VentureBeat

Ribbit injects voice into Google Wave release

Ribbit, one of the earliest web-based telephone services (acquired last year by British telecom giant BT), plans to ride Google Wave’s coattails — announcing the integration of several gadgets allowing voice calls, phone conferencing, text messaging and voicemail transcription into the search engine’s new, much-hyped communication platform.

These services, available in the limited beta release going live tomorrow, are meant to introduce voice as a major pillar of net communications, along with email, social networks and… Continue Reading

Ribbit, Sprout inject “voice” into ad campaigns

Ribbit, the company that lets people easily create phone-like applications within Web sites, has struck a partnership with the online marketing company Sprout to insert “voice” and other phone features into advertising campaigns.

Ribbit, now owned by BT, has captured the imagination of developers because of its cool technology that allows voice call technology to inserted in dynamic ways within Web sites.  It is joining with Sprout, a company which has generated its own buzz with its photoshop-like interface for… Continue Reading

Ribbit announces winners of its “killer” mobile apps competition

Ribbit, the mobile development platform owned by BT, announced the winners of its $100,000 Killer App Challenge today, recognizing teams that most effectively integrated voice functionality into apps, web sites and mobile communities. Products created on the Ribbit system are unique in that they span carriers, devices and operating systems — giving the submissions a good amount of freedom, but also the challenge of working seamlessly across platforms.

The competition drew 150 applications from 500 developers… Continue Reading

Ribbit launches its web phone platform

Ribbit, the web phone company recently acquired by BT for $105 million, has opened its developer platform to the general public. Although the Mountain View, Calif. company makes useful applications like the recently-updated Ribbit for Salesforce, the most exciting part of its technology is the platform, which promises to allow anyone to add phone capabilities to their web applications.

The platform has been in beta testing for the last few months, and there are already more… Continue Reading

Ribbit adds landlines and instant messaging to your Salesforce account

Ribbit, the web phone company recently acquired by BT, continues to tie together many of your communication tools with the release of Ribbit for Salesforce 2.0, which adds compatibility with landline phones, Google Talk and Skype.

Calling itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” Mountain View, Calif.-based Ribbit has built a platform for easily integrating phone capabilities into web applications. Ribbit for Salesforce, which launched in May, was the first big demonstration of the platform’s potential —… Continue Reading

Ribbit investor Robert Ackerman talks about good returns, bad markets and ‘Communication 2.0′

Today was probably a good day for Robert Ackerman, managing director and co-founder of Allegis Capital. Less than a year after Allegis led the $10 million second venture round for Ribbit, “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” BT announced that it has acquired Ribbit for $105 million. That’s supposedly a return of more than 500 percent for Allegis.

I spoke to Ackerman this afternoon, and he described the sale as another validation of Allegis’ investment strategy. That… Continue Reading

BT buys Ribbit for $105M

BT, the dominant British telecommunications company, has acquired Ribbit, a company that has styled itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” for $105 million.

VentureBeat first heard news of the deal in July and reported it. At the time, the company’s spokesman Don Thorson adamantly denied that any deal had happened, but it was clear something was up. Today, the company confirmed the amount of the deal.

This is an impressive performance for Ribbit, which first launched in… Continue Reading

Source: Ribbit, “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” bought by BT [Updated: Confirmed]

Updated with a response from the company.

Ribbit, a company that has styled itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” has been purchased by BT, the dominant British telecommunications company, we’re hearing.

[Update: A company spokesperson has gotten back to us denying that there’s been an acquisition. However, the company wouldn’t comment on whether or not acquisition talks were taking place. There are a few possibilities here. One is that it my source (and I) are completely wrong… Continue Reading

Ribbit for Salesforce makes sweet sounds for enterprise users

Updated
Ribbit, which bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” has been getting a lot of positive attention. The Mountain View startup has created a platform that allows developers to integrate users’ phones into their web applications with minimal fuss. Tomorrow, Ribbit plans to launch Ribbit for Salesforce, the first big showcase of what its platform can do.

As the name implies, Ribbit for Salesforce is an enterprise application that brings a number of useful voice… Continue Reading

Ribbit, “Silicon Valley’s first phone company”

Ribbit is a remarkable new company, and it knows it: It calls itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.”

That sounds like marketing overreach for a young company barely launched, but when you look at what it’s doing, you can see why they can get carried away.

Ribbit, based in Mountain View, Calif., has developed technology, built on years of prior work of its founders, that lets a developer insert phone software into any Web application. The developer… Continue Reading

DEMO: A roundup of companies launching

There are 78 companies presenting at the DEMO conference this week. We’ll be covering some of the more notable ones in separate posts.

First, we’ve picked out 16 of them here for brief overview: Yoics, Acesis, Asankya, Atlaspost, Bitgravity, Cozimo, Healthpricer, Hubdub, Huddle, Squidcast, Standoutjobs, , Youchoose, Zodiac-interactive, Skyfire, Scenecaster and Ribbit.

YOICS, a Palo Alto, Calif., company, makes any network-connected device remotely accessible via a Web page. You can grant others access to it too. You… Continue Reading