Anonymous phone calling services continue their attempts to penetrate the online dating market. Jangl is the latest company to enter the niche, raising an additional $7 million from Silicon Valley firm Cardinal Venture Capital. The round included Storm Ventures and Labrador Ventures, the two firms that first led a $2 million round into Jangl last year.
Jangl is YAAPS, Yet Another Anonymous Phone Service. There are so many players in this space, it’s not entirely clear to me why VC would unleash $9 million on a company with little to differentiate itself from competitors and initially focused on the dating market.
I’ve talked about anonymous calling many times in the past: Anonymous Calling, Background checks = FUD, Skype Will Own Part Of Click-To-Call Market, Vivox, the next big thing in online dating?
For dating, Yahoo, MSN and Skype provide plenty of anonymous calling features, and with an installed base of hundreds of millions, why wouldn’t people use their existing IM client?
For e-commerce, user verification is important, something existing IM clients do not offer. Still, quite a niche in a crowded marketplace. I will withhold further judgement until I see the Jangl Myspace widget.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the major telco carriers offered anonymous calling capabilities in the future, it’s a step further than blocking caller ID and just another line item in your monthly bill.
GigaOM goes into detail about Jangl and Silicon beat has more on the the company and the funding.
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