Freemium visual voicemail service YouMail never forgot their roots — they first launched in late 2007 with the mission of making visual voicemail available to the masses, but soon focused their attention on what was then the market-leading smartphone platform: BlackBerry.
I don’t need to tell you that RIM’s fortunes have changed since then, but the YouMail crew dutifully updated their BlackBerry app even though registrations from users of that platform began to dip. Until now, that is. With one final (and seemingly substantive) update in place though, YouMail has officially decided to call it quits on BlackBerry. → Read More
Yesterday something strange happened. YouMail, a visual voicemail app with millions of downloads, was pulled from the Android Market. Confused, YouMail reached out to Google about what the dealio was, only to hear that T-Mobile had requested that the app be pulled. T-Mobile complained to Google of “adverse network disruption,” which was blamed squarely on YouMail.
According to YouMail’s blog post, the company hadn’t heard anything from T-Mobile concerning the issue. But GigaOm is reporting that they’ve received a statement from T-Mobile that paints a different picture. → Read More
Whoa. I’m going to tip toe through this story a bit carefully, as it’d be easy to come off as if we’re rallying the pitchforks. We’ve reached out to T-Mobile for their side of the story, but haven’t heard back just yet.
Here’s what we know: YouMail, a visual voicemail app with millions of downloads, has just been pulled from the Android Market. The reasoning, according to an e-mail sent from Google to YouMail: because T-Mobile said so. → Read More
It’s kind of hard to believe: even 4 years after the launch of the iPhone, visual voicemail still isn’t ubiquitous.
That’s where YouMail comes in. Filling in the gaps where most platforms fall short, YouMail brings visual voicemail (and myriad other features, like visual caller ID and smart greetings) to BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and Android.
Come Wednesday morning, YouMail will be making two landmark announcements: they’ve surpassed 3 million downloads, and have nabbed a small round of funding from the Tech Coast Angels ACE Fund and Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund. → Read More
Voicemail is terrible. And yet, even with far superior options at their fingertips (read: text messages. Hell, carrier pigeons are better. I’ve never heard of a shady news outlet hacking a celebrity’s carrier pigeon, have you? QED), some folks just won’t give it up. Fortunately, there are a few third party services out there to make voicemail less terrible, bringing features like visual voicemail to handsets where it might not otherwise exist.
One of these services, YouMail, is really on a roll lately. After announcing earlier this month that they’d received their billionth call and had closed a round that upped their total funding to $12.5 million, the company has just disclosed another stat exclusively to TechCrunch: they’ve just crashed through the 2 million user mark. → Read More
Voice mail is a pain, but it doesn’t have to be. Just ask the million users who’ve now registered for YouMail, a ‘digital secretary’ type service that offers visual voice mail, smart filtering, voice-to-text transcriptions and custom greetings.
YouMail, which operates only in the United States, says it has not only surpassed the 1 million registered users mark but has also handled over 300 million calls since its inception in 2007. → Read More
Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it. When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems – which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and for how long. Even though email was around, people were still unsure how to use it. Letters went on letterhead and were formal. Voicemail was informal and common. Email etiquette was still being developed. It was good for mass-forwarding jokes and moving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files around, but it took a while for email to take over as older generations moved out of the workplace or got with the program. But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily. Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back. How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?” Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there. There are startups that are trying to make voicemail more useful. Pinger, GrandCentral and YouMail are among them. The iPhone’s visual voicemail feature helps clean up the clutter, too. But at the end of the day you still need to take time to listen to those voicemails, and that usually comes after other equally urgent but less disruptive tasks. The services that really make voicemail more usable are those that convert → Read More
I’d like to declare that the Mac vs. PC shtick is old and tired. If you’re releasing a new product, please refrain from spoofing those ads. That is all. YouMail lets you assign customized voicemail greetings based on who’s calling. Finally. Yes. I love it. It’s touted as a service that let’s you "express yourself to friends and family while remaining professional to unknown callers." I made the mistake of assuming that taking out a Home Equity line or credit from Wells Fargo wouldn’t result in them calling two or three times a day trying to sell me other stuff. Now, whenever they call they’ll hear "Hey Wells Fargo, go fly a kite with a hole in it! Ha! Seriously, stop calling and pretending there’s something really important you want to talk to me about. I’m on to your game. Drop dead. Love, Doug!" Cell Phone Voice Mail with Personalized Greetings and Online Retrieval [YouMail] via Mashable → Read More
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