Comments on: ThePudding: Targeted Advertising Comes to Phone Calls

By: Pudding Media Raises $8 Million To Serve Ads Against Phone Conversations

Pudding Media Raises $8 Million To Serve Ads Against Phone Conversations — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:54:55 +0000

[...] and BRM Capital to prove the concept. Pudding Media already operates The Pudding, a Website we covered in September. As we reported back then: ThePudding provides free, PC-based phone calls to anywhere [...]

By: Listen To Ads, Earn Minutes On Jajah

Listen To Ads, Earn Minutes On Jajah — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:20:00 +0000

[...] on ads supporting for Free 411. Virgin launched an ad supported phone service last year. Blyk and ThePudding are two new startups that recently launched their own phone-based ad solutions. Now VOIP provider [...]

By: Mattedsic.Com » Comment on ThePudding: Targeted Advertising Comes to Phone Calls …

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:33:02 +0000

[...] wrote an interesting post today on Comment on ThePudding: Targeted Advertising Comes to Phone Calls …Here’s a quick [...]

By: dan

dan — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:11:14 +0000

bear in mind they will likely drop cookies on your machine during the call to dig into deeper profiling. combine that with conversational elements, and evaluating your response to served ads and you have a real adbotvoicespy.com machine. while the technology may be neat, it has no commercial benefit to folks wanting to making free phone calls. lets be clear here, voice is nearly free here in the US already. So the target is? people that can’t afford 2 cents per minute? that just the market every advertiser wants to go after, well pizza shops and trailer parks

By: JoergK

JoergK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:17:54 +0000

At the risk of reopening the ‘who-cloned-who’ discussion: take the German site http://www.peterzahlt.de, which is a similar, but less privacy-intrusive service. All you do is enter calling and receiving tel numbers and enter two basic demographics (callers gender and age) and you can call pretty much world wide – there is a long list of countries. Two restrictions: calls will be cut off after 30mins (but you can reconnect straight after) and during the call, you’ll see ads on your computer. Most people would be ok with this, since you can either switch on your screen saver or walk away with your cordless phone. But you can’t close the site – the call will be cut off – obviously. In the US, even cell networks are included. One drawback for you guys across the pond: the site is only in German for now. I’ve heard of capacity problems, but appearantly they are upgrading their servers.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:40:53 +0000

To whom it may concern: you can turn away from the screen during the call – nothing’s for nothing and if concerned about privacy then meet the other person physically face-to-face… you think things are private on Skype or a cell-phone network ..this is would be no different in my mind.

By: Shai Berger

Shai Berger — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:48:53 +0000

When you think about the implications of running your phone calls through the internet cloud, with its massive processing power and terabytes of info, there is a much bigger picture here.

Today, we see the advertising as simply an intrusion – a way to pay the piper. But what if Pudding could really deliver useful information to us during a phone call?

Once we become comfortable that the cloud is a 3rd party on our call, a world of possibilities opens up.

Everyone has brought up the Gmail analogy: Gmail exposes me to ads in exchange for free email service. But, I don’t use Gmail to save money. In fact, I have email options available to me that are zero-cost *and* ad-free. I use Gmail because I like having all of my email in the cloud, available from any computer and searchable. Gmail makes my email experience better.

Cloud-routing of phone calls is ultimately going to make my calling experience better. If it’s done right I will *want* to make my calls through the cloud and it won’t be about saving money at all.

More … http://www.shaiberger.com

By: Look past the pudding at Call the Cloud

Look past the pudding at Call the Cloud — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:31:52 +0000

[...] it very succinctly… Free Internet Phone Service, But With A Creepy Twist. More coverage from TechCrunch, Saunders, Keating and [...]

By: james

james — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:36:35 +0000

I will never use this product nor I will ever support any eavesdropping technology. All our phone calls IN US are already traced by the Israeli company, Amdocs. Just research it for yourself. Using this product only promotes domestic spying technology and helps grow and fund it.

Please stop promoting this company!

By: Anatoly

Anatoly — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:17:12 +0000

@Stan — Ideally, I’ll say something like I hate these freaking ads, and it will stop serving them to me.

By: Stan Oleynick

Stan Oleynick — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:31:58 +0000

I actually had the same idea for quite some time now but never really did anything with it. Since it’s already out there, one thing that I wanted to suggest to the guys behind this project is to also analyze the voice tones with which the person is mentioning something you will serve relevant ads against. That way if a person seems excited about the product you can go ahead and serve the relevant ad and if not hold it… if a person says “I hate the freaking iPhone” but you serve an iPhone ad he will get even more pissed, know what I mean?

It is also good to analyze strings of sentences and serve ads based on the whole sentence not just a single word that way the system can see whether the product is talked about positively or negatively before serving ads, if it’s mentioned in negative light you can serve a competitors ad, etc… this idea has tons of potential and different nuances!

If people behind this project will be reading this, feel free to email me at: stan.oleynick (at) gmail.com and I will be more than happy to send you some more observations and tips.

