Cerdafied - VoIP, Mobile, Web and People

Extra, extra. Read all about it.

Well we’ve taken another step toward our organic evolution at Jangl. We’ve abandoned our former stealth website with only a betareg page and a blog, for a less stealthy (but not overwhelmingly telling yet;) website. We still laugh when watching the eyebrows go up and down in the home page animation. In addition, we met with Mike Bazeley of Silicon Beat this past week. He ‘gets it’ on several levels. I’m still improving the way we tell our story too, and have already revamped my Keynote pitch since this meeting. It makes for an interesting transition when you live and breathe something everyday, to articulate your value proposition to someone new to it. Bazeley contemplated a few questions in his blog. I thought I’d take advantage of this media and perhaps color up some additional perspective on those questions.

1. Is phone privacy that big an issue that people will want to use this?

I think the whole phone privacy thing is bigger than we realize. It’s probably safe to say most of us look at caller ID before picking up a call (“Eww, I don’t want to talk to this clown right now”). And in the days of answering machines, most of us screened incoming calls before picking them up. Why? Because we want control over who we talk to and when.

2. Privacy aside, is there an opportunity to use Jangl to connect with your social networks?

Most of us have people in our social networking profiles that we don’t either know as well, or don’t know beyond being connected in that network. (For example, I don’t know Tom on MySpace, but he’s my friend nonetheless). So often times we have a way to IM or e-mail through those networks (anonymously mind you). We’re a way to port those communications out to our phones, where we spend even more time than on PCs (or Macs in my case:).

3. Can Jangl keep the connection time down to a reasonable level so that it doesn’t annoy people?
Would you wait 10,15,25 seconds for a call to go through?

It seems most calls take 25 seconds to reach someone anyway (or reach their voice greeting). So as long as we’re talking about substituting our connect time with that typical ringing wait, then I think it’s all good. Also, if there’s utility associated with that wait, we as consumers are proving that we are just fine by it (ringback tones: ‘please enjoy the music while we find your party’). In our case, we’re giving the OPTION to screen the incoming call from a mobile phone. So the length of time it takes to be reached will ultimately be up to the user of the service.

4. Will users endure micro ads in their phone calls?

If the ads are a) relevant b) of value c) brief and d) played when I’d otherwise be listening to the class 5 phone ring, then it seems like a fine user experience. Only time and usage will tell. If users won't endure micro ads, then they won't have to. I know the free 411 services are doing audio ads. I have no problem listening to an ad in exchange for paying $1.40 per 411 call. What's my privacy worth?

We’ll Jangl soon.

-MC

It takes two to "JANGL"

Ok, I've been sitting on this long enough. To any passer-bys to this blog, be it potential users of our services, press, vendors, partners, competitors, investors, etc... let it be known that we have changed our name from Buzzage, to "JANGL". If anyone wonders why, then have a peek at the prior post. Hopefully next time you log onto buzzage.com or jangl.com, there will be something more than a green registration page!

We launch a flavor of our service into a partner's network any minute now, and then some number of weeks later we'll open up our beta 3 round, which will be much larger and deeper than our prior rounds. For those that have been registering, it will be worth the wait. Again, we're focusing on one's phone privacy initially, but using a method that you've never seen nor heard of. Hopefully this will become a phenomenon that makes us look back one day and wonder how we got on without it. I won't look too far into the crystal ball and say this will rival IM adoption and use cases, but it's an interesting proxy to contemplate-in many ways.

Let's jangl. Jangl me. Welcome to the jangl. Socially active consumers beware.

-mc

Give it a name

No I don’t mean the phrase from “Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead” and no I don’t mean the title of “The Names” 2nd release. I do mean Buzzage. Buzzage is an appropriate name for our company. The age of buzz. Buzz being what you do when you call someone. Give me a buzz. Etc. We’ve put a lot of work into innovating marketing into our service, so that when people call Buzzage users, they in effect become Buzzage users too. (They call that viral marketing in the business). The key to helping something viral see the light of day, is stoking the viral fire so to speak. Arguably one way to improve your chances at something like this is to choose a name that functions on a number of levels, which in are case are:

-The name of the service should be verb-able. For example, “Skype me”, “I googled you”, etc.
-The name of the initial service should be synonymous with the company name. This way you’re investing in a single name, as opposed to multiple brand names.
-The SMS short code should be available, and thus the word can’t exceed 5 characters. This is key since we’ll have an SMS component to our service.
-The name should ideally be one or two syllables.
-A toll free phone number with the name should be available.
-Domain name should be obtainable.
-It helps to at least sound like it has something to do with what you do.

I’m sure the pros would say more, but this is the baseline for us. To that end we've decided on a new name as we near launch time. We’ve scoured dozens of names and approaches. A girl in her mid 20s that we haven’t even met before actually came up with our new name. Our PR firm and design firm helped a great deal.

Oh, what’s the name you ask? Coming soon. Real soon.

Wireless Ventures (20 more minutes of fame)

We had 10 minutes of fame at a previous Dow Jones Venture One Summit as I pointed out a few weeks ago. Since we hadn't launched the company to the public yet, I had to sing and dance, especially when their projector didn't recognize my mac. I guess it went 'good enough' though, since they asked us to speak at their Wireless Ventures event. (This time I made damn sure that the projector worked in advance). Since we still haven't publicly launched, I still had to sing and dance...only this time was able to say more since we're getting closer. That was cancelled out by the fact that there were 20 minutes of talk time though...

Anyway, getting to the point... It seemed as though there were lots of companies that had apps that would a) require a presence on the mobile carrier deck, b) require support for the various mobile devices c) require a huge split on the take due to premium SMS based billing and d) if they were ad supported, they were putting the ads on a mobile web app only. A & B could starve a start up, C could make it a painful haul, and D is simply painful for the consumer. On D...I suppose all this gets better as data rates on phones improve, but man, I've got a Treo and STILL can't deal with the web interface.

It seemed as though we were one of the only (if not the only) that have taken a step back from all these issues, and decided to provide a service that is agnostic to the carrier, the device (and the access medium actually). Since we're working at the common denomenator and keeping the junk behind the scenes, it will hopefully make for a more compelling consumer experience and more optimal delivery experience. I thank our lucky stars for this fundamental level of differentiation.

To this end, there was a VC paneled wrap up session in the end. Each of these VCs took the stage and had been assigned a particular track to pay attention to throughout the day. So in this session they would compare and contrast the presenting company strategies. One of our investors, Alex Mendez was among them, however he wasn't assigned to our track. Instead Roland Van Der Meer, another VC we think highly of was assigned to our track. One of his teamates Baris Karadogan, who we didn't know prior, stood in for him though. I met him briefly in the hallway, and it was clear he had a strong sensibility for the space. When asked to point out his pick of the day, his answer was Buzzage. Nice. I knew I liked him.

-mc