DEMOfall 08: HeyCosmo launches a bizarre but interesting mobile concierge service

September 9, 2008 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

Mountain View, Calif.-based Arsenal Interactive has an interesting offering dubbed HeyCosmo, a suite of services that includes Concierge Blast. If you’re traveling, it will find the nearest restaurants of a certain type such as vegetarian. It will list all of the numbers. Then you can instruct it to ask if the restaurants have an opening for a party of five at 6 pm. The service will then call every single one of those restaurants. You can send a text question and the service will convert it into an automated voice.

When the restaurants answer, an automated voice will ask if there is an opening. The restaurant receptions can press a number “1″ if there is an opening or “2″ if there isn’t. If the line is busy or the host hangs up, the call fails and you have to try again. The Concierge Blast then shows you the results of all of the calls on the web site. You can call back to make the actual reservation.

Every time I hear the pitch from James Im, the chief executive of Arsenal Interactive, it makes a little more sense. A personable guy, he shouted my name and shook my hand heartily. Then he got me to pose for a couple of pictures with him and his team. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s really a bizarre service he offers.

The problem with this is that some hosts will hang up when they hear an automated message. Kim says that the restaurants will get used to the calls over time and they will likely jump at the chance to book reservations. You can use the Concierge Blast on your friends too. You can ask a group of friends if they want to hit Las Vegas this weekend. They can all vote and volunteer to pay for a piece of the trip.

You can use it on Concierge Blast on Facebook or other sites. Rivals include SpinVox, Chacha, Kadoink and Ribbit, which was recently purchased by British Telecom. Like Ribbit, Arsenal Interactive has built a “soft switch” in the background. This is the part that makes the most business sense. The company is able to make a 100 automated calls on your behalf because those phone calls are virtually free voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) calls.

Im said that the company can make money off advertising. The ads are context-aware verbal messages played just as a user is deciding whether to eat sushi or Mexican. The company was founded early last year and raised a bridge loan to get off the ground. Im said he may seek a first round of capital early next year. It has seed funding of $650,000 from private investors.

I wonder if anyone really needs this unless their job is to be the social director of a big roving posse. But Im said that the company is already generating $100,000 a month in ad revenues and it is generating millions of messages a month. It is now in an open beta test. The company has 14 employees.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • no likey
    I just got "blasted" on my cell. I am not a retaurant and I just hung up. Now I have no idea what this was all about. Cell services bill for incoming calls and having an automated call on a cell phone is bizare. This service is really stupid.
  • mc0123
    Hey No Likely, similar thing happened to my friends. I sent a blast to a bunch of my buddies this past weekend about going down to San Jose Rock & Roll Half-Marathon to see if they wanted to join me and a couple of ‘em said they missed the call and wanted to know what my msg was.

    Have you tried using it to blast your friends yet? Well, you were probably called by a friend of yours because that concierge service can only call businesses. Unless your cell phone is listed as a business, concierge can't call you.

    I just checked out their blog on HeyCosmo.com and it looks like they are working on a msg retrieval if you missed the call. They should've had that from the getgo. Duhh~

    Until they get that going, I'm only using the blaster for my party invites.
  • Mike - Santa Clara
    I saw the blog and it appears that they have that function "on the roadmap." Not being able to get the missed message is just a little nuisance but really haven't found it a hindrance to using it.

    --Cheers!
  • Tom - K&S Auto service
    Got blasted at work by a customer needing their car serviced. Never showed up.. Maybe there should be something that the customer does when they make a final choice to let all the other "potentials" know that your going else where so we can un hold your appointment slot!
  • Mike - Santa Clara
    I think this is an easy misunderstanding. I just used that concierge app to get my someone to come to my home to bid for reshingling and I used the standard call template that comes up as a default for that category. I edited the options for my needs but didn’t edit the response portion. The response read that if a certain time was available that I would call back to confirm the reservation, which means that the call you may have received was only checking availability and not really locking in a reservation. My calls got 5 responses back and decided to call back on the closest one to my location and confirmed a reservation.
  • E
    This is ridiculous. I am not a restaurant, I am not a business owner, my friends actually pic up the phone and call me personally if they want to chat....this so-called "service" is a nuisance that should have better securities regarding who receives the calls.
  • Damnit!
    Effing ridiculous! I just got a call from these people asking about somebody's wife's future baby. Total waste of my money @ time! Like the other person said, my friends actually CALL ME DIRECTLY, not use some dumbass service like this. Besides, who the hell is having a baby?
  • ch3847
    I hope this ridiculous piece of unsolicited rudeness falls flat on its sorry keyboard.
  • Mark
    This is an abusive "service." The system is manipulated by scammers and web trolls. Many people are receiving phone abuse from Hey Cosmo. The site should come down because the abuse is not tolerable.
  • Mark N
    I, too, just received an unsolicited call from this service. My cell phone is a personal phone. This is nothing more than an easy way to be scammed. From reading several other web sites about Hey Cosmo there is no limit on when they call or how often. I have blocked my number at their site and have forwarded the information to friends and family to block their numbers. I hope that the block works. This is not the way to do business.
  • CLK
    This is BS. I have my cell phone listed on the Do Not Call registry and I got a call from some prerecorded woman blathering on about "Predict-O". I promptly reported them to the DNC registry. There is another blog where hundreds of others are doing the same.

    This is horse shit!
  • Eydie
    I'm surprised that the mainstream tech media (not just VentureBeat, but CNet, Engadget, and the San Jose Mercury News, among others) haven't picked up on the fact that, uh, they endorsed a dud. Ain't no shame: The products they unrolled and the vision they touted were rather compelling--how was anyone to know the true nature of HeyCosmo? I did some of the research: http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/more-like-h... Feel free to use it, as long as you give me a shout-out :)
  • Marty from Modesto
    I am not amused by this spam garbage on my phones and also on my 80 year old Mother's phone.

    This is pure harassment and I am following through on a civil lawsuit. I received it on a cell phone that I have had for 5 years and I only use it for emergencies. I received one on my home land line. I received one on my VOIP phone, with a brand new number and a new block of prefix numbers just made available by the VOIP service. There is no one in my family or friends of mine that would use such a piece of garbage web site like this.

    HeyCozmo.com I'll take my $200.00 now! BTW, $200.00 per phone call brings it up to $600 for me and $200 for my Mum.

    NO REASONABLE PERSON WOULD THINK THIS WEB SITE IS PROPER!
  • joe blow
    This service is rude, abusive, time consumming, costs the recipient CELL phone MONEY and MINUTES, and is ANNOYING AS HELL!!(*(*(&*(
    Knock it off!!!!! you rude idiots!!!!
  • Ann
    I just got an uninvited "blast" from these idiots, despite being on the DNC list for ages. These people should be put out of business.
  • mike
    Another uninvited, intrusive, invasion of my privacy!!
  • I just got one of these unsolicited automated calls to my cell phone. This HeyCosmo is a stupid idea!
  • jeff
    I am registered on the Do Not Call List. I was recently called by 401-648-0571 wouldn't you be surprised its heycosmo, add it to your block list, I know I did. Absolutely annoying can only find out the site is registered with godaddy.com
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