When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget.
In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites (Match.com, Tagged, AdultFriendFinder, and Fubar) and a Facebook/Bebo application (potentially on 80 million profiles). Jaxtr, on the other hand, has been spreading mainly through email links and personal websites (5 million users in under 5 months).
Now they’ve forged a deal to be featured on the maverick of dating sites, PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is like every other dating site you’ve heard of, but free. Free has actually paid off pretty well for founder Markus Frind, who runs the site from his Vancouver apartment and takes in over $10 million a year in advertising.
Comscore ranked the site the number one dating site in December 2007, with an average of 1.3 billion page views a month (70,000 sessions and 3 million page views an hour).
Jangl’s widget will let daters call each other, send SMSs, and leave voice mails all without sharing a real number. The functionality makes it easy to take the next step in a relationship without sacrificing privacy, or just discreet phone sex. Calls will be terminated on Jajah’s servers as part of their existing relationship. Like PlentyOfFish itself, Jangl will be monetizing the service through text advertising; a first for the company. On other sites, the service is either ad-free or paid for as part of membership (match.com).
I’ve found social calling widgets (particularly Jaxtr and Jangl) to be the most attractive part of the VOIP market because they’re not competing in a race to the lowest calling rates, but adding real utility to our existing phone lines. Other voice widgets include Ccube, Tringme, and Snapvine. While monetization is still somewhat up in the air, both companies are testing out business models (paid Jaxtr minutes, or Jangl’s revenue sharing). Going forward we’ll see which models do and don’t work. I also expect both companies to continue adopting more advanced features similar to Google’s GrandCentral.
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You know. Government wants you to have more kids.
No one can’t afford to put kids on high price colleges, food, gases, savinges. Today, kids may require to take two or three jobs.
is it me or internet is just becoming a whole lot of gadgets. i expect obesity rates to soar lol
Plentyoffish is really a force to be reckoned with.
yes it is. with a layout so awful and obvious link spamming i am surprise it is able to keep members coming back
it’s a crazy story, just the sound of it - one guy, is running this 10M dollar site alone, from his apartment
It is better than we include in our lists to people who already we know. You could find with a crazy person or an assassin in series.
#6
WTF? your comment made absolutely NO SENSE
i read tidbits about POF here and there but it’s still a puzzle. nothing in your crunchbase yet?
The best thing about Jangl is that you can create local numbers for overseas friends and family, eliminating the need for skype etc, as long as the friend/family member is willing to sign up for Jangl too.
That could really increase the stickiness of their website (no pun intended) and bring in more people that were first turned off by the plain/simple design.
JAxtr, JAngl, JAjah - what’s up with these names being so similar/confusable? or is that what they’re going for?
The growth of the number of registered users on PlentyOfFish seems to have almost halted, so if they don’t invent something new people will start migrating to more advanced sites.
You guys do need an editor. Love the content, don’t love the quality of writing. Perfect example: “discreet” vs. “discrete”. I wonder what “discrete phone sex” might entail.
Who the hell would be living in an apartment making 10 million a year. The hardware used is also absolutely ridiculous, 3 boxes. 1 web, 1 mail and 1 database. Totally unrealistic.
@Jason
Tell that to ComScore
I’m not disputing the traffic, I’m disputing the claims made from that ugly mug of an owner.
Disclaimer: Please note I have nothing against plentyoffish.com and I do not own or represent a competing personals website.
$10 million, eh? That’s fishy, because a friend recently sent a link to his profile on plentyoffish.com and it somehow let me edit his account, either without logging in or by automatically logging me in.
This allowed me to edit his profile and was the first indication of a major security problem. Then, curious about what else I might be able to find, I tried a few URLs and ran across several directories with records of hundreds of emails sent to Markus or the website’s webmaster.
These messages contained plenty of user information, including passwords in some cases. I was able (not that I tried, mind you
to log in to several accounts. And I am by no means proficient at penetrating online security measures, so I can only conclude that this site is, or was, not very secure.
@someone
“$10 million, eh? That’s fishy, because…[bla bla bla]…not very secure.”
Your explanation makes no sense, how is that related?
@jason
“Disputing the claims?” Why? Makes sense to me. He said he added another box. Do a search on google.
I don’t know if he really makes $10 million in revenue but the website gets a huge number of visitors and page views. That is a fact. And he’s running this by himself (and 1 or 2 helpers). Another fact.
How many website managed by 1,2 or 3 people are as successful as pof? Not a bunch.
Nice job Markus.
Hi Nick,
Interesting post. I work with eHarmony and wanted to pass along that they partnered with Jajah to offer a similar secure call feature in July of last year. Covered here by Stephanie Mehta of Fortune.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/1...../index.htm
http://texaschildcustodylaws.net/ 10 million, eh? That’s fishy, because a friend recently sent a link to his profile on plentyoffish.com and it somehow let me edit his account, either without logging in or by automatically logging me in.
you guys need to check out htis dating site. let’s you update your profile using your mobile, or an email, as many times as you want. This is going to leave POF & others behind.
Sorry…the site is http://www.partner4real.com.au (that’s like sending an email & forgetting the attachment)
Dont really see why they would do this deal unless they take a high % of revenue from jangl.
Although i give him credit for doing very well so far
How do you rate? Check out http://www.yupnup.com
Markus has done a stellar job but verbdate has had voip calling for free with Skype for over a year…from pc, blackberry, laptop, voipstick…no wired lines…weeee!
http://www.brring.com has a similar service that allows you to use a free, anonymous VoIP phone number with custom ringback tones. They play a short ad in exchange for the free ringback tones.
well done