution. The reality, however, is more mundane and as Alec said, boring. Where do we come out on this debate? On the side of realism. About two months ago, Ian Bell on our behalf analyzed the state of VoIP and why it was “dead.” We were egged on by some comments made by Skype’s general manager of voice and video, Jonathan Christensen, at an industry conference a few weeks ago.

Towards the end of that post, Ian pointed out that the current spate of problems facing the VoIP sector was lack of imagination on the part of the industry because its players went “after low-hanging fruit and forcing their innovations to be defined within the walls of the PSTN.” It is not just the failed voice service providers who took the easy way out, but also the so-called social voice innovators.

My friend Daemon sees a lot of hope in the new services that are emerging, but I remain skeptical. Not because I am a hater. Far from it. It is just that the VoIP landscape is littered with carcasses of companies that represented mediocrity and marginal ideas. There is some hope on the horizon, but we have been fooled before.

What side are you on?

by Alexis Cala, PIC Current Assistant Producer

Courtesy of re-ality

Difficult economic times have many of us avoiding any travel and missing out on quality time with family and friends.

If your like me, and many of your family members live out of the state or country, long distance calls can get expensive quick even on the cheapest plans (especially if your family are talkers!).  Not to mention, trying to see all of them over the holidays can get very tricky.

Fortunately, internet calling can make it cheap and easy to stay in touch with family and friends all over the world! Internet calling, also known as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), has made it possible to make calls from your computer to other computers and phones.

For different options and deals here are just a few internet calling plans:

• Calling America
• InPhonex
• Jaxtr
• Vonage
• Ooma

Don’t miss out on free pc-to-pc (computer-to-computer) software downloads and services from these providers!

• Skype
• Yahoo Voice

Can’t think of a gift for Grandma? Give her free video calling from Skype and a webcam (many are less than $20) for a gift that keeps on giving. Many of these plans (including pc-to-pc) offer free, or otherwise super low rates on long distance calls, video calling, text messages, group chats, and more!

For more information on these services, please visit:

The New York Times

VoIP Review

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

What is this?

[qi:004] Updated: A few years ago we saw a gaggle of VoIP start-ups pop-up, each claiming to have their unique twist on cheap phone calls. Some offered anonymous calling services as their signature feature. Others labeled themselves as social voice apps. Some of them tried both and other features. Most jumped on the social networking bandwagon. And many of them - Jangl, TalkPlus and EQO for example — went bust, because they learned the harsh lesson — selling cheap minutes or offering free calls isn’t really a business. One such company – Menlo Park, Calif.-based Jaxtr – apparently hasn’t learnt that lesson.

It is still hanging around, thanks to $10 million venture capital infusion it received in June 2008 from Lehman Venture Partners. They fell from my active-coverage list. Today they sent over a press release touting Freeconnect, their free member-to-member calling service, that has been tried unsuccessfully by other VoIP start-ups.

FreeConnect is easy-to-use. Jaxtr members simply enter the number of the jaxtr member they wish to call. Jaxtr will then give them a local number to reach that person. Once they initiate the call, jaxtr notifies the person they are calling, and will give that person a local number to call, too – allowing the parties to connect directly. They can then talk for as long as they like, free of any charge from jaxtr. These assigned local phone numbers can also be used again by the same parties on an ongoing basis.

That announcement made me feel like Rip Van Winkle who just woke up. If my memory serves me right, this is just another variation on Rebtel’s initial model, one they launched with back in 2006. After realizing that they weren’t going anywhere, Rebtel (somewhat) re-focused and now (supposedly) makes a decent living. The whole process of using Jaxtr to make free phone calls seems so cumbersome and in this day of increasingly cheap wireless plans – almost pointless.

Now even if Jaxtr’s new offering does become popular — odds of that happening are lower than chances of baseball slugger Manny Ramirez returning to Boston — how is Jaxtr going to make money? Free calls don’t make money but they surely incur costs. Advertising isn’t going to cover the costs — at least not while this deep recession lasts.

“We believe a big portion of the free callers will convert to paid calling… The number of people who do that can make up for the people who only do free calls,” Bahman Koohestani, chief executive of the company told VentureBeat.

Maybe I should offer to sell him an investment opportunity in Bernie Madoff’s fund!