By: phenom

phenom — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:35:47 +0000

What abt privacy…..their logo looks similar to Cisco Systems.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

By: Textbook Case

Textbook Case — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:09:56 +0000

Actually Gmail is worse, they have recorded copies of all my email. Forgot about that.

By: Textbook Case

Textbook Case — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:09:07 +0000

I want to use it just because it upsets people so much. My email content is waaay more sensitive than my phone content. And I use Gmail, and I get me emails parsed, and I get ads for them.

It’s no different at all. There’s no recording.

Also, what’s with all the non-native-English-speaking hostility? If these guys weren’t Israeli would all this be such a big deal? I mean it’s the Mossad now? I’m pretty sure all Israelis are ex-military.

This is turning out to be a fully classic set of comments.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:50:21 +0000

this will never work, they will never get user traction to create a distribution pool worth advertisers time. you need scale, then advertisers take note. this will never scale because no one would trust it. not to mention the fact they haven’t a clue on marketing, should have launched the free service first, get users, then launch this audio spybot ad platform. as it stands now, they would be lucky to get 100,000 US based users in one years time. and even that is not interesting to big marketers. this reminds me of the seven bladed knife invention from years back, who needs it?

By: @all Dumbasses

@all Dumbasses — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:38:55 +0000

Damn… Some of you and TC athiest people need stop attacking and burn dollar bill.

I saw image of Mike holding cigar and burn money… What is with you anyways? You can’t just burn that money.

Its…. Its….

Oh, Forget it. I’ll come back with another idea.

By: Nag

Nag — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:34:45 +0000

hey Mark,
That was a very good point between Gmails ads and thepudding.com ads.

there is no difference between text or voice.. as both the mediums are exposed.

By: Mark Hendrickson

Mark Hendrickson — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:31:32 +0000

#20 = instant classic

By: Nicholas Macias

Nicholas Macias — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:28:12 +0000

These comments are just as surreal as the name of the company, The Pudding. Is there a version of Godwin’s Law for invoking the Easter Bunny? (@20)

By: Jason Sperske

Jason Sperske — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:25:45 +0000

The problem with products like these is that there is very little incentive to be forthcoming and honest about their data retention policies. I can see how dangerous it would be to draw value from recorded conversations (considering the legal muddy watter they are wading through) but simply retaining the information (even for “research only” purposes) and waiting for the legal climate to change not only makes business sense but even passes as morally acceptable in the eyes of people putting up millions of dollars. The problem is even if the company fails, the fact that computing power has progressed to the point where this is even possible means the cat is out of the bag. The only way to combat this is by careful monitoring and the efforts of corporate/government watchdog groups like the EFF. It sounds like an impressive technology (AdSense works because Google can search millions of advertising opportunities in less than a second on a query that changes a few times a day (text of a web page or email), this would have to identify the query, search and return something meaningful in a time window that might only be a few seconds wide. It seems like a better product at this time would be more of a conversational assistant that presented pertinent information from multiple sources (like Wikipedia or Answers.com) on topic you were actively discussing and even followed up via email or IM with more information. This at least would go down smother with people who might want to have the power of “Google”/”Ask”/”The Pudding” if they were holding a conference call with members of a team. Just an idea which in all likelihood is too nerdy to be practical (I tend to do that )

By: Eyal

Eyal — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:22:36 +0000

ישראלים יקרים – אכן כן

By: MIKE is idiot!

MIKE is idiot! — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:20:29 +0000

I like ask the military founders… Please don’t use this evedrop thing to against someone you don’t like base on religion & politics.

My dollar bill says “In God We trust”. We got freedom of religion. We have right to choose any religion we wish to worship freedly.

I think Mike Arrington doesn’t believe in God, Santa claus, Easter bunny, tooth fairy.

Mike Arrington is Scrooge and dumbass atheist who refuse to believe religion. He hate kids too. He won’t send christmas present to them. He would invest startups.

Idiot!!! Childrens are startups too. Mike!!! Send them money on christmas.

By: Pex

Pex — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:09:14 +0000

When company record people’s conversion or voice. It’s violates — “U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment ”

I was reading this article very clear.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ”

If ThePudding violate something like that. The company will go out of business and shutdown its assets. VC will lose tons of money where they invested “ThePudding” services.

Citizens hope “ThePudding” does not land in U.S soil anytime soon. They should launch it in their homeland.

By: No!

No! — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:59:48 +0000

i wouldn’t use this if they payed me to use it.
If you can afford a computer and a DSL connection, how in the hell cant you afford a .02 cent per minute call via Skype or jajah? (free if you both users use the service)

By: Dumb idea.

Dumb idea. — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:58:48 +0000

Even Sneaky guys can Copy your voice with drag drop. Something like this.

http://images.m...win/auda_18.gif
http://www.audi...icAudio_lrg.jpg
http://img127.i...reditor2fs5.png

Inventors need to make polygraph playbacks that can trace date, time, and space. I need that technology for business. So I can fired male sexual harasser or anti-business men ( feminist ).

Many bosses need that technology.