Back in 2000, two mobile software companies with perfectly good names, Phone.com and Software.com, merged in a $6.4 billion deal and became Openwave Systems. The new name was bland and meaningless then—as it is now. (Although, don’t get me wrong, the company itself is perfectly fine 
—and, in fact, just sold its Musiwave business to Microsoft for $46 million). But Openwave just sat on the Phone.com and Software.com names and URLs for years, doing nothing more with them than redirecting traffic to its corporate Website.
Nearly two years ago, they finally sold the names to WashingtonVC and the Internet Real Estate Group (which also owns Chocolate.com, Jeans.com, Sweepstakes.com, Relationship.com, Consultants.com, Patents.com, and others). The Internet Real Estate Group is a domain-holding company that is creating actual sites out of its most valuable domains. It had an early hit with beer.com, which it bought in 1998 from a 21-year-old for $80,000 (letting him keep a 20 percent stake) and selling it three months later for $7 million. Coincidentally, that is also roughly how much it paid in total for Phone.com and Software.com.
Now Phone.com has relaunched as a low-cost VOIP phone service targeted at consumers and small businesses (starting at $17 a month for unlimited calls in the U.S.), and Software.com is a software download store. Heading up Phone.com is Ari Rabban, an executive who used to work for VOIP pioneer and Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver. Michael Mann, the founder of BuyDomains.com (now NameMedia, which just filed to go public last week), is chairman of the board of the company, and the biggest investor through WashingtonVC, which is his incubator/investment fund.
Phone.com offers what appears to be a competitive product, with advanced features such as a follow-me service and virtual extensions for small business customers. It will launch more Web telephony products soon as well to compete with the Jajahs and Jangls of the world. And with the Phone.com name, it doesn’t need to spend much money on marketing. In fact, since the service launched in late September, it has spent zero on advertising. That will change soon, but 10,000 people a month come in just through type-in traffic alone. Add in search-engine optimization, and the name pretty much markets itself.
Hrmm I would have imagined the typein for phone.com would be higher than ~333 people a day.
if you go to Google and do a search for phone, they are number 4 and if you use the stumbleupon toolbar you will also see that someone categorized phone.com as pornography. I wonder what the issue was with that.
Killer Domains.
Those names should be made into a general, massive portal for that given topic – made and organized to a fashion like Yahoo’s portal is
Personally, I think this move was super smart. Instead of being sent to lame ad link websites, true content/services is sure to bring in at least some money.
I believe that two startups that announced a kind of a merger today should get phone.com name since it’s natural
@lawrence: Killer domains indeed. Although I see your point, I think the leadership at the helm of these ventures have (much) more in mind than “portalizing” them. The inherent brand value that domain names like these add to any venture really can’t be understated.
Anyway, nice to see some of our website and brand development being featured here on Techcrunch. The team here at Graphics.net did a great job on the logos and website designs for both Phone.com and Software.com.
Cheers.
Danno,
what a shameless plug for graphics.net. You suck.
What about the site
I’m seeing a garden variety monitized domain landing page. Has the site actually re-launched or were these private demo screenshots Erick?
@ Peter M: You bet. I’m proud of the work our team does and stand behind them wherever and whenever I can. And thanks for mentioning our name again, I appreciate it.
this is kinda cool.
@1
where do you see 333 type ins per day? I see 2,900 searches for “phone” per day.
Would love to have these domains, damm!
Uhh – right in the article: “That will change soon, but 10,000 people a month come in just through type-in traffic alone.”
yay for Danno!
Congratulations for Mike Mann – i think he owns 80% of this and holds the vision!
I apologize for Danno who is learning protocol with a lashing. I have no idea who “fan” is.
@vic, yes the sites have launched. Click on their names above. You can buy phone service from Phone.com and software from Software.com. They are not link farms.
@Ahmedf, that was the number I got from Internet Rea lEstate.com co-founder Mike Zappy. 10K a month from type-ins. Mike Mann, is that right?
@wtf, To clarify Zappy is Mike Zapolin our buddy and partner in venture, Mike Mann is me, WashingtonVC. Typeins I dont know but we will drive thousands of times that ultimately so its not really part of the plan. At risk of marketing, you should really try this even if it wasnt mine, I will get you a free trial.
“starting at $17 a month for unlimited calls”
Uh, no… That’s for ‘home’ customers ONLY.
I just tried out “Phone.com”. BIG letdown. “Phone.com” treats their business customers and their home customers VERY differently. They say they cater to small businesses, like mine, but they offer NO unlimited calling plans! And in fact, under their oppressive scheme, each employee is allocated only 50 Mins of talk time per MONTH. LOL, I use that in half a day! No, I’m sorry — they’re nuts. That’s ridiculous. I don’t want my employees to feel like they work in a concentration camp, fussing with having to consider the worthiness of every call before they dial or answer. Using Phone.com would be a living hell for my small business.
And this is too bad, because their virtual PBX interface is top notch –– exactly what I’d been looking for to replace my small business’ antiquated phone system. So if Phone.com’s executives hadn’t greedily tiered their pricing plans in such a way that 15 people are allocated only 40 minutes per month of talk time, it would be ideal. I’d gladly recommend it. And what’s more, it appears they don’t even support free VoIP-to-VoIP connections, like GrandCentral does with its Gizmo interoperability.
So after much excitement, “Phone.com” is useless to me. Case closed. That’s too bad.
All because some retarded marketing manager there has devised that totally illogical pricing structure.
I, Danno, have been lashed and do humbly apologize for my shameless plug. Seriously and sincerely.
Mike, congrats on getting “crunched”.
Thanks a lot. Getting crunched sounds good.
I feel inclined to say that Randy is wrong with his premise and much of his detail. In fact I think he is confusing us with another service. In any case I will ask an exec to respond in better detail.
It’s what you get when you’re reselling the proprietary product of another company. But hey, more power to y’all if you can make a go of it without any patents. Packet8’s Virtual Office is a superior product, or wait, are you reselling Packet8? Vonage had their patent problems and they’re not done with them yet. You may be able to drive traffic, I hope so, because customer acquisition costs are what this game is all about at $17 a pop.
I think this product is great. As a small business that is mobile, it has allowed me to have a professional phone answering system that connects to my mobile phone seamlessly. It also has allowed me to have subcontractors receive referrals that I can actually track and charge for, and I never have to spend even a minute with the customer.
I’ve never had a technical difficulty, and think the price is very reasonable. I just hope my competitors don’t figure out how I’m doing it!!!!!
Looks like this thread is already dead. They are all busy “Manning” the phones after a late afternoon of blogging on the 15th.
If it walks like a duck….QUACK!!!
Jimmy is on the crack before he gets on his crackhorn and hobby horse
Yeah, this thread is dead. Quack quack!!
In this case not a golden goose. Honk Honk!!
Maybe an albatross. Aaaack Aaaack!!
Good luck getting 100k subs. But if you do, Mister Mann, you’ll make the jack to buy the crack and maybe even a mule for your sister Sarah.
And that’s “Mister Crackhorn” to you…..nobody calls me Jimmy.
Randy is right – the largest small business plan is 2500 minutes. If you have 15 employees, they each only get about 160 mins on the phone. Depending on the business, that may be fine… But if you run in an industry where you constantly have someone on the phone, or employees always making calls to clients and clients always calling in, these plans and their “free monthly” minutes aren’t going to last long before you’re running into overage fees.
So far I think the service is great – and the customer support is top notch
Their service IS wonderful. I just called them. They were very kind. In fact, I signed up for the 300 plan.