Jangl, the guys that brought you anonymous numbers, has retooled its service today. Jangl’s old service was geared toward people simply wishing to keep their phone number private.
Users could give their number to Jangl and get an ID in return. Whoever had the ID could go to Jangl.com, enter their own number, and get a number to call them back on. A separate phone number was made for each person who used the ID. A Jangl user could then decide which numbers they would accept or reject based on who the announced caller was. Don’t want to talk? Kill the number and never be bothered again. Once accepted, the caller could phone you directly in the future without every giving up your real digits.
While simple, the process still required users to jump through some hoops, such as going to the Jangl home page and looking up an ID. Today’s release removes a lot of that friction and refocuses Jangl as platform for calling between people who don’t want to share their number, but also between people who can’t know each other’s numbers because they’re not expecting a call.
Jangl users will now be able to essentially call anyone with an email address. You just drop your own number and their email address into a form on the Jangl site and you get a local number to call them at. When you call the number, you’ll record whatever message you like. A link to the recorded message will be emailed to the person along with a local number (local to them) to call you back on without revealing their real number. It’s easy to see that Jangl could use this feature to transition other modes of communication on to the phone by expanding the modes they invite people through.
Rounding out the offering will be some other modes of displaying your Jangl number, such as a revamped Jangl widget and call me link. Jangl is pushing the voice mail feature out to these products as well to deal with a projected increase in the volume of calls. Jangl users won’t be bothered with every call to their phone, but will instead scan a list of voice mails from new callers and choose to connect or not.
In the long run, Jangl plans to make money off of hosting long distance VOIP calls. Social networking’s internationalization seems to be a ripe breeding for these types of calls. Members may choose to first connect call over Jangl instead of message or email, and then hold on to the number instead of switching over to other VOIP plans offering similar long distance discounts.
Thanks, Nick — appreciate the nice words. Keep in mind, we won’t be making money off of the calls, per se.
But within the call, in the widget, via partners, with text or audio ads. . .or via subscription model + ads. . .those are all potential ways toward $. Thank you again.
“without every giving up your real digits.”
Every = ever
Jyngle? http://www.jyngle.com
Tim – this is a great service you have and I wish you luck in the future. We have a similar beta product (http://www.grou...e/goyoohoo.aspx) with an email sig widget but ours is a pure message delivery platform. Anyway, best of luck!
Thats a nice service. Thanks Tim
doesn’t make much sense–who will supply the advertising? Surely this company will not be selling the ads directly. If they can get access to lots of advertisers, there might be something here
sorry — i’m just getting caffeinated here. we’ve actually talked the most about premium services. . .a model in which something always remains free, but there are one or two tiers of service for power users. this is a no-brainer, of course, as ideally it brings in a wide customer base that generates interest from advertisers. point is, we’re creating several different avenues to $ here, not hanging our hat on just one. we’ll adjust as we go. nice thing is, we’ve been generating revenue for several months now via partnerships, too, and that’s yet another big stream. thx rahim.
Greatest bridge;
– I have seen of late –
– From minimal website only idea –
– To Great widget – widespread communication -
Tim, I’m glad to see the service changed up a bit. I remember having some difficulty getting it to work a few weeks ago while attempting to woo Michael and Ben to BINC.
I look forward to playing around with it a bit.
Oh…finally I can prank call people, and call prostitutes without giving up my digits? It’s kind of cool…but ss there really a huge market for this?
Riiiiiiight…
This planet is weird when you turn into 20s….
1.) I saw a teenager pinch tiny spider and ate it, said “Yummy!!”
2.) I saw an old man wearing stocking & high heels.
3.) I saw a midget date 7 foot white woman at starbuck.
4.) I saw a she-male enter men’s room, and pee stool, said to me
“What are you looking? … Bitch”
5.) I saw gay men buy pack of tampons and pregency test tube. They were feather slaping each other and gigging.
6.) I saw a kid watch 1970 exorcist, said “Cooool. She’s communist!”
Arrggghhhh!!! I can’t get out my head. I need more TC news.
I think your timestamps on comments are acting up (EST is 3 hours early)
Hi Nick,
We’re in Cannes launching filmcommunity.com – the social MEDIA Network for filmmakers. We’re also aiming at film festivals, film production companies, ‘talent’, filmstudents and anyone about whom you might say films are ‘a way of life’. We’ve already been described here as ‘the myspace for film’ – I’m still trying to work out whether that’s good or bad.
TIM – we’ll definitely be checking out your new service. Good luck with it. It sounds great. We haven’t even launched yet and we’ve got members from all over – Brazil, France, Italy, Ukraine, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Canada, as well as the United States, so it would work well in our context. Alot of people here are using Skype, especially African filmmakers and it would be good to offer something revolutionary like *JANGL.
best wishes,
Garth
Real life — you forgot to mention your bookie and your mistress. Sin is obvious.
Garth, right on, man. Congrats. Please drop me a line at tim at jangl.com. Thanks.
I saw these guys at CES this year. Seems like a great idea for those online dating types that don’t want to pass out their real number online.
It is fake anonymity if it is only one way anonymity.
Virtual worlds and social networks need double blind truly anonymous systems.
GSMonster – we have done 2-way anonymity (er privacy) since last year. This new service announced today is in addition to the prior service. Enter an email, get a number. You’ll see that expand too, to other network IDs, i.e. social networking IDs, etc.
Free calls and free sms serivces are available on http://www.voip...ms.blogspot.com
http://mycrestate.com/blog
Why not just use your browser and a Mexuar Corraleta session to deliver calls via VOIP without ever needing to pay for the PSTN?
Cheers,
Dean
http://www.mexuar.com
P.S…. of course anyone with more than a few weeks of http://www.Asterisk.org skills could build the same thing.