December 17, 2007
Rabbitting on Ribbit
Ribbit’s claims to be Silicon Valley’s first phone company may be a bit of a stretch, but the start-up’s software could help a thousand internet phone companies bloom from virtual handset makers to vertical service providers.
Early examples include the chalkboard soft-phone, pictured left, developed by London design agency, Square Circle, and the Ribbit for Salesforce application that makes voice an object and provides speech-to-text transcriptions within a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Ribbit should be a godsend to developers. It’s a platform that acts as a “SmartSwitch”, handling all the complexities of mobile, fixed and internet telephony and allowing developers to master just a few commands in Flash to introduce voice to any web page or web application.
It promises a complete matrix of connections, from mobile phones ringing up desktop widgets to an instant-messaging window calling a fixed-line phone.
Ribbit, which gets its official launch today, offers more possibilities and greater personalisation than the telephony buttons that services such as Skype and Jajah can add to web pages.
It says it can justify its Silicon Valley phone company tag with the processes, business model and innovations it is introducing.
Ribbit’s platform approach means it will offer services such as billing, customer support and quality-of-service assurance, just like a regular phone company, but it will leave it to a growing developer community to come up with applications for its technology.
The company plans a revenue-share arrangement with developers, but it is also proving it can make money from its own reference applications – the Salesforce app is worth $29 per month per user.
The Mountain View-based company is VC-funded by Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital and KPG Ventures and has recruited 600 developers since the developer community was launched in August.
New applications are being launched every week. “The bulk have been enterprise applications, but we think it will open up for consumer ones, when we provide a [reference] application,” says Crick Waters, vice president of business development.
Coolest consumer app to date is the virtual iPhone, powered by Adobe’s AIR technology, which sits on your desktop and acts just like the real thing, minus the roaming charges.
