Jangl, a Pleasanton, Calif. start-up released a noteworthy little messaging feature this week.
It lets both parties leave messages or talk with each other without using their real numbers. It’s free, even internationally, because it is over VoIP.
How does it plan to make money? It doesn’t — for now.
Here’s how it works: First, let’s say you have only someone’s email address. You can enter their email address on the Jangl homepage, and Jangl will issue a new phone number to call. You call it, and leave a message. Jangl ties that message to the email you gave it, and forwards your voice message in an email (they click on a link to hear an audio message). It also issues a local number for you, so the recipient calls you back, again without having your real number. This saves money on International calls, because it’s done through VoIP. You can do the same with an IM address: Just plug that into Jangl, and it will let you leave a voice message for them via IM.
Once you’ve registered, Jangl will give you a dashboard so you can choose which messages you want to respond to, and it lets you change settings, such as how you want to be reached (phone number, email, etc) or how want to respond when reached (phone, email). Because it lets you call a local number, even when someone is abroad, it is free. You pay for any local minutes your carrier charges you, obviously.
Jangl has also issued a widget. See image above. Here’s how it works: I come a long to your widget, and I type in my real number at top. Note that your number, below, is blurred out, so I don’t see it. Jangl then issues a different phone number for me to call you on, and leave a message. You don’t ever see my real number. You call me back on the same issued phone number. It sounds weird that we share a number. But think of it as a virtual number: Jangl knows our real phone numbers, so can put the calls through to our real phones.
Here’s the tough part. There’s no clear way for the company to make money short-term. The company says it plans for mass adoption first. It will seek to make money by offering premium features or advertising, such as within the widgets, or within calls, but hasn’t made any decisions about this.
We talked about this with chief executive Michael Cerda about these new features a couple of months ago, when the service was still under wraps. We missed the announcement when it went live a couple of days ago. To bring this up to date, Jangl has just integrated the widget service within Facebook.
Tags: co:Jangl7 Comments
-
tim said:
Hi Matt –
Thanks for the note here. Two quick things: regarding IM, we’re working to have that feature turned on shortly. So right now, we can get a Jangl voicemail to anyone who has an email address; soon, we’ll be able to do the same if you simply know their IM name. Eventually, it will work with lots of different web identifiers — MySpace names, etc.
Second, you’re right in saying we’re in customer acquisition mode right now. We could turn on any of these revenue features — and in fact, we will in the near future — but right now, we’re focused simply of giving consumers a taste of what they can do, and in ensuring that the service is at its very best.
In fact, too, Jangl’s generating revenue with Match.com, as we power its MatchTalk feature, which lets its members talk on their real phones, without sharing their number. We’re continuing to forge similar paying relationships with other communities and social networks, some of which will be branded and some of which will be white-labeled — but that revenue stream will continue to grow, as well.
Thanks again.
tim
-
Daniel Feder said:
How does this compare with Jaxtr?
-
Michael Cerda said:
Jaxtr is a widget attempting to encapsulate Snapvine + Jajah + Jangl, although they are focused primarily on long distance arbitrage. Most of their 25,000 or so customers are long distance users from India and Israel (indicative of the long distance use case).
Jangl is a destination site for you to call anyone (new), plus a widget for privacy, voice mail, text, and a lot more on the management & control side. The company has over a half million users and several major partnerships (and more coming).
-
Touraj Parang said:
Excellent question Daniel!
As Michael points out, jaxtr is a more comprehensive solution for your communications needs than the point solutions provided by many other players in this market. We surpassed 100,000 users last week, and happy to report that all these users were organically generated (i.e., each user brought others in). Our users love our service, because our service is intuitive, easy and provides free global calling in addition to the essential call control and privacy features needed so that they don’t have to worry about unwanted calls from telemarketers and spammers at random hours once they put jaxtr on their blog, profile, email, IM, etc.
Another important differentiator between jaxtr and others is our philosophy about consumer choice. We are a service that our users CHOOSE and SHAPE, rather than forced on them through partnerships. Many users on Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and other social networking sites have currently posted the jaxtr widget to their profile and are very happy with it. We believe in free global communications and consumer choice. When a service relies on partnerships for adoption, imho, it is an indication of a lack of grass roots consumer acceptance of that service in the highly viral web 2.0 world.
-
SG said:
IMHO both the models have a huge question mark related to revenues. These free calling features automagically turning into revenue generating models have not worked in the past. Getting users to play with free minutes is one thing, comverting these to paying customers is a completely different play.
SG
-
srinivas said:
i want use free calls service
-
Michael Cerda said:
Well…Jangl was at revenue last January actually…thru partnerships. It’s also a great way to build scale and quality into the operation. In parallel, Jangl is on its 6th consumer beta, iterating the innovation each time. We hope to find more success iterating and giving consumers what they want, rather than ripping off other companies.
