Want to make a long distance call on the cheap? You’ve got plenty of options, including the likes of Google Voice, Skype, and numerous other VoIP providers. But things can get a little tricky if you don’t know someone’s phone number, or they don’t already have Skype installed. Today VoIP service provider Jajah, which was acquired by Telefónica in 2009, has a solution that will appeal to Facebook users: a new feature for its Android application (iPhone’s coming soon) that lets you call your Facebook contacts.
That sounds a bit confusing, but the feature is straightforward in practice. After installing the app on your phone, you’ll be asked to authenticate using Facebook Connect. You’ll then be able to see a list of all of your Facebook friends who are currently logged into Facebook Chat. → Read More
After selling his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million a year ago, co-founder Daniel Mattes has set his sights on the electronic payments market.
Mattes, who has apparently been baptized the “Bill Gates of the Alps”, has started a new company called Jumio. → Read More
Less then seven months after it was acquired by Telefónica Europe (aka O2), for $207 million, VoIP service Jajah is launching its first integration with the large European carrier. O2 subscribers in Germany will now be able to designate up to five friends abroad as their Global Friends; Jajah will assign each of those friends local numbers, allowing you to call internationally from your mobile phone at local rates. The product will be powered by Jajah, but customers will be seeing the O2 brand.
This is interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s obviously a fairly speedy integration given the size of O2. Jajah CEO Trevor Healy also says that this marks the first time that a global carrier is offering a VoIP-powered service to its subscribers — he explains that O2 is willing to embrace the ‘Silicon Valley approach’ to digital communications, as opposed to holding steadfast to tradional voice services. Here’s to hoping the US carriers follow suit. → Read More
The reports from a few days ago that the Jajah deal with O2 closed at $200 million were correct. Telefónica Europe (aka O2) just announced that it bought Jajah for 145 million Euros ($207 million) in an all-cash deal.
Jajah, which provides Internet calling services and thus competes with Skype, was on the block since at least November (which TechCrunch was first to report on), following Google’s purchase of much-smaller Gizmo5. → Read More
Last month, we wrote about the VoIP startup Jajah being the target of a bidding war. Today, it appears that war is over, with the winner being O2, and the price being $200 million, according to a report sent out by the financial website TheMarker, and being circulated by Reuters.
It was believed that Microsoft and Cisco were two other companies that were vying to get the company. Back in June, the company served up its 1 billionth VoIP call. While the company has some 15 million subscribers of its own, many of the calls originate from Yahoo Messenger, which has used Jajah since 2008 for its VoIP calls. They also have a deal in place with Microsoft. → Read More
There appears to be a good old bidding war going on for another VoIP startup, Jajah, following yesterday’s news about the acquisition of Gizmo5 by Google, a source in Silicon Valley with knowledge of the talks informs us.
Details are scarce at the moment, but Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Telefónica Europe (O2) are said to be looking to buy the venture capital-backed company for a price ranging from $200M to $400M. We’re digging for more information. → Read More
Starting today, Jajah is rolling out a brand spankin’ new service – Jajah@call, a Twitter user-to-user phone call solution. That’s right, ladies and gents. Jajah, the self-proclaimed “world’s most innovative IP communications company,” is bringing this new feature to the wildly popular microblogging service. → Read More
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. → Read More
VoIP service provider JAJAH just recently turned three years old and is today announcing a more important milestone: according to the heavily-funded startup, the one billionth call connection on the JAJAH platform was made some time ago. Unsurprisingly, that call was actually made using Yahoo’s Voice service, which is powered by JAJAH after both companies forged a major partnership for VoIP services in April last year.
JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy says the service has attracted 25 million users since its launch, which means every user has on average made 40 calls through the company’s IP telephony platform if we use back-of-the-envelope calculations. → Read More
Jajah, a popular VoIP service provider, has released a new English/Chinese translation service called JAJAH.Babel just in time for the Olympic Games. The service, which was developed in conjunction with IBM, allows users to call a free number to get a near-instant translation of spoken sentences. The service isn’t meant for voice calls abroad – instead, it’s a handheld translator. After speaking your message into the phone, you hand it to the person you’re speaking with, and the phone spits out the translated message. Using the service is fairly simple, and should work from any phone line: How does JAJAH.Babel work? From English to Chinese or in reverse: Dial JAJAH.Babel from any phone. U.S. local access number: +1.718.513.2969 Choose which language you want your message translated into (either English to Chinese or Chinese to English) Say your message and press # You will be able to confirm that your message was properly understood by the system. The message will automatically be played back in Chinese. If you wish, simply hand your phone to the other person or put the phone on loudspeaker so they hear the message. The other person can then record a message in Chinese, following the steps above, and you will hear their message in English. To help test the service I recruited TechCrunch intern Matthew Schulz, who is fluent in Chinese. His conclusion was that it worked surprisingly well. The translation from English to Chinese sounded a little bit awkward, but the meaning was obvious. As for speech detection, the service had some trouble when he spoke Chinese in his normal tone, but when he enunciated a bit more than usual the results were almost perfect. For now, the service is limited to translations between English and Chinese Mandarin, but the companies plan to release new languages in the near future. You can get more information about the service along with more local access numbers here. CrunchBase Information Jajah IBM Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Just over a week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper suitor. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Now we hear from multiple sources close to the deal that Live Universe has agreed to acquire both. This appears to conclude the Jangl saga that started late last fall. Around that time, Jangl’s board began telling the founders to pursue an acquisition strategy in lieu of raising more money. The board’s decision came even when the company had closed deals (some profitable) with several partners, including Plentyoffish and Tagged. We hear there was a disconnect between the VCs, who had a more enterprise background, and Jangl’s executives, who were set on developing a consumer-facing brand. The founders, and Michael Cerda in particular, are said to have worked diligently to carry out the board’s marching orders. But despite many companies showing interest in Jangl, it struggled to find the right company for its exit. An acquisition deal (apparently with WhitePages.com) came close but unraveled after the terms changed and became far less acceptable. With no apparent options left, much of the company’s staff was notified that they would probably have to find new work, and it was finally announced that Jangl’s founders were indeed jumping ship. Just what Live Universe plans to do with everything they left behind has yet to be seen. I’m sure Jangl’s partners will be interested in hearing the fate of their agreements, if they haven’t already. CrunchBase Information Jangl LiveUniverse Jajah Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
VOIP provider JAJAH has just got a welcome boost via a deal with Yahoo that will see JAJAH power premium voice on Yahoo Messenger. Under the deal, JAJAH will provide its proprietary telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care to Yahoo Messenger users using the platform for receiving calls from the PSTN network, or for making calls to land lines and mobile phones. The announcement coincides with JAJAH moving into new territory as an indirect to consumer provider as well as its direct to market service. Yahoo is the first major U.S. technology customer/partner of JAJAH’s Managed Services and JAJAH told TechCrunch that they expect to announce new partners including landline operators, cable companies and mobile carriers in the coming weeks. JAJAH’s existing VOIP service recently passed the 10 million user mark. CrunchBase Information Jajah Yahoo! Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Do you really want random people on the Web IMing you? Google thinks so. Yesterday, it added a chatback widget to Google Talk that lets you put a little badge on your Website or blog linked to your Google Talk account. When you are available, visitors to your site can start an instant message conversation with you. This is a similar idea to all the call-me buttons that have proliferated from startups like Jajah, Jaxtr, Tringme, and GrandCentral (now part of Google). But keeping it to text chat makes more sense. IMs can be ignored easier than a ringing VoIP line. Still, you are really asking to be distracted if you turn this feature on. Or disappointed. What if you put the badge on your site and no one wants to chat? → Read More
