Jangl

The paper

I went to the store to get some bagles for the family this past Sunday. I kind of felt everyone was looking at me for some reason. On my way out of the place I saw a huge picture of Ben and I on the cover of the Business & Technology section of the Contra Costa Times (we live in CoCo county). I knew there was going to be an article covering east bay financings, and that we'd be a part of it, but I had no idea our mugs would take up half the page. The online version was without pics, but is a nice article in any case. The upside, in my small town of Alamo, is that people realize only now that I don't sell computers for a living. It also goes to show us that people really still do read the paper. I haven't had a subcription in years.

While this and lots of other commentary lately characterize jangl as the source for private phone numbers, we view ourselves more as the source for liberating consumers communications. As Ben mentioned to me over the weekend "You are no longer just a number."

BTW, we had to create a new blog here, so unfortunately, those with RSS feeds have broken links. I'm posting this message on both sites.

-MC

Anonymity: 1-way or 2-way?

There seems to be growing noise (and thus confusion) around what constitutes an anonymous calling solution. Most of the noise is based around the 1-way anonymizers (meaning only that my privacy is protected when people call me on that number, but not when I call them). These are the many companies that offer consumers a number, a bridge, or a number + extension, whereby the consumer posts these private numbers or hands them out. These numbers then forward to a real number so consumers can receive calls without having to forfeit their personal privacy. When that consumer needs to call the person back, caller ID compromises the anonymity that was originally desired. Of course, more sophisticated users could presumably activate 'caller ID blocking'. Brother I've been in telecom, networking and related areas for over a decade and I couldn't tell you what the code is to activate and de-activate caller ID blocking. We've certainly learned from the several hundred folks in our closed beta programs, that they don't either. In fact, in our first closed beta, we too had one of these solutions. Not only did we confirm the obvious on this point, but another very important issue became apparent... Let's say I hand out my 1-way anonymous number to 30 people. Well I want to dispose of the number because one of those people are hassling me. So I dispose of it, and now I've disposed of the number that the other 29 people had! Wrong answer. Of course I could black list the person hassling me by blocking their phone number, but then they could just call me from another number.

Consumers need these kinds of solutions to behave like a utility. If they want to maintain their privacy, then they want to maintain their privacy 100%. 1-way implementations are 50%. The obvious point here is that solutions like ours are 2-way solutions, where one's privacy is secured when making and receiving calls. The trick is to build them around a simple yet functional user interface (both voice and graphically). Not only are we doing this, but we're making it work with familiar user behavior...we're making it happen in multiple modalities. You'll see what I mean soon.

-MC

Extra, extra. Read all about it.

Well we’ve taken another step toward our organic evolution at Jangl. We’ve abandoned our former stealth website with only a betareg page and a blog, for a less stealthy (but not overwhelmingly telling yet;) website. We still laugh when watching the eyebrows go up and down in the home page animation. In addition, we met with Mike Bazeley of Silicon Beat this past week. He ‘gets it’ on several levels. I’m still improving the way we tell our story too, and have already revamped my Keynote pitch since this meeting. It makes for an interesting transition when you live and breathe something everyday, to articulate your value proposition to someone new to it. Bazeley contemplated a few questions in his blog. I thought I’d take advantage of this media and perhaps color up some additional perspective on those questions.

1. Is phone privacy that big an issue that people will want to use this?

I think the whole phone privacy thing is bigger than we realize. It’s probably safe to say most of us look at caller ID before picking up a call (“Eww, I don’t want to talk to this clown right now”). And in the days of answering machines, most of us screened incoming calls before picking them up. Why? Because we want control over who we talk to and when.

2. Privacy aside, is there an opportunity to use Jangl to connect with your social networks?

Most of us have people in our social networking profiles that we don’t either know as well, or don’t know beyond being connected in that network. (For example, I don’t know Tom on MySpace, but he’s my friend nonetheless). So often times we have a way to IM or e-mail through those networks (anonymously mind you). We’re a way to port those communications out to our phones, where we spend even more time than on PCs (or Macs in my case:).

3. Can Jangl keep the connection time down to a reasonable level so that it doesn’t annoy people?
Would you wait 10,15,25 seconds for a call to go through?

