Israel-based Zlango will announce a $12 million round of financing tomorrow, led by BenchMark Capital and Accel Partners. The company launched the Zlango icon-based SMS service in the middle of 2006, and has expanded to three countries (Israel, Poland and certain Caribbean cell phone carriers). The press release for the financing (see bottom of post) was written in Zlango with an English translation (a nice touch).
The company has created an entirely new language based on pictures. Users learn the language, which substitutes pictures for words and phrases, and use it to send text messages. Where Zlango is live, users can either download it directly or go through their carriers to use the software.
The fun with Zlango doesn’t stop with the press release, either. The company has created a music video to the Beatles song Drive My Car using Zlango (embedded above), and you can create your own Zlango messages on this page and email them to friends or embed them on any website.
I liked Zlango when I first saw it last year because they’ve created a new language. In the future, the company says, users will be able to create their own icons for personal use. And then users can start to put those icons into the Zlango community, where they will be voted on and possibly included into the language. So just like any other language, Zlango will evolve over time based on usage patterns.
About 100 various handsets are now supported by Zlango. Here’s the press release:
Zlango funding press release
link is bad…my last post seemed messed up.
link to press release:
http://zlango.t...zlango_pr_2.jpg
I can barely keep up with all the LOLs and FTWs and ZOMG!!!1s in my life, I have a hard time believing I’m going to start pictogramming anyone anytime soon. On the other hand, they are Israelis, that seems kind of badass.
wtf.
this new ‘language’ seems kind of ridiculous and tedious.
no, it Is ridiculous and tedious.
with emoticons now, one or two every-so-often – ok, it can be cute
and easy to understand.
but a pure sentence from solely icon images; no words?
i’m having trouble envisioning carrying an entire chat with someone using purely these images, and no words – i mean you can only convey so much with these images
what’s their revenue model? to sell these graphic images; to sell this so-called language – Ha.
That’s got to be the coolest press release I’ve ever seen, even if others don’t like it. Creative, original, linked into the core product. Luv it!
Wow! Eat your heart out Ebonics
!
I think 50 years from now youth will have their own geek language of signs and symbols.
htttp://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Rajee: maybe, but no way in hell they will use some corporate sponsored 1980s style icon library.
Cool press release and cool company.
It’s like modern hieroglyphics.
Seems like an interesting idea.
if i were the investors in benchmark/accel, i’d demand to have my funds returned, or that the partners who got into this piece of garbage ripped a new one.
it’s this kind of crap that people who are running solid/real companies look at and immeadiately say WTF!!!!!!!
peace…
It reads a lot like a terrible Japanese press release translation.
Well they must have done their homework with a particular demographic, will ask my 9 and 12 year old what they think. As for me, being 34, I just looked at it in disbelief.
Most kids’ IM conversations I’ve seen (in the US, Asia, South America, etc) use so many emoticons that they’re already almost Zlango. This could be the new Esperanto…
Rebus 2.0
$12M for this RETARDED crap?
Can you spell “bubble” with those icons?
Of course the icons take up a lot more of the limited screen real-estate of a mobile phone than plain text would.
Too bad they can’t work American Sign Language in somehow.
First, the icons are pretty terrible if you asked me. They carry very little information for the amount of pixels they take up. How will this scale to the small screen sizes on current phones? And they are ugly to me. Did they focus group these and picked the ones preferred by 12-year-old Reddit contributors?
Second, things like this never work top down. You cannot convince people to use your language when they have already created and are growing a much easier to use sms/im language. What’s wrong with ‘lol’ ? Why do I need a picture?
I notice they embed the icons in CSS so you cannot right-click and copy them. Ooohh, that will stop me.
Maybe Eons from now this will be seen has the Hieroglyphics that future societies will need to decipher. Who is going to make the Rosetta stone.
Covering up the text below the icons I could understand only about 30% of the press release and even then I felt like the little voice in my head had suddenly transformed into a caveman. I may be too old for this (29) but I just can’t imagine ever using it. Ever.
Not bad – , 12 million is way too much. Where is the business model?
– I would never pay to have my
turn into a smiley on (g)AIM ..
- Also the information for the space argument is nice, and real.
- This would’ve been a nice 1-3 million dollar PHD, project.
– Good luck though, Rb
Looks like ebonics 2me.
“UMMM”
it might be retarded from our perspective but tell it to the koreans, japanese, and most importantly chinese who stick 20 of these for every 2 symbols.
p.s. I would prefer using this anyday over pinyin on my cellphone
I must say it’s puzzling. But if I’ve learned one thing in my many years in hi-tech, it’s to never assume that people are stupid.
If reputable companies like Benchmark and Accel put up this kind of money, they must know something we don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, this may be a bad investement, I don’t know.
But I do know that they know more than we know
I hope I can get the BenchMark logo on my phone.
