[asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?

Mon Dec 17 15:18:08 CST 2007

Matt,

As someone who has been pushing voice driven web applications since Astricon 2006 in both Java with Mexuar and Flash with (a yet to be named company) I think I can add some comments here.

The asterisk community has potentially a major part to play in "voipifying" websites and social networks.

For a number of reasons this hasn't come to pass.

I can say however the biggest issue is never technical but often driven by corporate capabilities, lack of foresight; and often just plain greed.

I have looked at Ribbit (thankfully not under NDA otherwise I wouldn't be able to comment here), they have a major 'Achilles heal'  - their funding.

The problem with Ribbit is they want to be a big company with a big 'swinging XXXX'. This is often a problem with companies who come up with one good idea and then plant their entire retirement/exit strategy/pick up chicks for the rest of their life on this one good idea.

The reason Asterisk has been successful is purely because Digium as a company never wanted to have the biggest office on the block. They were quite happy never to crack 20 staff for a long time and as such didn't need to take the gobs of VC money being offered to them. (will this continue...to be seen - but magic 8 ball says doubtful).

This goes back to the tellme concept I was trying to float on the voip-info.org site a few years ago as well.

As long as you have easy and well defined api's developers will come and will build apps around your tools. 

Make the price low and the barrier to entry minimal and the customers will come.

More important than any of it though....build your business with a clean heart and people will know they aren't developing on your behalf while expecting to get screwed at the first opportunity you see.

(oh and VC's are for suckers who cant get laid :)