It seems most calls take 25 seconds to reach someone anyway (or reach their voice greeting). So as long as we’re talking about substituting our connect time with that typical ringing wait, then I think it’s all good. Also, if there’s utility associated with that wait, we as consumers are proving that we are just fine by it (ringback tones: ‘please enjoy the music while we find your party’). In our case, we’re giving the OPTION to screen the incoming call from a mobile phone. So the length of time it takes to be reached will ultimately be up to the user of the service.

4. Will users endure micro ads in their phone calls?

If the ads are a) relevant b) of value c) brief and d) played when I’d otherwise be listening to the class 5 phone ring, then it seems like a fine user experience. Only time and usage will tell. If users won't endure micro ads, then they won't have to. I know the free 411 services are doing audio ads. I have no problem listening to an ad in exchange for paying $1.40 per 411 call. What's my privacy worth?

We’ll Jangl soon.

-MC

It takes two to "JANGL"

Ok, I've been sitting on this long enough. To any passer-bys to this blog, be it potential users of our services, press, vendors, partners, competitors, investors, etc... let it be known that we have changed our name from Buzzage, to "JANGL". If anyone wonders why, then have a peek at the prior post. Hopefully next time you log onto buzzage.com or jangl.com, there will be something more than a green registration page!

We launch a flavor of our service into a partner's network any minute now, and then some number of weeks later we'll open up our beta 3 round, which will be much larger and deeper than our prior rounds. For those that have been registering, it will be worth the wait. Again, we're focusing on one's phone privacy initially, but using a method that you've never seen nor heard of. Hopefully this will become a phenomenon that makes us look back one day and wonder how we got on without it. I won't look too far into the crystal ball and say this will rival IM adoption and use cases, but it's an interesting proxy to contemplate-in many ways.

Let's jangl. Jangl me. Welcome to the jangl. Socially active consumers beware.

-mc

Give it a name

No I don’t mean the phrase from “Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead” and no I don’t mean the title of “The Names” 2nd release. I do mean Buzzage. Buzzage is an appropriate name for our company. The age of buzz. Buzz being what you do when you call someone. Give me a buzz. Etc. We’ve put a lot of work into innovating marketing into our service, so that when people call Buzzage users, they in effect become Buzzage users too. (They call that viral marketing in the business). The key to helping something viral see the light of day, is stoking the viral fire so to speak. Arguably one way to improve your chances at something like this is to choose a name that functions on a number of levels, which in are case are:

-The name of the service should be verb-able. For example, “Skype me”, “I googled you”, etc.
-The name of the initial service should be synonymous with the company name. This way you’re investing in a single name, as opposed to multiple brand names.
-The SMS short code should be available, and thus the word can’t exceed 5 characters. This is key since we’ll have an SMS component to our service.
-The name should ideally be one or two syllables.
-A toll free phone number with the name should be available.
-Domain name should be obtainable.
-It helps to at least sound like it has something to do with what you do.

I’m sure the pros would say more, but this is the baseline for us. To that end we've decided on a new name as we near launch time. We’ve scoured dozens of names and approaches. A girl in her mid 20s that we haven’t even met before actually came up with our new name. Our PR firm and design firm helped a great deal.

Oh, what’s the name you ask? Coming soon. Real soon.

Wireless Ventures (20 more minutes of fame)

We had 10 minutes of fame at a previous Dow Jones Venture One Summit as I pointed out a few weeks ago. Since we hadn't launched the company to the public yet, I had to sing and dance, especially when their projector didn't recognize my mac. I guess it went 'good enough' though, since they asked us to speak at their Wireless Ventures event. (This time I made damn sure that the projector worked in advance). Since we still haven't publicly launched, I still had to sing and dance...only this time was able to say more since we're getting closer. That was cancelled out by the fact that there were 20 minutes of talk time though...

Anyway, getting to the point... It seemed as though there were lots of companies that had apps that would a) require a presence on the mobile carrier deck, b) require support for the various mobile devices c) require a huge split on the take due to premium SMS based billing and d) if they were ad supported, they were putting the ads on a mobile web app only. A & B could starve a start up, C could make it a painful haul, and D is simply painful for the consumer. On D...I suppose all this gets better as data rates on phones improve, but man, I've got a Treo and STILL can't deal with the web interface.