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget. In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites (Match.com, Tagged, AdultFriendFinder, and Fubar) and a Facebook/Bebo application (potentially on 80 million profiles). Jaxtr, on the other hand, has been spreading mainly through email links and personal websites (5 million users in under 5 months). Now they’ve forged a deal to be featured on the maverick of dating sites, PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is like every other dating site you’ve heard of, but free. Free has actually paid off pretty well for founder Markus Frind, who runs the site from his Vancouver apartment and takes in over $10 million a year in advertising. Comscore ranked the site the number one dating site in December 2007, with an average of 1.3 billion page views a month (70,000 sessions and 3 million page views an hour). Jangl’s widget will let daters call each other, send SMSs, and leave voice mails all without sharing a real number. The functionality makes it easy to take the next step in a relationship without sacrificing privacy, or just discreet phone sex. Calls will be terminated on Jajah’s servers as part of their existing relationship. Like PlentyOfFish itself, Jangl will be monetizing the service through text advertising; a first for the company. On other sites, the service is either ad-free or paid for as part of membership (match.com). I’ve found social calling widgets (particularly Jaxtr and Jangl) to be the most attractive part of the VOIP market because they’re not competing in a race to the lowest calling rates, but adding real utility to our existing phone lines. Other voice widgets include Ccube, Tringme, and Snapvine. While monetization is still somewhat up in the air, both companies are testing out business models (paid Jaxtr minutes, or Jangl’s revenue sharing). Going forward we’ll see which models do and don’t work. I also expect both companies to continue adopting more advanced features similar to Google’s GrandCentral. CrunchBase Information Jaxtr Jangl Jajah GrandCentral Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Social communications startup Jaxtr has been experiencing some pretty amazing growth. They’ve attracted over 5 million users in under 5 months (140 days). It’s a ten fold increase in users since they reported 500,000 users in July. Jaxtr attributes a lot of the growth to the utility of the product and virality of calling links placed in emails. In August, Jaxtr reported 1 million users and $10 million in financing. In response to the growth, they’ve brought on Taneli Otala as VP of engineering, the former CTO of MySQL. It’s hard to compare these new numbers with Jaxtr’s main competition, newly partnered Jangl and Jajah, because Jangl has only reported numbers about their potential reach. These numbers highlight deals with websites such as Match.com or Tagged (which reaches 40 million profiles). Jajah recently crossed over 2 million users. Jaxtr offers a really comprehensive calling system. It lets people call you anonymously online through a widget or unique Jaxtr phone number that connects to your real number. Similar to Jangl, Jaxtr adds a host of advanced features such as call screening and voicemail, all without giving away your original phone number. They’ve also built out more functionality similar to GrandCentral. Users can link multiple phones to their account, and forward certain phone numbers directly to voicemail. Jaxtr CEO Konstantin Guericke says about 85% of their users are international, with the other 15% based in North America. This makes sense because one of most direct benefits of VOIP systems like Jaxtr is the long distance cost savings to over 220 countries. VOIP calls save money on long distance calling by connecting calls over internet lines instead of more expensive standard phone lines. Jaxtr users have 100 free minutes to use per month, however calls to other Jaxtr users don’t use these minutes. Jaxtr plans on monetizing by letting users buy more minutes and running advertising on the web pages of free accounts in the future. CrunchBase Information Jajah Jangl Jaxtr Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
VOIP provider Jajah and social VOIP startup Jangl are partnering up to create some new products out of a mutually recognized compatibility. The deal makes a lot of sense. Jajah is a high-profile VOIP startup making great strides in bringing VOIP to regular telephony (with over 2 million registered users), but their recently launched click-to-call widget hasn’t yet given them a large web presence. Jangl’s calling widget, however, has distribution on over 40 million user profiles through deals with social networks like Tagged. Specifically Jangl will be using Jajah’s back-end VOIP engine to serve their calls. With Jajah in over 122 countries, it will give them a much greater reach than previously. In turn, Jangl will be using Jajah’s newly launched pre-call advertising engine to monetize their service with geographically specified ads powered by Oridian (another one of Jajah’s recent partnerships). The two are also alluding to future “strategic development and emerging products” as well, but not saying much else. If the two ever decide to merge (not that we have any indication that they will), either one would only have to change the last three letters of their name (preferably Jajah—Jangl is the better name, at least for English speakers). Some customers might not even notice the switch. CrunchBase Information Jajah Jangl Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Ad supported telephony has been a bit of a hot topic in telephony. Jingle Networks plans on ads supporting for Free 411. Virgin launched an ad supported phone service last year. Blyk and ThePudding are two new startups that recently launched their own phone-based ad solutions. Now VOIP provider Jajah is also offering the ad-option to earn free telephony. Eventually, they hope to bring the model to other phone providers as well in an AdSense-like solution. Jajah is teaming up with advertising network Oridian to let users pay for minutes by listening to targeted advertisements. It’s an opt-in system where users hear and see very targeted advertising content and receive credit in their JAJAH accounts for each message. Ads are targeted based on the phone’s location. For example, “If you own a furniture store that you want to introduce to your local community, your messages will be played to your prospective customers next door”, as founder Roman Scharf explains. The messages will play above the ring tone