Anonymous calling companies continue to court dating sites. It’s deja vu all over again. The Jangl deal with Match is the first big play in the space, but it remains to be seen what the adoption rates are for the service.
Mark Brooks recently interviewed Vumber, an anonymous call company set to launch soon. Basic anonymous calling offerings are a commodity, making it increasingly difficult to figure out the core differentiators which guide the decision making process when it comes to picking out which services are appropriate for your site.
Jangl has come up with a unique way to offer advanced calling services to consumers, but what about the other competitors? Vumber CEO Cliff Wener says theirs is the only system that works bi-directionally on any phone. I don’t buy it. Landmark patents? Maybe, but there is so much prior art out there, patent defensibility remains murky at best. The Vumber value proposition is exactly what Mark has written about in the past when he interviewed Phone Matrix CEO Andy Siks.
PrivateCall does a much better job at describing the financial upside and user experience of their service compared to Vumber but at the same time the two services appear indistinguishable.
Anonymous calling will not be a direct revenue generator for dating sites until adoption rates go up. When they do go up, carriers will think hard about building the feature directly into their phones.
At present, they are a fun new service to try. Most people adhere to the wink->-IM->email-> mobile phone call process, getting them to pick up the phone immediately is going to take a major shift in thinking and trust.
Someone just sent me link to GigaOM story about TalkPlus, a VOIP startup which recently raised $5.5 million and is reported to be talking to dating sites. The service will be free while in beta, but will cost about $10 a month and will come other features. More on Jangl, Grand Central, iotum and other Voice 2.0 companies at GigaOM.
Most anonymous calling companies are started by ex-telcom guys with very little understanding of how singles use dating sites. Or, they are established players looking to get into new markets, which is why it pays to find out just how serious they are about getting into the dating market before doing any sort of deep integration.
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