There are scores of companies focused on connecting people on the Internet. But what about people without computers, or prefer to communicate by phone?
Ccube, in Cupertino, CA, is making it easier for billions of people without computers to communicate. To use the CCube Service, one only needs a phone. after a brief web-based signup process – which will not be necessary in future versions of the service, all search and conversation will be phone-based.
I spoke with Ccube CEO, Mahesh Lalwani to learn more about the service and how Ccube is different from other anonymous calling services.
Lalwani started out the conversation by mentioning Tom Friedman’s book, A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, in which Friedman talks about 10 “flatteners� that have leveled the global playing field.
Lalwani thinks Click, Call, Connect, the concept behind CCube, is another flattener to add to Friedman’s list. Ccube combines Lalwani’s speech technology and telcom experience to make matching and finding people based on shared interests extremely simple.
Putting together a working anonymous calling system is not difficult. What’s interesting about CCube is that anonymous calling is just the beginning.
There are two primary differentiators between Ccube and other high-end anonymous calling systems. One is the features. Concepts like call windows are useful when scheduling times you are available to talk throughout the, making it easy of the service without worrying about someone calling you at 2am.
Trying to win the anonymous calling arms race based on features is an uphill battle. The signup process needs to be dead simple and the value proposition clear to users right up front. Then it’s up to the marketing and business development team to go partner with as many communities as possible.
Or in CCube’s case, throw out a free ‘Call Me On Ccube’ widget that gets embedded in web pages, blogs, email and classified ads and let the users come to you. Building the Ccube community around a web-based, and soon phone-based directory of people. This is a much different model than say Jangl, which is relying on Match to drive adoption via the same “call me” buttons used by Ccube. (Update: Jangl is now the number 2 service on Facebook.)
The ability to search for people by keyword, geographic location, interest or other attribute is the real value of Ccube. Listening to audio descriptions of sofa’s on Craigslist or brunettes over 5’5″ within 100 miles is where Ccube really shines. Match.com had voice profiles years ago and Craigslist may allow some anonymous calling services but Ccube is a meta- directory where categories of daters, sellers and affinity groups can find each other.
Ccube currently offers both free and subscription levels of service for US phone users, including:
Free – 30 minutes per month
$7.00 – 250 minutes per month
$20.00 – 1000 minutes per month
Bring in one friend and receive 10 minutes in addition to the free 30 minutes.
Ccube is a small startup which needs funding and lots of traffic in order to succeed. From what we know so far, Ccube’s success could be a phone call or two (million) away.
