Jangl formally announced the opening of their beta service this morning. Jangl provides an ID that users can give out to other people to create a VOIP number unique to a single relationship between two people. VOIP is used as the connection between any two phones, be they land lines, cell phones or VOIP calls. The service has been in use at Match.com for several weeks but it’s now available to anyone through the Jangl site.
When you sign up for a Jangl account, you provide your phone number, a PIN and a Jangl ID. You can then give people the Jangl phone number and your Jangl ID. The first time they try to make a connection, the caller has to record a greeting requesting permission to connect. A Jangl ID holder can remove that permission later and no longer be reached through the number. The service is free at launch but Jangl says they expect to charge a fee in early 2007.
Jangl has raised a total of $9 million in two rounds of funding over two years, the second round closed in July. Funders include Storm Ventures, Labrador Ventures and Cardinal.
It’s a little awkward to ask someone to call this company and put in your ID, maybe you’ll accept their call and maybe you won’t. Once a connection has been made, then the individual connection gets a regular ten digit phone number that can be called. I’m sure this will work for situations like online dating, but I can’t imagine off the top of my head how I’d use it in a professional context. I give out my direct line fairly frequently and even the occasional cold call by PR people doesn’t bother me enough that I would want to initiate those relationships with a phone number everyone knows I could cut off at any time. Give me time though and perhaps my cynicism will grow.
I can see a lot of possible applications of Jangl but regular individual use isn’t one of them.
One way or the other, this is another interesting and innovative use of VOIP. While Skype celebrated its first instance of 8 million simultaneous users last week, its huge price tag is widely seen as a loss to the eBay community that has failed to use Skype in conjunction with auctions. Instead, services like Jangl, JaJah, Grand Central and now the newly released TalkPlus are all leveraging VOIP to connect the mobile and land line phones we’re already using. Will this be the real market viable application of VOIP technology? It could be, or it could be proof that the best use of this technology is still yet to come.
Are they giving away money on business plans pitched on a cocktail napkins again? This blows (my mind). $9M really?
It’s a project, but I’m not looking for $9M
Sean, drop a line when Pixelshrink lands a deal with Match.com. Not to be a jerk, but give Jangl some credit.
We built this anonymous and free calling service in one day: http://www.SafePhoneCalls.com
That looks pretty cool John. Thanks for the link.
Marsh,
No one is dismissing the accomplishment, just $9M seems like a lot of money.
John – I’m with Jangl, but I wanted to clarify the difference between what you’re doing and what we do – we assign a real 10-digit phone number that is a permanent (until disconnected) direct connection to the other party (no scheduling, extensions or passcodes required). With Jangl either party can call the *same* phone number to reach the other at any time without needing to run on a pre-arranged schedule.
Pooj – to tell you the truth I am pretty impressed that John could build his anonymous calling system in 1 day – when you compare the two…and how much has been raised/spent…I would recommend you make a quick (googlish) acquisition.
“The service is free at launch but Jangl says they expect to charge a fee in early 2007.”
What is Jangl’s plan for getting people to pay after initially offering it for free? Seems like it might be a challenging transition.
This idea actually has been around for quite a while. Much younger, and years ago, I bought the domain “poofnetworks.com” with the idea of providing an instant anonymous calling service to IM networks via a web API. Using the API, third parties could integrate anonymous calling into their chat and IM clients. Calls would be connected anonymously through landlines and switched through Poof’s central hub.
One would buy “poof” minutes through poofnetworks.com and link them to their IM account in the setup. Press a button on your chat client and Poof! magically you could be connected to your chat buddy.
My first target was to be the folks at Trillian.cc which, at the time, didn’t haven’t very good voice-chat integrated. Pulpchat.com was to be next. I was confident I could get buy-in from third parties like Trillian by offering a cut of the per minute charges.