It seemed as though we were one of the only (if not the only) that have taken a step back from all these issues, and decided to provide a service that is agnostic to the carrier, the device (and the access medium actually). Since we're working at the common denomenator and keeping the junk behind the scenes, it will hopefully make for a more compelling consumer experience and more optimal delivery experience. I thank our lucky stars for this fundamental level of differentiation.

To this end, there was a VC paneled wrap up session in the end. Each of these VCs took the stage and had been assigned a particular track to pay attention to throughout the day. So in this session they would compare and contrast the presenting company strategies. One of our investors, Alex Mendez was among them, however he wasn't assigned to our track. Instead Roland Van Der Meer, another VC we think highly of was assigned to our track. One of his teamates Baris Karadogan, who we didn't know prior, stood in for him though. I met him briefly in the hallway, and it was clear he had a strong sensibility for the space. When asked to point out his pick of the day, his answer was Buzzage. Nice. I knew I liked him.

-mc

Your phone is your castle.

We were sitting with our PR firm today and our guy Tim came up with a phrase "your phone is your castle". It's good on a couple different levels. First, it's a play on 'your home is your castle'. Second it's actually true. Find me somebody that doesn't carry that phone with them at all times, whether it's the people that still wear them on their belts like cowboys with pistols, or those that toss them in their pockets, purses, drink holder in the car, or just sit them on the desk...if you can find someone that doesn't do one of these regularly, they're the exception.

We have a beta offering now (which is a portion of what we'll offer in the not too distant future) which actually allows consumers to control and manage who calls them and when. It's not a secret now that consumer privacy is the first of multiple facets of "lifestyle communications" that we're working on. Eventual versions contemplate these types of functions for a caller and a callee at the same time. So imagine you're posting a personal ad or a social networking profile, and you wish to include a phone number. What do you do?

Ten Minutes of Fame

We had 10 minutes to talk at the Dow Jones Venture One Summit this past week. It was fun to present on the same track as a former boss, who now runs a company called Stoke. (They seem to be doing some cool stuff from an infrastructure stand point). Since we haven't launched Buzzage yet, and since it was only 10 minutes, we kept our presentation high level. In fact, my mac didn't jive with the projector, so no one even saw my slides-which kept it even more cryptic-for better or worse. (If any readers here were in the meeting, send me an e-mail and I'll see about forwarding the slides).

I noted a few things during my attendance: that hype is as strong an attribute as ever for a company, that youth oriented companies are the rage, that there's more excitement on services folks can touch and feel, and that free services are just fine. It sounds bubblicious I know. The good news for all of us (as consumers), is that everyone seems to be much more in tune to user experience issues/opportunities than ever before. The opportunity/challenge is for companies to balance functionality with ease of use..

Turn it on, turn it on again, etc

Ok just to close an opened loop, the next round of beta did roll out today. (Enjoy, those who are testing, and thanks for taking the time). It's time to now open an unopened bottle;).

"I don't just put anyone in my phone"

There's this new Nokia campaign going on called "It's your life in there". I was watching 24 on TiVo and as I went to grab my remote, the commercial began and I had to see how it played out. It's a woman talking about the sensitivity and privacy of her phone, and how there's a natural process before "letting someone into your phone". It was one of those 'human use case' oriented commercials, that didn't have a real connection to a feature or anything. I was listening carefully to see if there was some sort of wiz bang feature they were going to push. Nope. Then my wife said "Isn't that what Buzzage does?" Funny enough, the content for the commercial actually maps better to what we would be pushing. I wonder if they'll license us the copy;)

-MC

ongoing blab

The next round of beta is coming, to qualified registrants. I thought it was going to be last week, but y'all know how it goes. The good news is that taking the time to do things right is usually best practice... Building for utility value and user experience is key.

If you submit to the beta registration, Susan will launch a survey to get a bit more data on you and your interest. What I *can* say here is that this is about proliferating your personal privacy on a {mobile} phone number among other things. We look forward to user feedback. Ok stay tuned for that...