You should check out my twitter conversation with Jaxtr co-founder. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Regardless of however you spin it, if you are firing 20 percent of your work force and have no real business model to speak of, you are in trouble. That certainly is true of Fring, an Israeli Mobile VoIP startup, which has cut 10 of its 50 employees. CEO Avi Shechter told TechCrunch that his company is doing well. In addition to $13 million it raised in the past, Avi says the company has raised an undisclosed amount of money in its Series C financing.

By doing well, I guess he means Fring’s deal with Mobilkom Austria and an increase in the number of monthly downloads from 100,000 a year ago to 400,000. Mobile advertising is one way it hopes to make money, but it seems like a long shot. Like many of its peers, Fring is going to have a tough time in the future. Jangl and TalkPlus have already shut down, while EQO recently fired 65 percent of its workforce. Jaxtr, another VoIP startup, recently had a management shakeup and has its own set of issues. Other Fring competitors would include iSkoot and Nimbuzz.

Related Post: 7 Ways To VoIP From Your Mobile Phone

Techcrunch.com: “13 Employees Laid Off At VoIP Startup Jaxtr
Jaxtr, a startup that offers VoIP serivce as well as a social network, has laid off 13 of its employees and has been added to the layoff tracker. As of June 2008 the company had 35 employees (we’ve asked the company for the current count). Update: The company now has 30 full time employees.”

Full story

When do you move from online chat to telephone call?

How do you move from online chat to telephone call?

I am introducing a service, “JingleMe” (http://www.JingleMe.Com) as a point of discussion. It is a phone widget for Social Networking. It solves the privacy and the anonymity requirement that is needed in Social Networking space. The available call features are just right. Not over or under loaded with features. No ID, no phone numbers displayed or disclosed; Just click the “JingleMe” widget and place the call. JingleMe will allow you to listen to the caller’s name before you accept the call. If you don’t feel like taking the call, you can reject the call and the call will never go thru. You can even block the particular caller. It has a time of day feature where you can set your profile, so you can accept (or not accept) calls at certain day and time of the week. The basic service is FREE and currently available for North American market.

Blog: http://jinglemesocial.blogspot.com/

The JingleMe reporting capability is clean and simple presentation. It tells you who called, represented by the callers voice as recorded, the time and day the call occurred , option to block the caller and delete the record. When you click the voice icon you will be able to hear your caller. Easy readability.

JingleMe.Com is a phone-to-phone connection service designed for Social Network sites. By registering at http://www.jingleme.com/ site, a member will receive a custom script that can display a widget on the member’s preferred page. A viewer clicks the JingleMe widget and enters a phone number. The JingleMe system will automatically call and connect the caller with the called party. No phone numbers will be visible at either end. The called party’s contact information stays private, and the caller’s number is anonymous.

For those of you Social Network site members who would like friends to reach you but yet do not want to publish your phone number, JingleMe is the right widget. It provides a brief (and FREE) conversation time with a friend or with even someone you haven’t heard from or talked to in a long time. JingleMe has multiple features to protect your privacy. As mentioned, no phone numbers are visible or displayed. The called party has an option to hear the caller’s name as provided via a recorded voice before accepting the call. The called party has an option to anonymously reject the call. Furthermore, the called party can block caller as well as “unblock” it at a later time.

For convenience, the member can select best day of the week and best time of the day to accept calls. A real-time call reporting feature is available to review call detail records. The service is FREE and comes with FREE limited number of inbound calls every month. You can add more calls to your account for a nominal fee. All calls are brief and designed for a brief chit-chat. Check it out: http://www.jingleme.com/

I had earlier made a post about tringme http://venturoni.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/tringme-rocks/. you can clearly see my enthu there about the service. My experience with it is sour. I am wondering how to fight such bad service providers.

Let me narrate the story , you tell me if i am wronged or wong.

I have to tell my naivity about VOIP services especially of the callback kind. So when i was charged for calls that didn’t go through, i didn’t have a clue. I reached out to the customer service for the same. See the thread below to get more.

http://support.tringme.com/view.php?id=724517

To my predicament my acccount was closed. Do you terminate an account just because the customer doesn’t understand ?

i highlighted the points of my experience with opencoffeeclubbangalore where the founder of tringme is also a member. After a non response i raised up the issue with the same group. Please see the thread here

http://groups.google.com/group/bangaloreocc/browse_thread/thread/76b60eae157ea1fc/28c82534699da475?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=tringme#28c82534699da475

I don’t know what to say.  I even reached out to the CEO of the organization to check up the reason for closing my account . I am not worried about the $ 1.57 credit i had, i am worried about the future of web customer. If i can be fleeced, you too can be fleeced. 