We looked at Zlango early on. I personally think the product is great. A lot of thought went into developing the icon language and there is a real internal logic to it. It sounds like caveman-ese but you’d be surprised how quickly you can learn it.
Also, my feeling is that if you’re older than, say 16, it’s hard to understand the appeal of the product. But within its target age group, Zlango will likely be a hit. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what to do with it at the time and passed on the investment.
That being said, I also have to wonder a bit about the $12M round. Obviously, marketing is key here — and cellular marketing ain’t cheap — but one does wonder if the valuation isn’t a little Bubble-y.
The people for sure aren’t stupid. I can’t say that I understand the amount of the funding, but it feels like a winner to me. Not everything has to be enterprise software — people pay for fun and kids + cell phones = disposable income. I am too old for this, but every day I look at what my kids are doing online and think WTF, why would they like it. I mean really, don’t we feel that way about most MySpace pages? They look like crap. My girls play a plug-in TV game called DreamLife that looks totally stupid to me also. I have learned not to base investment decisions on my own taste.
Wow, $12M for new hieroglyphics?
Hi,
Zlango is THE next BIG thing in the mobile space.
All the people who commented here are way above the demographics they aim at. This explains why most are and will not understand this. and this is exactly why your kids will love it.
5M, 10M, 12M… it does not matter, what does is what Zlango will do with the money and I hope they will spend it right.
Biz model…? i can think of dozen models that can work in the mobile space.
good luck!
This needs $12 million?
The people who say things like “If reputable companies like Benchmark and Accel put up this kind of money, they must know something we don’t.” forget that even reputable VC firms lost huge amounts in the first bubble. Intelligent people make stupid decisions at times, and just because a top-tier VC puts money into a venture doesn’t mean that the venture is a great candidate for success. Venture capitalists are in an interesting business since the good ones make money even though on a per-investment basis, they lose money on the majority of their investments. Don’t forget that.
It’s definitely a risky investment. There is a certain “jamba” potential, make it a trend among kids and milk the cow (or the poor kids).
The investment would be too risky for me though:
- kids change their minds every 2 years. What is hot today is totally out tomorrow. And when I say 2 years, we all know that the “life rythm” is getting faster and faster. The next generation of kids will probably like something complete different. A real tough demgraphic…
- I cant imagine this will be a hit for any other demographic. its funny but its not really appealing. Just look at the comments.
I have a feeling it will take longer to scroll through all the pictures each time to find the ones you want to construct a sentence that would probably take 20 seconds to write out on a Blackberry, trio, or standard cell using T9.
Are they planning on mixing emoticons with regular text?
http://www.abbreviations.com … so you won’t be confused with any acronym, abbreviation or emoticon again…
Cool, my kids will be learning hieroglyphics instead of their ABC’s when they get to first grade!
please tell me they are coming out with porn version
That is certainly one of the most creative and fun press releases I’ve ever seen. Nice work!!!! I also love it!
Cool idea but it’ll be a challenge to standardize this! What’s stopping others from developing different sets of icons for the same word, sentence, etc.
This is indeed akin to a SMS version of Esperanto (which, we should remember, never really took off!). Still, the young demographic they’re targetting increasingly have IM contacts stretching around the world, and this might be able to cut through all the highly localized slang that Roman SMS texting supports (e.g. Hong Kong’s Chinglish SMS / pinyin chat).
Also, SMS/IMs abiltiy to encode messages from folks like parents and other authority figures is highly attractive to secretive pre-teens wishing to particpate in the next flashmob type event.
Everyone dissing this – quit being so uptight. It looks like a fun and interesting idea for teens and kids. The press release is brilliant. People have forgotten how to have fun, that’s why most people can’t come up with a brilliant idea to save their life.
“OMG, what’s the business model?! where’s the revenue stream?!”
Open your mind, take off your suit and tie and relax a while.
so this is what $12 million icons look like. call me crazy but i like AAPL’s $73.16B icons, well.. about 6,098.3 times better..
Funny! These Israeli’s! :O
There is way too much with VC’s. Benchmark this this is important and profitable? Its like monkeys giving smaller monkeys more poop to fling
well, if it is a good investment? I think YES!!!
Zlango will make tons of money and will be a popular product. same as American idol.
If I was a VC will I invest? absolutely NO!!!
This is one of products that are built to pull $$$ out of board teenagers parent CC. Sorry but I compare it to gambling and other applications I don’t want to name here.
I did it in my blog at :
http://olahav.t...n_the_flav.html
Ori
Perhaps they are ripping off Neil Stephenson’s mediaglyphics from The Diamond Age? http://www.tech...nt.asp?Bnum=214
Thanks Mike for letting us know about the funding news. I also covered them in my blog here:
http://www.tech...-communication/
stupidest idea i’ve seen in 10 years. benchmark must be really desperate to invest its billions on crap like this.
who is this intended for, the 1.2B chinese who can’t speak english as it is?
rb.