VoIP startup Jajah has just scored major deals with eHarmony and Match.com, two of the web’s most popular dating sites, to provide online daters with semi-anonymous voice chat. The new features are part of Jajah’s ‘Platform for Dating’, which is also currently being tested on a number of other dating sites (though Jajah won’t name them, yet).
The new feature offers a good middle ground between the text interactions you typically go through on dating sites and actually meeting your potential match face to face. The integrated Jajah widget will allow you to talk with a prospective match though an online voice call, without having to divulge any of your real contact information should things turn messy.
Voice chat is a premium feature on both eHarmony and Match.com, going for around $5/month. Jajah declined to share any details regarding the revenue split between the dating sites and the VoIP service, but it sounds like the company is going to be generating quite a bit of money from the deal, especially given the negligible costs associated with actually connecting the calls.
This isn’t the first time dating services have implemented voice chat — Match.com previously offered its own service that was powered by the now-defunct Jangl, but it’s been out of action for the last nine months. This is the first time eHarmony is implementing a similar service.
Nice. They just moved up from “sell” to “don’t buy.”
Arrested Development, high five!
No touching!
Nice! LOL
matrimonial sites should connect with fb, to increase credibility against fake profiles.
Ya, but then their wives & husbands might find out.
ummm yeah but Facebook connect doesn’t stop this one iota… FB connect has many good selling points…it does not however stop fakes.
Already been tried before. It was either Jangl or Jaxtr that did this with Plenty o Fish.
Should have been free with ad support. perhaps then it would have a chance.
I don’t know. Didn’t PoF just yank this kind of functionality? Will it really improve either company’s bottom line?
stickam anybody?
Thank you Jason for the great article.
This is not actually a question of “having a chance” anymore, this is a proven service that has already been adopted by thousands of users and is a significant revenue stream for both the dating platforms as well as JAJAH.
The service has been rolled out earlier to a smaller subset of users with great results and is now available to all members.
Naw, I doubt there will be alot of user adoption. Last time with Jangl there was like 8,000 users who actually paid for it?
I mean sure that’s not bad, but when you think about the rev split… it doesn’t come out to that much on the deal alone.
Have to modify it to make it more attractive IMHO.
People don’t want to have to be stuck at the computer to talk to each other, what if they are out and about?
Sorry if I’m skeptical, but all the people I know who have done stuff through eHarmony.com and Match.com have moved fairly quickly to meeting the people they were interested in… and most of the time being anonymous didn’t matter much to them.
Thanks, we can’t disclose numbers here, but the adoption has been great and makes both partners happy.
With JAJAH you are never stuck to your computer, that’s exactly the point why we started JAJAH in the first place, a JAJAH call is always phone-to-phone, no headset, no download, no software.
In the cases of a dating platform there are two ways how to get in touch over the phone without revealing your number, described here:
http://jajahurl.com/dating
Both get a disposable alias number and can be “out and about”, wherever they are, just pick up the phone (landline or mobile) and make that call.
And sure we will tweak the services in the future and add features to make them more attractive/fitting based on the users feedback, but that’s how it works, and it already works pretty great and the users are happy with it.
Having been in the dating Industry for a while , I can say this is a good deal for the users. You have to look at it from the male/female perspective. The woman will usually want to have at least one phone chat with the man before meeting just to get a “vibe” …guys are happy to meet for coffee or drinks at the drop of a hat. This functionality allows the individuals involved to maintain the anonymity until they are ready to meet or exchange personal information. This just increases the overall efficiency of online dating and reduces the fraud.
Fred,
1) Jajah is a telco.
2) Your business is to sell minutes.
3) Jajah’s transport is actually provided by other carriers, so really you’re just a reseller.
4) You have one and only one way to differentiate your service: price
5) Margins are slim and getting slimmer, so you better hope you find a way to resell billions of minutes.
Good luck!
Given the low cost of establishing a phone connection between prospective matches, there should be absolutely no reason for Match or EHarm to share the subscription rev with Jajah. There’s just too many other ways to skin that cat.
I’d offer that Jajah will be inserting voice ads to generate their revenue and that horse is yet to be successfully saddled…
What say you Jajah? Bing?
It’s regular revenue share, no need for ads.
Fred,
Bet you won’t answer this question:
Do you buy your transport from some other carrier?
If yes, then you’re a reseller. plain and simple. your job is to drive billions of minutes of usage. the only way resellers make money.
Adolf,
I’m happy to answer your question. Neither JAJAH nor my friends at Google are just “resellers” of minutes. We invested millions of dollars into a very complex global IP communications backend infrastructure, lots of hardware all over the world and even more code that makes all this happen.
We can connect any phone (landline or mobile) to any other phone to pretty much anywhere in the world at extremely low rates with added services like text messaging, voicemail, conference calls, anonymous calls, plug-ins, mobile apps all over the world.
Our business is to sell global value added integrated turn-key IP communications services. We have 5 different 60+ pages API documents to implement, integrate and maintain these services. We provide not only the global interconnect but also user management, billing in 15+ currencies, fraud & abuse detection, customer support, reporting, payment systems, sip trunking, pbx, sip control and many more.
Telcos and huge tech companies like Yahoo! and others turn to us to build and outsource these kind of services for them.
We are very happy with all the developments, more partner announcement coming up, cash flow positive and a great international team that makes all of this happen.
We’ve worked to hard in the last 4 years to be called “you’re just a reseller”, we are not!