I had it all figured out. That was, until I discovered “poof”, magical for some, was slang for something altogether different. And poof! I was onto the next big idea…
Also, I if there’s not a business model on the web for such a service, I’m sure one could find a modest audience in the back pages of HighTimes.
-Todd
I think definitely the best use of voip technology is yet to come. There’s still a long way to go with call quality, etc. (isps and enterprises need to provision the calls or you’ll get jitter, drops, etc.) but there’s a lot of development in the space, IMS is the big buzz, etc. so it’s not a bad place to innovate in my opinion. I figured Skype wouldn’t work well for ebay users – they’re kind of the last people I’d expect to early adopt something like that. But, tons of business people I know use it. Maybe that’s the sweet spot for traditional VoIP right now.
As for Jangl, it seemed complicated when reading about it. I don’t think consumers on dating sites are going to be any quicker to adopt than sellers on ebay.
Just a clarification, Jangl raised $2MM a year ago today, on just $1MM of that, we got to private beta and into pilot with Match.com. It was only then that we raised an additional $7MM, which would be used to scale for Match as well as build out a direct service among other things. We’ve got lots in store actually, which is why we raised what we did. There are lots of companies that built something in a day; there’s a reason the level of offering, roadmap, partnerships and team that Jangl has – was not built in a day. We’re extremely proud of our execution track record on our one year anniversary – and plan to outdo ourserlves in the next year.
Thanks for those details Michael. Best of luck to you.
So it’s an Asterisk hack…?
Todd,
Poof. Maybe I’m just a big fan Arrested Development but I’m not sure you’ve got the right slang term for poof. It could actually be quite popular amongst one market, however I would imagine that “poof” is probably a derogatory term. Yes the domain is available.
Bravo Bring service where I live!
@Sean
the slang term is not kind (see thefreedictionary.com). i gave up on on the name but never really the concept. i pitched the idea amongst a few friends but never gained much traction or most importantly funding.
in the poof model you wouldn’t have to give anyone an id, password or be screened through a greeting. both users would need a poof account. the account information would be entered into the setup of each users chat client. it would be up to the IM vendor to integrate the API into the client.
while in chat, either user could click the “let’s talk” button and the request would be coordinated through either the poof service or forwarded from the IM provider. in both cases the call would be _bridged_ through a switching hub. convenient, land-line quality, with complete anonymity in an instant!
“I’m sure this will work for situations like online dating, but I can’t imagine off the top of my head how I’d use it in a professional context.”
Actually, there are some really good pro uses for this…
For example, Customer Service. Having the ability to give customers a direct number that expires is pretty handy and a great way to solve communication problems if you’re running a tiered support operation. e.g. customers with a support contract get a personalized direct number that is valid as long as they keep their contract. Another CS example would be for follow-up calls. Most companies have draconian policies that are designed to prevent folks from sneaking through to customer service. Once you’ve called in a problem and have an open support ticket, it is incredibly frustrating to go through the whole phone queue again just to get an update. Giving a jangl id to a customer once they have an open support problem would be a great workaround… Once the problem has been resolved, the number is cancelled, keeping the bosses happy and ensuring than no-one is getting “around” the system
Another example would be using a jangle id for your contact info in any public places you don’t have control over e.g. a web page.
We’ll see how the company grows from here, but I think it’s quite interesting.
@ Michael – I think you misunderstood my comment (assuming you were talking to me). I was not trying to take anything away from you or your company. You have obviously done a lot of things right and have much to be proud of. I was just pointing out that what John did in one day is pretty impressive in comparison.
“There are lots of companies that built something in a day; there’s a reason the level of offering, roadmap, partnerships and team that Jangl has – was not built in a day.”
Instead of getting defensive and condescending – maybe you should have just agreed that it is impressive and left it at that.
@ Dave – I wasn’t pointing at you. Thanks for your kind words, and apologies if I came across as condescending or defensive, etc. That wasn’t the intent at all.