I have read somewhere that they are fast innovating and coming up with new services. It’s good. I am wondering what use will it be if it doesn’t value the customer right. 

Please do read and share this experience with as many friends as possible so that they can be cautious about dealing with this company

http://support.tringme.com/view.php?id=940136

Communication between people is what the mobile phone is all about. Still local voice calls constitutes an overwhelming part of the mobile traffic. With all the traveling and facilitation of global socializing going on, shouldn’t we be calling each other more often?  Anyway Jaxtr thinks so.

Skype made the world a little smaller but now Jaxtr attempts to shrink it completely. With Jaxtr you can call your friends from the others side of the globe to prices far below the normal roaming rates of your operator. But whats really cool is that you can do it directly from the address book on your mobile phone. Yes that’s right, no need for dowloading and launching applications. Also you can meet and socialize with other Jaxtr users around the globe in the virtual café hopefully ending with…..a phone call. Hope they use protection.

How it works: You sign up at the Jaxtr website and provide Jaxtr with the phone number of your friends. Jaxtr then gives you a local number to call and store in address book. Now you can call your friends on the other side of the globe to low rates because Jaxtr uses the internet to connect two local numbers. You can also choose to contact Jaxtr members in the virtual café. Again Jaxtr provides you with a local number to use for calling the person.  

Novelty: The service is novel because it is not based on a client application like e.g. Skype. Also creating a social network based on voice communication is not everyday news in the world of social networking.

Value: Communication is basic human need and Jaxtr makes it very easy. Though, It can be discussed whether initial contact with people you have never met before is facilitated best through direct and live voice communication.

Why I review it:As consumers we should not put up with the way too high roaming rates of the normal operators. Jaxtr shows us that the service of connecting people (thank you Nokia) can be done much cheaper.

It has been 2 days since i started using the click to call service tringme. My earlier post was focused on the product offer and the marketing strategies employed. I was even raving at my ability to make VOIP calls from mobile. I still love it.

Let me focus on the service part in this poost.

Quality : My experience with tringme tells QoS is not all that great. I experienced lags. Though reduced from earlier experiences it still needs a lot of improvement.

Pricing : My first reson for going in for a VOIP based click n call play is to reduce the cost. I am not sure how others are using these services. I am a tard disappointed with the pricing. It’s more expensive to make calls to UAE using this service. I spent 565 seconds over phone to UAE. I received a charge of $2.35. $1.82 to the UAE phone and the  rest to my phone. it averages out to $.25 per minute. Bingoo! . It will cost me Rs 9 from my landline. I must be a fool to spend Rs 11 on my Voip. I had a look at Jaxtr pricing. They too charge at similar rates. Please have a look at the rate cards before you buy these services

Customer Care :I have some issues with tringme billing. The customer care is quite responsive. If they can keep up this level of speed at higher volumes, they can make a positive dent on customer.

I am not very sure if there is a value on offer in this call compared to mobile/landline network.

Suggestion :I am not interested to come to your site everytime to call. I am neither interested to install a widget as of now. Please provide me a toll free SMS number so that i can send in my destination number. You can get me onto the call. If this feature is already implemented then direct me to the link.

I was searching a way to send free sms through php.

After days … nothing, so I decided to write my own little code using jaxtr.com

Now I’m testing it… stay tuned: it seems to work!!!

I’m here!!!

That’s the function:

 function sendSms( $phone_number, $phone_message ) {

  $jaxtr_login = “yourlogin”;
  $jaxtr_passw = “yourpassword”;
  $phone_country = “IT”;  // Your country

  $ch = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, “./coockieFile”);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,”http://www.jaxtr.com/user/Login.action“);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “tzOffset=&Login=&jaxtrId=$jaxtr_login&password=$jaxtr_passw&_sourcePage=/login.jsp&__fp3AEYu5iIaZ5yCr93EuBjJg==”);

  ob_start();
  curl_exec ($ch);
  ob_end_clean();

  curl_close ($ch);
  unset($ch);

  $ch = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, “./coockieFile”);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,”http://www.jaxtr.com/user/sendsms“);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “CountryName=$phone_country&phone=$phone_number&message=$phone_message&bySMS=”);

  $buf2 = curl_exec ($ch);

  curl_close ($ch);

  echo “<pre>”.htmlentities($buf2).”</pre>”;
 }

That’s all!