Other blogworthy data is that we are very fired up to bring on Pradeep Belur, to head up ops and admin. He is such a strong add to the team, and will contribute to that balance and execution we strive for. He's been with companies such as Sprint, Teligent and Equinix, so there is lots of relevance. (Notice to the vendor lurkers....call Pradeep now:) The most important attribute, other than competence, is passion for what we do, and Pradeep is there. The only thing left to learn, which I'll do tomorrow, is if he plays an instrument; Ben and I do as well as Susan, Tupshin and Kyle.

On another front, we are presenting at the Venture One Summit in March. We get 10 minutes of fame-just enough. Otherwise, we will be cruising VON soon enough.

-MC

Organic Companies

This post is somewhat off topic, but is relevant if you follow startups, are in a startup or plan to be. There is a huge and growing market for organic products and accompanying services. I know since I built a click and brick place called The Yoga Company 4 years ago this month. Anyway, for many of us, the word organic is safe, it’s natural, it’s without the use of drugs, hormones and pesticides. So how about applying this thought to building a company? An organic company, what would that look like?

An organic company would have a strong vision, have passion about its idea, would iterate efficiently, and would also execute responsibly. It would have to build the right mix of cast and characters, that trust each other, can work as a team, have just enough functional tension, and share a common agenda. An organic company would put itself in the best position with integrity. It would also use its energy to create and nurture opportunities, and show up for them. It would find its way on instincts as well as mindful calculations. It would temper reactive behavior and be smarter about proactive behavior. It would be obsessed with its customer’s success/satisfaction first. It would have a finger on the customer pulse at all times. It would tell its story by rolling out its vision in product form one logical step at a time. It would be driven by the big picture rather than the minutiae. It would proliferate its purpose every step of the way. It would proliferate its personality and even humor every step of the way. It would have cultural relevance. It would leverage its shortcomings into positive outcomes. Finally, it would be much about the journey. It would also have some organic beer in the fridge. Ok, that part was a joke;)

It’s definitely our aspiration to be an organic company. And our next round of beta opening up this week is definitely organic.

-MC

Purple Minutes/Voice 2.0

It's interesting to follow the various perspectives on Voice 2.0. When I did my morning RSS viewings, I came across Michael Arrington's blog coverage for Ingenio's new Ether. They are apparently doing a web + phone + presence service of some kind. Anyway, the blog referenced VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver's blog Voice is Purple.

Therein he cited: "purple minutes refers to IP traffic that is more than just plain old telephone traffic (or "black and white" traffic); it's traffic with a value-added component."

I think the point of this is that the cheap or free calling services that have emerged as a result of voice over IP, are really only a part of the promise of VoIP. This being acknowledged by the VoIP pioneer himself holds water because he has been involved in some of those services, like Vonage and FWD. The more consumer impacting and perhaps real promise of VoIP is lifestyle based.

What's real interesting is that every perspective I see on this topic refers to IP traffic being the place where all this happens. The ONLY problem with this, is that to get there, everyone also seems to believe that we all as consumers need IP to get IP features. If I'm a VoIP die hard, I'm going to preach this gospel all day. If I'm a lifestyle die hard however, I'm going to preach another gospel...the Buzzage gospel...which says these kinds of features and services need to make my life easier, better, more fun, convenient, private and personalized, on WHATEVER communications channel I'm on, be it mobile, landline, VoIP, etc. Some people may want these kinds of features and services on their VoIP services, but me and I'm guessing hundreds of millions of others want these services to be agnostic to the channel. I for one want these service on my mobile phone channel.

BTW, when I think purple, two things come to mind: Prince and Seth Godin.

-MC

The Year of the Dog

We're fixing for a great dog year, so hoping you are too. We've begun our initial beta preview last month and are opening it up to more users this month. Reaching our first beta within 2 months of being a real company is a rewarding milestone-especially for me who has been with some companies that even at the 2 year mark didn't have product yet! To be fair, those were hardware plays though, but still!) As we've been alluding our initial focus is on privacy as it pertains to phone numbers, whether mobile, VoIP, PSTN, whatever. This serves as a base from which to grow and expand our services throughout the year.

We're happy to note the addition of Kyle Sims, probably one of the more sensible guys we've come across, when it comes to a user's experience with a service. Kyle's done time at TellMe, Netscape and Verizon so brings a lot of relevant background and utility to the team. We can't wait to see his impact on Buzzage. When building an early stage team, everybody counts in large amounts (and "everything counts in large amounts" in the words of DM). We're rounding out the remainder of the initial team this week, but can't yet say names. The tricky part now is determining which market segments we optimize and target the service for...it's getting fun.

