VOIP calling service Jaxtr just celebrated doubling their previous number of registered users to in the past 27 days, totaling 500,000 users. Jaxtr doubled its membership since launch back in March, now adding over 12,000 users a day. More than 800,000 people have used the service to make calls since they launched.
Jaxtr isn’t like other VOIP companies which seek to replace your current phone. It’s a phone service intended to connect you with acquaintances cheaply over a VOIP line without giving up your phone number. It’s similar to Jangl. They have an embeddable widget we’ve written about before, so you think they would be big on social networks. However, over half of their growth comes from sources outside of social networks like Facebook and MySpace. For the record, though, Facebook and their new platform has been growing better than MySpace.
CEO Konstantin Guericke cites the greatest growth for Jaxtr came from blogs and a call me link placed in people’s email signature. The viral nature of an email signature turned out to be a good method of spreading the service. Business users tend not to be signed on to social networks all day, but instead send a lot of emails where having a generic method of fielding calls from strangers makes sense.
International expansion has also been important to Jaxtr. Half of their users live in either the US, India, or China. The other half live in the rest of the 52 countries they cover. Eighteen of those were announced today.
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Wow! it is amazing. It is just the thing that Jajah misses.
I think Jajah should add some features like Jaxtr.
The profile page has a typo on the URL to Jaxter taking you to a bible study page…
Bloody hell friggin 2.0 spellings… that’s jaxtr… not jaxter *sigh*
God, it’s not a good night… I’m sorry for multiple postings… it’s the blog URL not the homepage for Jaxtr. OK, I think it’s time for bed…
I really like the idea of adding this button to the signature. You absolutely nailed it with the point about how business users do not stay connected on a social network all day. Too bad we at cellity can’t implement such buttons. We’re just going to have to count on people downloading our software. Bummer?!?
Who wants to talk to people that can’t be trusted with a phone number?
@Nick, have you heard of Grandcentral
? And Skype?
My grandcentral button rings all 3 of my lines.
I find this google gadget very useful to switch b/w phones.
http://tomaranand.googlepages.com/
Enjoy!
–anand
bdb, when you put your jaxtr link in your email, you can choose which phone rings and you can also decide which callers get routed to voicemail vs. which can ring your phone. But more importantly, since calls through jaxtr are free (you only pay for incoming calls, which are free in most of the world, or to local numbers), it’s the equivalent of an 800#, and one that works in 220 countries around the world. And you can call from/to mobile phones–no download or WAP access required.
thanks Konstantin, I just have a bit of “voip_service_overload”. I see there are a few things I’m without
! Filtering which calls go to which number is not one of them.
I’m not much of an international traveler (once per year maybe), so maybe this isn’t for me.
If you are directly affiliated, Jaxtr should partner with the travel_focused_social networks I have recently seen mention of elsewhere, as there seems to be target market overlap.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Jaxtr is free right? And it uses callback to complete the first call and a local access number to complete subsequent calls?
These are going to be hard costs to overcome anywhere but the US (where you can dial a 712 number and make $.02/min) for a free service.
Yeah, jason. Jaxtr gives away a free 100 credits (=100 US min) each month to users.
Very classy Nick, and such a thorough analysis.
I tried adding this to my Outlook XP signature but it didn’t work
Has anyone else been able to do this successfully?
Hey Jason, you are right about jaxtr being free. In the future, jaxtr will offer premium services that users can pay for, but the basic service as it currently operates will remain free forever.
@bdb–in response to your question “who wants to talk to someone that can’t be trusted with a phone number,” think about an instance when you might want to sell something on craigslist or ebay? You certainly want buyers to be able to contact you, but you might not be comfortable posting your phone number on the listing….the possibilities are endless
Sorry bdb, I was too busy reading you ripping on me in the comments today to check on the old ones.
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I agree that GrandCentral is great. Jaxtr just posted some really impressive numbers.
The two services are different in small ways based on the embeddable widget and way they handle blacklisting. Blacklisting in GC doesn’t stop them from calling your number on another line. Jaxtr doesn’t give up a number to call on another line since it’s a click to call service. Jangl has unique numbers based on a connection between two people’s phones. Cancel the number, and then need to generate a new one and get approved to contact you again.
Jaxtr and Jangl are also VOIP services, meaning they give you lower long distance calling rates by bridging long distance calls over the internet.