Jaxtr, the company that links your phone to the Web, now offers local phone numbers in India. Jaxtr is the first and only company to offer its members the ability to bypass expensive international toll charges by calling a local Indian number to reach friends and family abroad-cheaply and easily-from any ordinary mobile or landline phone. (Press Release)

With the local numbers, India jaxtr members can call for as little as 0.43 Indian rupees (43 paisa or 0.01 USD) per minute.

For Indians in US, the reversal of calling patterns can result in tremendous savings.

eg.

I use StanaCard or Reliance Calling Card to call home. Both of these cost almost 6 cents per minute. (Apart from this, I also use my operator’s tariff minutes).

If I consume about 320-360 mins/month calling India. 70% of thse minutes are calls to my immediate family. Rest of the minutes are divided between friends and relatives.

I’m trying to analyse the cost savings if I purchase jaxtr India number(s) where my family can call me. Calling US from India is much cheaper (on Jaxtr) that calling India from US, this should result in considerable savings.

The following table should explain the scenario in detail.

Wow! this cuts down my long distance charges by more than half! The only downside being, for each of my phone in India (from where calls are made), I need jax minutes since sharing of minutes across multiple phone numbers may not be allowed by Jaxtr.

The business of providing voice services to users of social networks is a tough one – you need huge volume to basically make money off what is essentially a new age call-back/calling card business. That is why many companies that aimed at this market have either retrenched or gone out of business.

Jaxtr, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, on the other hand, is ready to double down and stay in the game. Helping it do so is $10 million in Series B funding from Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, announced this morning.

The funding announcement is contrary to the rumor I had heard about Jaxtr hiring Lehman Brothers to sell the company. Good thing, I didn’t post that one  Jaxtr plan includes making money to selling minutes for outbound calls to non-network members and ad-supported calls. “Combo of viral growth, ad revenue and paid services is a promising model,” Konstantin Guericke wrote in an email this morning. Jaxtr says it has 10 million users, a number they have been using since early 2008, though I would prefer if they start telling us about active users per month.

The out-of-network calling is a new service from Jaxtr, and is ultra cheap. For instance calls to China cost a mere penny a minute, while calls to India are 6 cents a minute. That’s low price, and I am not sure how they are going to make a ton of money doing that. Advertising-supported business is not an easy one either – as we have noticed in the past. To sum it up, I channel Brian McConnell, a former phone guy, and an occasional columnist for us.

The liquidity and exit opportunities for small telecom companies are also not good. You either need massive amounts of capital, or you need to be bought by a phone company (the stereotypes about phone companies exist for a reason). There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare.

Good thing, Konstantin has the money to soldier on!

Last night I attended one of the most amazing, ongoing, networking meetings available in the world. No this is not an exageration–it is the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs aka SVASE. Last night’s panel has incredible substance factor and track records of success:

Patrick Chanezon, API Evangelist, Google; Jyri Engestrom Co-Founder Jaiku; Konstantin Guericke, CEO jaxtr and Co-Founder, LinkedIn; Ramu Yalamanchi, Founder and CEO, hi5

One of the big “Ah-ha” discoveries was what the panel described as “Social Objects” and the need to find a Social Object in order to build your business.

What Is A Social Object?

The examples given of Social Objects are the best way to describe what they are in business:

Ex.1-Youtube has video as it’s social object. People come to youtube to watch video, they add their own videos, and they utilize other people’s videos for their blog or website. This created the critical mass viral marketing we now see for youtube

Ex.2-Flickr has photos as it’s social object. People post their photos, share with the network, they take away photos, and they virally spread the word about other people’s work.

Do You Have A Social Object?

A great example of someone with a social object is America’s mortgage broker Brian Brady. Brian’s social object began as “the American Dream” aka home ownership aka money. People need funding to own a home and mortgage brokers provide that access to many new homeowners.

But Brian took it a giant step further. Brian became THE go-to source of information about mortgages on the internet. He socially networked everywhere, he commented, he spoke as a keynote speaker, and he built online recognition through blogging that has positioned him today.

How Do You Find Your Social Object?

What differentiates your business as a Realtor? Do you dominate a particular area? Are you perceived by consumers as the expert in that area-region? Or are you an expert in a area of real estate knowledge ie. buyer’s agent, 1031 Exchange specialist, seller’s agent, or relocation expert

Tip: Remember a Social Object is something people revolve around, talk about to other people, continue to follow, and have an ongoing interest in maintaining a level of knowledge about in their lives.