right before the call starts similar to the example embedded below. Since Oridian is an international ad network that helps US sites monetize international traffic, I can’t imagine they’ll be focusing on your cross town calls, but rather the long distance international ones a VOIP provider effectively delivers for local calling rates (you still have to pay for minutes from your telco). Jajah says these ads will allow users to earn back their entire phone bill, or even make money too. To make money back, you’ll have to listen to ads worth more than Jajah’s calling charges. Virgin’s Sugar Mama ad supported option lets users earn a minute for each minute of advertising heard. Jajah’s VOIP network has a significantly lower cost base costing at most three to four cents per minute to users on long distance calls. This makes it more feasible to support through advertising compared to standard phone time earned on Virgin, which may not make them money, but provide an effective rebate for price sensitive users willing to work for it. Listen Now: http://www.talkcrunch.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/player.swf CrunchBase Information Jajah Blyk Pudding Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They’re very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes while you’re talking to that business contact or MySpace hottie. http://www.tringme.com/tringme.swf?uid=1&username=TringMeTringMe offers a bit more flexibility. Callers can ditch their phone and call directly through their Flash widget to your mobile phone, landline, and GTalk (Yahoo and Skype coming soon). All they need is a microphone and one click. Although they’re still in private beta, you can try the demo widget to the right for an idea of the experience. Similar to the other services, your phone number is kept private and the calls are free (now’s the time for that overseas call). You can also set the widget to just receive voicemails, which are emailed to you, saved on your standard mailbox, or recorded and played back in GTalk. There is one major drawback, though. Since there is no virtual phone number involved, callers have to be at a computer and can’t call you while they’re on the go. Naturally such an easy and anonymous calling service is susceptible to abuse, and I don’t see any countermeasures in place to keep out prank calls and telemarketers. The other services have verified phone numbers and white/black lists to keep abuse to a minimum. I expect TringMe will have to incorporate similar controls to make people more comfortable with using the widget. → Read More
Jajah will be officially announcing their click-to-call buttons on Monday. The buttons, which let people call the owner for free and anonymously, have been quietly in private beta over the past year. They are also taking on international calling card services and Jaxtr and Jangl, who already have click-to-call offerings on social networks and dating sites. The call buttons are available to registered Jajah users and come as a bit of embed code you can put on your web page or at the end of an email. They come with several customizations. You can adjust the CSS styling, adjust the number it calls, and restrict which countries can try to call you. When users click the button, the caller enters their phone number and Jajah connects the two parties over a VOIP line. The callee is then told who called and asked if they want to accept the call, say they’re busy, or blacklist the number. If they accept the call, the minutes are charged to their Jajah account, like an “800 number”. At two to three cents per minute, it can be used for some cheap long distance calling. For the cost conscious, Jaxtr and Jangl are still free, however. → Read More
While the consumer “landline replacement” VOIP battles continue to wage (the cable companies now control over 70% of that market, and Vonage is still fighting), a number of nimble software-only startups are experimenting with their own services. All of them allow users to call normal, non-VOIP telephones at greatly reduced costs. These savings can be captured whether or not the parties to a phone conversation are using VOIP-enabled phones, since transmissions can jump from PSTN to VOIP and vice-versa at certain junctions. For example, a cellular call to your buddy across the country might start on PSTN, quickly jump to VOIP for long distance travel, and jump back to PSTN near its destination. The key is to use VOIP to strip out some or most of the cost of the call, allowing these startups to offer very low cost calling to consumers. These aren’t free calls, though – any time a normal phone line is used for at least part of the call, particularly the termination, the teleco’s get a toll. Making sense of all of the new VOIP startups is daunting, so we’re categorizing them by use cases. For a comparison of features, prices, and more companies, check out this chart. I’m Cheap and I Have a Computer By far the cheapest way to go with calling is to get a desktop client. VoIP clients on your desktop allow users to make calls from one computer to another across the VoIP network. For an added fee, you can connect to a standard phone on the PSTN phone network for calls to or from your computer. Most of you will know this as Skype-in and Skype-out. The most well known desktop client has been Skype, with over 100 million users. The big guys – Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google – also have their own VoIP desktop clients. Since the VoIP offerings have been built into their IM clients, combined they comprise a potential market of over 340 million subscribers. A younger startup, the Gizmo Project, launched in July of last year. They have a reported 2 million downloads of their application. The application functions like Skype, supporting IM and VoIP calls. The Gizmo Project has the unique distinction of not only offering IM and VoIP calls, but also free calls to the standard phone network if you promote their product to a friend and stay an “active user“. Hullo and Nimbuzz → Read More