"The key is not to do a John Mayer."

One of our investors, Larry Kubal gave me a book a few weeks ago called Brand Hijack, written by Alex Wipperfurth. There is a quote in this book by Entertainment Insider Bob Lefsetz that reads "The key is not to do a John Mayer." (Now, I'm actually a fan of Mayer, but I get the point). The context of this was that companies starting out need to be patient as they launch, not going mainstream too early, or they'll ruin their good work. He says that as many people love Mayer, hate him.

There is lots of fodder for being patient and keeping your market focus on your early adopters in the early days-something we've been doing lots of since Susan showed up with her steak purse. As entrepreneurs we starve for that consumer phenomenon, but the winners know how to prod the likely early adopters, and then grow on that basis.

Why am I saying any of this?

Well, I've received some e-mails from folks interested in more details on what we're doing. I thought by now we would have unleashed a bit more, but as a team we agreed to keep it stealthy yet. That said, we have chosen the first group of beta testers for our initial offering. If that's you, we'll contact you next week. If that's not you, but you signed up, we'll get you in once we broaden the beta. If that's not you and you're snooping from a would-be competitor than you won't likely hear from us:)

We'll see some of you at CES. Happy New Year. (And Mayer's trio stuff rocks).

-MC

More on Privacy

Back to privacy... It's problematic for us when someone wants our phone number, but we don't want them to have it. I think of all those Plaxo messages I get from people... (If you don't have my home number or know my birthday, maybe I don't want you to!). Then there's the LinkedIn request... It's a very cool service (and I'm definitely a participant), but occasionally you get a request from someone you never even heard of. Some are friends, some are people you worked with once upon a time, some are people you might even want to be in better touch with. Nothing changes the fact that people always want our very precious phone numbers.

Then there's the very popular world of personals and online dating. Lots of services let us text chat, and learn more about someone ( Match, Y! Personals). But I really don't know that much about someone until I can talk to them live, and hear them talk. Am I dealing with a low-talker ? A loud mouth? Is the person as old or young as advertised?

Another venue which presents a privacy challenge is your favorite classifieds site. Sure places like Craigslist provide for the ability to anonymize an e-mail address, but they don't provide for the ability to anonymize a phone number. Let's say I see a car for sale and I'm interested... I read the ad, see a picture of the car, but for such a big purchase consideration, I want to know more. I want to talk to the owner and hear them articulate why it is they are selling, what the vehicle history is, etc. So he gives me his phone number and says all the right things. Heck I even buy the car. But then a week later the radiator leaks and the electrical panel goes out. For the sake of the example, let's assume I'm off my rocker for a moment. Knowing his number and spending a little time online I can find out where the seller lives. I can show up at his house. I can wait in the driveway with his car until he gets home. You get the idea.

Not to marginalize any of the utility from these services, but none of them provide live talking without forfeiting privacy. They leave it to the users to cough up their phone numbers...(something that forfeits privacy). Do I really want someone that I don't know, but that might have an interest in me, to have my personal phone number, to call me anytime? What can I do if I don't want the person to call me anymore? I can say "don't call me anymore", but that doesn't always work. I can block that caller's number, but the caller can just call from another phone, and another. Sure I can change my number, but then the other 500 people that I want to be able to reach me won't be able to. This issue stands alone when I consider for example my home phone, but greatly intensifies when I consider my mobile phone that's in my pocket all day long...

It's a problem that's begging for an answer...and it isn't obvious that answer is coming from your phone company, your social networking site, dating service or your favorite classifieds destination. That's why this is the opening to our story:

Now, we're certain these issues aren't issues to all people, but if they are to you we'd love to hear from you.

The beat goes on...

It was cool to see Matt at Silicon Beat cover us -I don't know him, but he sure hustled. His write up yielded us more visitors than the Venture Wire story. MoCo News also caught it.

As I've indicated, we're some parts web 2.0 and some parts mobile service, so it will be interesting to see which blog party takes more of an interest as we progress.