But thank you for your feedback.
Regards, Frederik
Jajah has a stupid, a really stupid, name and their voice quality also sucks. You sound like you’re talking out of a bucket.
I also tried Jajah but not a good experience…
I like letscallme.com – cheaper, better and you can use it across different sites.
Time for me to get off my laptop. I just read that title as “‘Jihad’ Lands Deals To Give Love A Voice On Match.com, eHarmony”
“This is the first time eHarmony is implementing a similar service.”
eHarmony has had a phone call service for quite a while. It’s been over six months since I’ve been a member (as I met my great girlfriend there) but it did exist.
I agree with PVDude. These services are pretty hard to use and usually multi-step (I send you an e-mail, you approve me, then we can talk). Also, they are closed systems so they only work within these platforms.
LetsCallMe.com is portable and much easier.
Jajah made a similar announcement of eHarmony including its services for anonymous calls yet 2 years ago. This information is just 1 Google search away. Do they think we forgot? Or had they been booted?
Jajah has made a new effort to grab the VoIP customers and this deal would be interesting in terms of new market test. Fring, Truphone and Vopium are also struggling to get their market share by improving new features in their applications.
Markus,
this is not primarily about eHarmony but rather the launch of a whole suite of services (different anonymous calling features, SMS, voicemail) bundled in a scalable plug-and-play platform and API’s for the online dating industry plus winning Match.com as a new customer as well as a couple of others that we haven’t announced yet as they are in a trial period at the moment.
This announcement is about Match.com, eHarmony and the new JAJAH IP Communications Platform for Dating:
http://jajahurl.com/dating
Thanks for your feedback.
Cheers, Frederik
LOL have you seen that URL lately Frederik?
http://www.jajaHURL.com/dating.
kinda funny, just thought I would point it out.
Two words. Google Voice!
Anonymous 2-way SMS, Anonymous Voice Calling, Conference Calling, Call Swapping (FMC), Private Voicemail, Voicemail Transcriptions, Android app, Blackberry app, iPhone app (coming soon), etc.
100% FREE!!!!!!
Jajah dating only provides a few of those features and it STILL costs money? Wow, not sure how that will work.
I use Google Voice because I can give people a phone number to reach me at, and i have complete control over who can call me.
Sorry, but having to input 3 to 4 private phone numbers that get assigned to me for 3 to 4 people I’m talking to at the same timeframe is just not practical.
Then I have to delete them when we break off the connection. It just becomes more work to me as a user.
Instead I give people my 1 phone number. Then if I don’t wanna talk to them anymore… 1 step block!
Good luck.
Yeah when GV goes public there’s going to be a crapton of voice/software companies going bust in it’s wake.
John,
Those are two different services, I use Google Voice too and like it. There are different needs in the online dating world and we tailor the solution so it fits our partners needs. Anything that Google Voice offers, we can offer to our partners too.
Google Voice has launched in early 2006, has a few thousand select people using it (closed for the past 2 years) and will not be free. Don’t you also have a “Balance” field on the lower left sidebar with links to “Add credit” and “Rates”?
Like I said, I like Google Voice and the team behind it but these are two different scenarios.
Thanks and regards,
Frederik
So if you think GV will be a fee for service product (and i agree with you), then they’re a reseller of minutes.
Just like you, right?
But who do you think has a better buy rate?
Frederick,
Being a fellow google voice user I felt it necessary to comment.
Google Voice (previously Grand Central) is free, plain and simple. The only time you pay is if you make international calls. Which I might add is cheap.
Google Voice’s rates beats JaJah’s rates (80% I would say), and for most of the major countries they beat JaJah on Mobile and Land lines (Germany, UK, France etc).
http://www.jajah.com/prices/ vs. http://www.goog...y?answer=141925
And here’s a big thing. They charge you $0.00 for calling inside the continental united states! Free! Competition is good, now it’s JaJah’s turn to be competitive.
In regards to scenarios, sure you have a different product than Google Voice, because you white label yours for partners.
I’m just saying users might not opt in to pay for a service that they can receive for free and comes with more features, and your own phone number for life.
JaJah just needs to mix it up a little so they don’t fall behind.
You mean i should start expecting more junk and fake invitations now since this is what happens with **even visiting** every other Dating site – Ahhh!!! i am better off with Skype, Nimbuzz and Vopium
Funny thing is that HintCafe has been offering this exact service for months and it’s a free dating site. I remember twilio writing a blog about the service about a month ago.
Great idea, it should work.
Poor Frederik! TC readers were really harsh and he answered very politely.
Thank you Markus, all good
I really appreciate my friend’s work at Google and like their service. JAJAH is more focused on B2B, being a communications platform, a fully-outsourced white-label solution for our partners, our services can be integrated and managed with minimal time and resources and have a proven, short term ROI.
We will continue innovating for our JAJAH users as well as our partners. We are in a very fortunate and good position right now.
Thank you all.
Cheers, Frederik
Fred,
Really appreciate your enthusiasm–and thanks for replying.
Millions of dollars in capital investment? Wow, that much?! as i’m sure you know, anyone who wants to be a carrier and not a reseller must invest billions of dollars to own/operate a network. Are your interconnect rates really cheaper than anyone else can get?
Anyway, I’m wishing you success. if nothing else company’s like yours put pricing pressure on the major carriers, which benefits all consumers.
yeah..i have used JAJAH service when it was in Beta phase.. thier service is very good