Regards,

Dean Collins
Cognation Pty Ltd
dean at cognation.net 
+1-212-203-4357
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-
> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Rubenstein
> Sent: Monday, 17 December 2007 3:41 PM
> To: Asterisk -Biz
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?
> 
> 	Why is it taking so long for OSS SIP or IAX clients embeddable in web
> pages? There's one or two products out there, while desktop clients are
> fairly plentiful. If "Web VoIP" clients were as plentiful as, say, MP3
> players, then the "Voice Web" would be growing probably as fast as the
> Web itself once did.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 07:10 -0700, Rehan Allah Wala wrote:
> > Any one tried this yet ?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Ribbit Pulls Back the Covers On Its Voice 2.0 Master Plan (And Raises
> > $10 Million B Round)
> > Erick Schonfeld
> > 12 comments ≫
> >
> >
> > ribbit-small.pngIn case it isn’t abundantly clear by now, voice is
> > just another application-bits that can be co-mingled with other data
> > in unexpected ways. Ribbit, a startup that officially launches today
> > and calls itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” takes that
> > concept as its basic premise. It wants to be the platform company for
> > Voice 2.0 applications. If its plans succeed, there will be thousands
> > of new phone apps appearing soon, and they almost all will be Flash
> > apps. In other words, these won’t be stand-alone pieces of software
> > like Skype. They will let people make calls right from the browser and
> > tie deeply into other apps and data on the Web.
> >
> >
> > “If you were to invent a phone company today,” asks CEO Ted Griggs,
> > “what would it look like?” It wouldn’t be just cheap calls over the
> > Web or a one-trick startup built around a single feature like
> > click-to-call buttons. No, says Griggs, who founded Junction, a VoIP
> > software company he merged with Summa Four and sold to Cisco in the
> > late 1990s. It would be a complete end-to-end environment where
> > developers who know nothing about telephony could plug into and
> > quickly create Web-based phone applications. Ribbit recently closed a
> > $10 million B round led by Allegis Capital, with KPG Ventures
> > participating. The company also raised $3 million (the amount was
> > previously undisclosed) from Alsop Louie Partners in October, 2006.
> >
> >
> > ribbit-chalk-phone.pngToday’s launch is a developer launch, not a
> > consumer launch (that will come later in the first quarter of 2008).
> > It is releasing a more robust version of its APIs for its private
> > developer beta, which is open to any programmer. Already, about 600
> > developers have built Ribbit apps under certain restrictions (they are
> > not allowed to go live on the Web until early next year). These apps
> > range from an Adobe AIR iPhone that can make calls from your computer
> > to a Flash phone with a chalkboard interface to a browser-based phone
> > that works inside Salesforce.com (see screen shot below).
> >
> >
> > All of these phones can call other Web-based phones (including Skype),
> > VoIP phones, or regular landline and mobile phones. Ribbit handles the
> > calls and other voice-related services (call logs, voice messages,
> > speech-to-text transcription,contact imports, directories,
> > provisioning, billing, security, authentication) and provides the APIs
> > to developers, who build their apps with Adobe’s Flex development
> > tools. (Ribbit does not support Ajax apps because Ajax does not let
> > you access the computer’s microphone, says Griggs, but he might
> > consider extending support to Silverlight, which does). Ribbit will
> > create its own consumer and enterprise phone apps, but it will also
> > host a marketplace where consumers and businesses can find (and buy)
> > Ribbit apps.
> >
> >
> > For the most part, Ribbit plans on charging for its calls. “There is a
> > company a week that tries to avoid paying for the call. We are not
> > doing that,” says Crick Waters, senior vice president of strategy. It
> > is free to play with the API’s and develop a Ribbit phone application,
> > but once it goes into production and actual calls begin, Ribbit will
> > start charging. Pricing will start at $30 a month for 20 simultaneous
> > sessions, or seats (for, say, call center reps logged into the
> > application making and receiving calls), plus per-minute fees to the
> > regular phone network. (Internet calls are free). The developer can
> > then choose to charge its customers or provide it for free, and make
> > up the cost in other ways. There probably will be free consumer apps
> > from both Ribbit and its developers, but the business opportunity here
> > is for enterprise voice applications that can be charged for. Instead
> > of developing a custom call-center application for $250,000, for
> > instance, an entrepreneur could build the same thing for much less on
> > Ribbit and charge, say, $5 a month per customer service rep (with
> > Ribbit taking $1.50).
> >
> >
> > ribbit-diagram-2.png
> >
> >
> > At its core, Ribbit has built a telephone switch in software, known as
> > a soft switch. It works just like a switch made by Lucent or Nortel.
> > Except that it is software running on hosted Linux servers. Ribbit’s
> > “class 5″ switch has been tested in Lucent’s labs and passed with
> > flying colors-meaning it is as reliable as any telco switch, Griggs
> > assures me. Ribbit’s soft switch can send calls to regular phones,
> > mobiles, Voice-over-IP, Voice-over-IM, and Web pages. It supports many
> > voice protocols (SIP, Skype, Google Talk’s XMPP). Through its APIs,
> > Ribbit will give developers access to all the functionality of its
> > phone switch. “In the old days,” says Griggs, “it was a hardware box
> > Lucent built talking to a hardware box that Nortel built. Today, there
> > are a lot of clients people are using.” Want to create a unified
> > messaging service that follows you wherever you are, even ringing on
> > your IM or in your browser? No problem.
> >
> >
> > Sending phone calls over the Web is not what makes Ribbit interesting,
> > though. What makes it interesting is that it offers a way to create
> > voice apps in a familiar Web application development environment that
> > can easily be linked to other Web apps. Voice is just a feature of the
> > Web, and Ribbit recognizes that. The Ribbit phone created as a demo
> > for Salesforce.com, for instance, will not only let sales people make
> > calls to prospects directly from the browser-based CRM application. It
> > will also log the call. And in the next release, it will be able to
> > record portions of a call at a click of the button and transcribe it
> > (Ribbit uses speech-to-text technology from SimulScribe). Other
> > developers have used the same transcription functionality to create
> > phone apps that let people leave voice messages on blogs or on
> > people’s Facebook FunWalls that then get turned into text comments. In
> > the future you might call a friend and hear, “Press 1 to leave a
> > private message, Press 2 to leave a message on my FunWall.” Ribbit has
> > big ambitions. If it can deliver on half of them, it just might become
> > Silicon Valley’s first phone company.
> >
> >
> > Here is a screen shot of the Salesforce app (click to enlarge):
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Rehan Ahmed AllahWala
> > Msn/Yahoo/GoogleTalk/Email: Rehan at Rehan.com
> >
> >
> > http://www.supertec.com/ - Internet Telephony Solutions
> > Http://www.DIDX.net - DID Number Market Place.
> > Don't Remember Me ? Visit http://www.Rehan.com
> >
> >
> > ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
> > "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
> > then you win."
> > By Gandhi.
> >
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> 
> (C) Matthew Rubenstein
> 
> 
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