Anyhow, recall the privacy/anonymity bit I wrote about a few weeks back. Our offering that pertains to anonymity will be introduced in a closed beta sometime in December. This is a subset of our eventual service, but is stand alone a pain pill for many. Any readers that hate giving people their home or mobile # (dates, craigslist, personals, classifieds) might be interested. Is that you? We won't be able to get everyone in right away, but we will as the race toward launch progresses.

U2 "Dreaming Outloud"

OK-so this is relevant to the thread... I saw U2 last night in Oakland. Bono had everyone hold up their mobile phones all lit up. The place looked like a giant Christmas tree. It was a site to see. We are all well aware of the huge adoption of mobile phones-everyone has one. But to see it in this context really put it into perspective. And then to see so many people sending text messages to the One campaign was inspiring. And we're only at the beginning of this mobile revolution... I immediately began to think about the kinds of things Buzzage will contribute.

Bono spoke (with inspiring pads playing beneath) about the Bay Area (and of course everyone screams), being the center of the universe for the technology revolution. "This is the place where people dream outloud".... and how true it is, as Ben and I sit here and relish in the closing of Buzzage's financing. Now it's time to make this dream come true.

3rd Great Protocol

I met a guy named Vint Cerf moons ago when I was schlepping routers to ISPs. He had an ISP named Cerfnet in San Diego. I had the pleasure of meeting him once, but mostly dealt with his guys Klaus and Larry. Not having known Vint from Adam (ok, I was very new to all this then), I perceived Vint just as I did any other ISP owner. I had no idea what he had done, and certainly not who he would ultimately become.

It seemed a couple years ago Cerf declared SIP the 3rd 'great protocol'; great meaning that it would greatly change lives and economies. The 1st protocol being TCP/IP and the 2nd being HTTP-obviously huge life and economy changing developments. Those in the comms world know SIP already, but what it eventually means to consumers is what really matters. With HTTP we have the URL. With SIP we have the URI. The URL points to a web address and the URI will eventually be my catch-all address for everything...phone #, e-mail address, IM, fax, video, etc. I'll eventually have the means to control who gets to contact me and how. Of course today, not everyone is SIP enabled yet (like Skype), but everyone knows that in order for all this to work, networks need to be SIP enabled (like GoogleTalk). Once all these means of communcations are SIP enabled, the various islands that are comms providers need to peer (kind of like the early days of the Internet).

Long story short, significant development and cooperation needs to come together before consumers get the full potential of the 3rd great protocol. Consider this the real promise and future of IP communications in any case. What Buzzage is ultimately doing is taking the future of IP communications, and applying it where it matters TODAY-to our existing and most ubiquitous form of communicating.

Convenience

Phone tag is inconvenient and usually not productive. But then again we can't connect and talk everytime we call each other. What if I knew you were calling me for certain information, and further what if I could arrange for a means for you to obtain that information you're looking for when calling me?

Like calling to book my band?

Like calling to find out where the Saturday soccer game is and whether it's cancelled?

Like calling to RSVP to a party and wanting to bring something (but not knowing what)? Or you're on your way to the party and are lost and need directions?

Like calling to check status on a project I'm doing for you?

Like calling in response to a classified ad I've placed for a car for sale?

Like calling to find out where the last minute rave is?

Surely there are more reasons you can imagine that people call you, where having the answer to their questions accessible without you having to personally handle every call, represents an opportunity to make your communications life more convenient...

Personality

Once upon a time there was this thing called an answering machine. Many of us had a little fun when recording our voice greeting on these mini cassette based devices. Back in the day I would play my guitar on the answering machine, or have a really cool song playing in the background (on my record player/radio/tape player combo). There was also the obligatory "Hello {then wait 5 seconds}, hello? Oh fooled you! Nobody's home, leave a message."

Ok, so why did people have this kind of fun with answering machines? Because it was easy, fun and an opportunity to display personality for callees, and useful and entertaining to callers. The answering machine is still around, but many of us don't have them anymore. They certainly don't apply to mobile phones, so we're stuck with plain old boring voice mail. I swear if I could, I'd have some of our band " Big Breakfast" playing on my voice mail. I'd even want to offer ways to listen to our music, buy it, get a picture of the band, or even text message our gig schedule on demand. Now if only someone would come along and make it easier for me to proliferate my personality...

