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.

It’s a bittersweet moment for YouMail, as same rep tells me that the release of their BlackBerry app in 2009 was what really put the company on the map. Since then, the company made a name for itself among Android users and racked up some considerable funding (disclosure: CrunchFund invested in these guys last year) along the way.

These days, YouMail’s userbase is over 2 million strong, and a company representative me tells that they handle 15 million calls each month. Their Android app (you know for everyone who doesn’t have Google Voice) accounts for the lion’s share of accounts, but once-considerable support from BlackBerry users has dwindled to the point where a third-party developer using their API to bring visual voicemail to Windows Phone users is more widely used.

What this really has me thinking is how many other developers have decided to shutter their BlackBerry efforts due to lack of momentum? YouMail joins a few other notable companies that have chosen to shift their focus elsewhere. Popular travel site Kayak did just that earlier this year, and Seesmic pulled the same thing in mid-2011.

RIM would probably disagree on that — Alec Saunders, the company’s VP of developer relations delivered a rousing address at this year’s BlackBerry DevCon Europe that talked up just how popular and profitable the BlackBerry app environment is. That may be so (I don’t know that I buy all of his points), but as a whole, the BlackBerry platform has slowly fallen out of limelight. The forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system and the devices that run it could change all that, but until it makes its debut later this year, we’ll just have to wait and see if any more developers leave the BlackBerry platform for greener pastures.

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.

We reached out to YouMail in early November and asked them to address issues with their application that were negatively impacting our customers’ experience. We’re in contact with YouMail and they are working to resolve these issues. Once they do, we’ll be glad to once again support their application.

So here we are in the midst of a lovely little “he said, she said” argument. The good news is T-Mo and YouMail are already in talks according to the pink carrier so this should be resolved soon. We’ll keep you in the loop once we know 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.

To quote the e-mail (pictured above) directly:

Specifically, we have received a complaint from T-Mobile that this application is causing adverse network disruption. We encourage you to contact T-Mobile to negotiate a revision and/or agreement to republish this application and update your existing users.

The problem? According to YouMail, T-Mobile never once reached out to YouMail to complain. Says founder Alex Quilici, “Our number is toll-free, so it would have even been a free call for them.”

Alex also added that not only did T-Mobile never complain, but none of the carriers have complained. They’re doing “over 50 million calls every month”, and no carrier has ever expressed an issue.

We’re trying to put together the puzzle pieces and figure out what’s going on here. It’s strange that T-Mobile would send out the blockade without a polite reach out — and it’s even stranger that Google would flip the switch on an app with millions of downloads without connecting all the dots. We’ll update you with more when we get to the bottom of this.

Update #1: T-Mobile says they tried to tell YouMail about this in November.

Update #2: YouMail says they’ve spoken to T-Mobile, have addressed their issues, and will return to the Market shortly.

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.

The funding round isn’t the largest YouMail has ever pulled, but is presumably as much about bringing certain investors on board as it is about the funding itself. YouMail raised $4M in a Series B back in July of this year, bringing their total funding up to around $12.5M. With this latest addition, the company says their total investment raised is “nearly $13 million” — in other words, this round comes it at around $400k between the two investors.

Update: Pinned down a more exact number. Sounds like it was $355k between the two.

For the sake of full disclosure (though, presumably, most reading this are already well aware): one of the investment groups mentioned here, CrunchFund, was started by TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington shortly before everything went crazy.

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.

If nothing else, their growing pace is impressive. It took roughly 3 years (from launch in 2007 to March of 2010) for them to break past their millionth user — and now they’ve managed to double up in half the time. One of the bigger contributors to their growth? Oddly enough: unlocked iPhones. Unlocked iPhones (like the 1 million+ unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile) generally can’t get visual voicemail from their carrier, so YouMail steps in to fill the gap.

Now, how many of these users are actually active? They… don’t know. As odd as it seems, the company doesn’t seem to have any means of measuring such things — or at least, thats what they tell us. They did share that they’re currently answering around 11 million phone calls per week, but they’re not able to crunch out the numbers for just how many different users those calls are going too.

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.

YouMail offers free applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms, as well as a paid application for Palm’s webOS platform.

Alex Quilici, YouMail’s CEO, says most of its now 1 million strong user base are service professionals who can’t afford to miss critical voice calls and opt to use the service as a virtual assistant to greet callers by name or personal message, route important calls as text or email messages, and take dictation from callers.

YouMail’ has partnerships in place with regional wireless and VoIP carriers such as IMMIX Wireless, Cellular One, Blue Wireless, iSmart Mobile and others. These carriers typically set YouMail as their standard voice mail service or directly offer it as a featured option to their customers.

The service is available to post-paid mobile users in the US on all major carriers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile. YouMail can also be used to unify a user’s mobile voicemail with their voice messages from VoIP service providers such as Google Voice, MagicJack, OOMA, and Vonage.

YouMail provides its service for free and ad-supported, and also offers a set of premium services, which includes voice-to-text transcription.

The company is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, and backed by $6.4 million from Vantage Point Venture Partners and Tech Coast Angels. YouMail faces competition with Google Voice, although there are some notable differences (for instance, YouMail boasts an API for third-party developers, integration with Facebook, offers personalized greetings for callers, etc.).

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 voicemail into text and then send it to you via email or SMS (Spinvox, PhoneTag Yap and Jott, for example).

More mobile carriers are offering text conversion for a monthly or per-message fee. It’s my guess this will become more and more common. Voice is here to stay as a data input method, but listening to messages will certainly become an increasing luxury, to be reserved for loved ones or those messages that aren’t transcribed properly (or you need to hear it for tone or emotion).

For now most people don’t have voicemail transcription services. So think before you voicemail, more and more people just find it annoying.

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