Interesting concept and the Match.com application seems like it’s potentially a good fit, but in offline situations, two steps to freedom is one step too many. I just don’t see myself being at a club and having a girl slip me her Jangl ID. First off, she has to explain what it is and how it works. Kind of difficult in certain environments. Second, the likelihood that I actually through that first step of retrieving a number from a Jangl ID is just too much trouble and right off the bat the entire process gives a bad impression. It’s obvious that Jangl is an anonymous system designed to enable someone to ditch your calls at will, so if you meet somebody in person but they still feel like giving you a Jangl ID instead of their real number, whatever type of relationship you’re pursuing (romantic, professional, etc.) probably isn’t getting off on the right foot and will most likely not work out. As such, I just don’t see this gaining mainstream offline adoption unless there’s a way to get rid of that first step. If you don’t feel comfortable giving a person you meet in real life your number but don’t have the ability to tell them that, the old fake number routine works quite well.
I do like this item from the FAQ though:
Q: Whenever I call a certain Jangl number, the person isn’t available to take my call. What can I do?
A: There are many reasons that the other person could be unavailable, including no answer or a busy signal, or that they aren’t free to take your call. Your best bet is to try again later.
I think the better answer would be, “The person doesn’t want to talk to you. Move on.”
You’re right about the offline use case Drama. It couldn’t take off with the two steps offline unless it was so accepted as a result of online acceptance. For that reason, we have a different offline strategy. We haven’t announced that yet obviously, but we’ll be sure to let Marshall know when we do.
As for today’s news, it’s about bridging the relationships that are formed online, out to phones. It’s online dating, social networking, blogging and certainly in classifieds applications. I think we’ll be busy there for a while;)
Michael: I think there’s an interesting market that you’re going after and while $9 million is a lot of funding to take on, at least I can see a legitimate opportunity. We’ll see how big it is, but Match.com is a good start and there are definitely plausible applications in the areas you list. At a time when a lot of Internet startups are launching with services that seem to have no real-world application, that’s a plus. It’s also a plus that you’ve identified a clearly-defined market and the realistic limitations of your solution, as I think it’d be a big mistake to promote this as an offline solution. It will be interesting to see the offline solution once you develop it. Best of luck.
I think this service would be of immense help to people who travel often or for countries like India where u really cant take your phone number with you to another service provider. In case you change your real phone number, you just need to update the number for the jangl id.
I thought Jangl was an interesting idea, but I’d more want it to cut down phone bills than to allow me to cut people off from calling me…Which, when you have a cell phone as your main phone, I don’t think Jangl will help with.
Thanks to Himanshu and David. (I’m with Jangl, btw.)
@ Himanshu, there’s a least one very smart guy I know who’s working on something very similar to what you’re describing. Not our thing yet, however.
@ David, lots of co’s already do what you’re describing. We picked a focus and we’re staying there for now. Michael Copeland at Business2.com wrote a piece today about focus and Jangl, etc. That says it better than I could.
tim
Oh, I didn’t mean to leave out another great comment by fewquid.
Fewquid, we’ve discussed something very similar to what you’re talking about — it’s a great idea, and I’m glad you mentioned it here.
As always, anyone can drop us a line anytime — we’re all ears.
tim
Well there is another startup http://www.lets101.com which have taken the idea to next step! they allow you to search others and listen to their introduction directly on phone and connect to anyone with just a key press on dialpad (ofcourse without revealing your phone number)
have a look at http://www.lets...st/faq#QLets101
to know more
Nitin
Does anybody know what happened to Jangl? They just disappeared or something….no longer around. I came across another similar phone widget. “JingleMe” (http://www.jingleme.com). Has features that address the privacy and the anonymity requirement that is needed in Social Networking space. I never used Jangl – However, JingleMe.Com a similar widget that seem to work flawless for Social Network sites. It has all the call features and controls that I need. 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. I like the time of day feature. You can set your profile, such that you can accept (or not accept) calls at certain day and time of the week. I liked that feature.