Happy Halloween

Privacy/Anonymity

People already segment their lives with various communications. For example, people I talk to on a regular basis have my mobile #, tons of people have my e-mail address(es), people I choose to talk to a bit less have my home office #, very few have my Skype ID, very few have my IM handle, and basically just family members have my home #. Among all of these, my mobile # is most sacred and then my home #. If someone has my mobile #, they can cause my phone to ring or vibrate anytime they want. (Do you ever notice when someone asks for your mobile # you kind of internally hesitate?) They can also send an SMS whenver they want. With my home #, people can cause that to ring whenever they want, and even figure out where I live. There should easily be a number I create that in essence is a proxy to all my #s. A number I can turn on and off, open or close, or easily get rid of. A number I can fill in on forms (like mortgage docs!), put in ads, give to dates or people I meet for the first time, or simply to people I don't want to have ultimate access to me at all times. I want...privacy and anonymity like I have with a chat handle or e-mail address-something phone communications lacks today.

We can.

The answer to my last musing about why we can't have purpose driven phone numbers, with the same utility as having a purpose driven e-mail address is... Well, we can... meaning it's possible as long as we converge the phone world with the Internet world. Carriers focus on networks, minutes and ARPU whereas Internet companies focus on content services, subscription and eyeball$. These are two different animals today. To Buzzage it's about bringing tomorrow's utility which would be found in an all IP world, into today's world where mobility trumps cheap or free talking. And doing so being agnostic to the brand and type of phone access a consumer has. Think of how profoundly the Internet has impacted our communications lives online. We're talking about porting that level of impact out to the phone, and evolving the way people communicate. We met with our friend Jeremy (who used to run the voice division of a huge Internet provider) the other day who proclaimed "it's about saving time and wasting time"...a household phrase around Buzzage these days-thanks Jeremy. In order to prep those reading for what we'll eventually come out and launch, we'll begin to socialize the 'why' around purpose driven phone numbers.

Purpose driven lives

Many of us have multiple e-mail addresses (and IM handles) for multiple purposes. Consider your personal e-mail address vs. your work e-mail address vs. your gmail address vs. your hotmail address. These each have a specific purpose and level of utility. The ability to represent ourselves as having various identities online (anonymous or not) is quite common. Well given 1) we spend more time with our phones in our pockets than we do at our computers and 2) since many of our lives have begun to migrate from e-mail and IM to SMS, the question begs...why can't we have purpose driven phone numbers the same way we have purpose driven e-mail addresses and IM handles?

A new inflection point in lifestyle communications?

A new inflection point in lifestyle communications?

In the web 1.0 era, Geocities offered task driven wizards to guide consumers toward building a website.There are lots of companies emerging in this web 2.0 era, which allow consumers the ability to publish additional content. Filmloop provides a service for consumers to tell a story with photos. Odeo provides a service for consumers to podcast. Six Apart provides a service for consumers to pubish blogs (I'm using it right now). Ning provides a service for anyone to build a social web application. Squidoo appears to be planning a service that allows any expert on anything, the ability to publish content. All of these companies have three things in common:

1. They are guiding the consumer through the process.

2. They are empowering consumers as authors, enabling peer produced content.

3. They are all web based (hence web 2.0).

Meanwhile #1: the explosive VoIP space hasn't been very explosive lately. Sure Skype selling to eBay was huge news, but from a consumer's perspective all the VoIP services are still focused and driven by free to cheap long distance calling. The promise of VoIP really does go beyond talking for free/cheap, although you wouldn't know it by the looks of the landscape. Everyone knows there's a huge revolution enabled by VoIP, but the cool stuff just hasn't made it to the scene yet.

Meanwhile #2: consumers carry their mobile phones everywhere, all the time. Phones are the most ubiquitous devices in the world. Mobile messaging, ringtones and ringback tones have been hugely adopted. The mobile industry, while still primarily driven by dial tone, seems to have begun cracking the code by enabling these lifestyle services.

It seems as though there is an opportunity to impose a lifestyle communication services inflection with some parts web 2.0, some parts VoIP and some parts mobile phone... This is the basis for a start up called Buzzage. More to come when I can say more. -MC