Don Thorson - Marketing 2.0

Today, Ribbit is rolling out it's first voice integration product to the general public. Ribbit for Salesforce demonstrates what happens when you turn voice into a data object and then weave it into a mission critical business application.  With Ribbit for Salesforce, Salesforce users become more productive because they no longer have to type in their meeting notes and account updates - a task they generally hate.

Talk. Don't Type.

Ribbit For Salesforce lets users call into their account from their mobile phone, and leave a message. The message is automatically transcribed and dropped into Salesforce. Once that message is inside Salesforce, it can be treated just like email and can be searched, edited and forwarded to coworkers. See the video

Customer Messages Inside Salesforce

Ribbit also takes customers calls and messages that come to your mobile phone. When your customers call your mobile phone and you can't answer, their message is also transcribed and sent to your account and we send you an alert that includes the transcribed message. Both the voice message and the text version of that message are archived directly inside your Salesforce account until you erase them.

Where other companies are coming up with thin layer voice solutions on the web, Ribbit is going one layer deeper and providing integrating and automation deep within the application workflow.

Open AP!

Most exciting about the Ribbit model is that all the features you see in Ribbit For Salesforce are available to developers through the open API. In other words, if you have an application or an on-line property that would benefit from these voice features, developers can add them and deploy them using the Ribbit voice technical infrastructure.

Predicting The Future of Voice?

The genius of this approach is that, unlike other companies,  Ribbit is not trying to guess what the future of telephony and voice are going to look like. What we know for sure is that phones and computers are converging and as they converge, new development tools and  platforms will need to exist. Rather than trying to predict the future, The Ribbit model gives developers the tools they need to invent. It would be impossible for any single company to do that much creation and invention - and someone has to create the tools and platform, so thats what we are focusing on.

Stay Tuned

Ribbit. The First Four Months

Well, I never was a prolific blogger - but with the onset of the microblog it's even worse. Anytime I spend doing my own social media these days seems to be in shorter and shorter bursts of Twitters and Facebook status updates. (I'm totally enjoying Twitter as new medium). I'm also spending time writing the Ribbit blog.

As I do every so often, I'm going to use this post to update everyone on my marketing activities over  the last couple of months - this time with Ribbit. Ribbit is an "open platform for telephony innovation" , which we decided to position as "Silicon Valley First Phone Company"- which didn't go unnoticed at launch.

The first strategic launch goal was to create basic company awareness among the press, influencer's, analysts - and what better way to do it than to come right out and claim you were a new kind / better kind of  telco. I'll write a lot more about this after the dust settles - but for now, it appears to have helped us accomplish our first strategic communication and positioning goal. (and as with all good positioning , it also accurately describes who and what we are).

Rather than write pages on every single marketing strategy and nuance, I'm going to simply list the milestones and activities around Ribbit and give an overview of what I've been doing. Getting the company "on the playing field" and gaining mind share were clear launch objectives. Which explains our double launch strategy: Phase one, launch the company pre- Christmas. Phase Two: launch the consumer application at DEMO in Jan.

Ribbit Marketing Activities (So Far) Dec 07 - April, 08)

   

Dec 17  - Company Introduction / Press Tour

Jan   7 - Consumer Electronic Show - "Bloghaus" involvement
Jan 15 - Wireless Roundtable - Influencer Event
Jan 17 - Salesforce "Tour de Force" Conference - Award Nominations
Jan 18 - TechCrunch "Crunchie Awards" -Double Nominations
Jan 28 - DEMO - Amphibian Product Announcement- Palm Springs
Feb 26 - Flex 360 Conference - Developer Event
Mar 13 - eComm Communication Conference
Mar 17 - Ribbit Spawn - Our First Official Developer Event
Mar 18 - Mash-Up Camp, Developer Event
Mar 20 - Under The Radar  Conference
April  9 - SD Forum, Speaking Engagement
April 21 - Wireless Innovations Conference
April 22 - Web 2.0. Blogtropol.us Involvement, San Francisco
April 22 - Flash In the Can ( FITC) Toronto

While this is a busy list of public appearances and marketing activities, it doesn't begin to describe  what's going on in the background. The bulk of Ribbit's efforts have been in business and product development.

Other Ribbit Milestones

New Hires  (25+)
First Platform" Revenue  - (customer deployed app on the Ribbit platform)
First Business Customer  - (first "Ribbit for Salesforce" revenue from satisfied Beta customers)
First Large Partner Technology Integration  - (test with global handset company)
+ 4000 Developers in Ribbit Developer ecosystem
Flash Toolkit  (Drag and Drop Voice Components ) announced and previewed
Business Development / Partner Meetings  (90+)

Stayed tuned for more news soon! If you're a start up, it just doesn't get anymore fun than this.

Digital Lifestyle Aggregators (DLAs)

Dig into the world of DLAs and the road leads to Marc Canter. A DLA is one of those things you wouldn't want to try to explain to your mom but if your profession has you anywhere near creating specifications for next generation applications, you'd better get in this game. Here are some DLA characteristics as described by Marc (which I first found via Om's synopsis on the same topic):

- integrated environment - bringing together lots of things in one place

- aggregated information - from all over the place

- highly customizable - which modules, what look and feel and what UI

- all supporting open standards to create an inter-connected meshed web

You can see the obvious relationship between these attributes and how people like Joseph Smarr and Google are describing OpenSocial, (which is a related title wave that will also hit in 2008). The opening up of applications and communities is inevitable and it will quickly become standard practice. The notion of losing access to core information as I move from one community to another or one app to another is antiquated. There is core information and connections that I never want to be detached from. In fact, I want my applications to be "intelligently" linked from the activity I'm doing and the community I'm doing it with or for. I don't only want access to information across communities and activities, I want dynamic interaction that contributes in real time to my understanding of a topic and advances the quality of my interaction with the community I'm involved with. Plaxo Pulse is making a run at this, but it's still in it's infancy.Walls between applications and communities are simply artifacts, probably of a shrink-wrap software mentality or business models that need to "own eyeballs".

All this goes hand-in hand with Doc Searl's presentation at this years Le Web in Paris , where he says on Slide 16 " Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them social will seem as absurd as it actually is"

At Ribbit, being rooted in telephony, we are awake to the losing proposition of "walled-gardens" because we are convinced that this will be the demise of traditional phone companies. Ironically, it could also be the downfall of traditional software and web application companies if they don't quickly embrace the concept of the living web.

A Big Week At Ribbit

It's been an amazing week at Ribbit. We launched the company on Monday and we've enjoyed surprise after surprise all week long. The press coverage was exceptional. Depth, accuracy, intelligent reporting. People  (bloggers / reporters) dedicated time to their writing and painted an accurate and complete story.

This is contrasted with other launches I've done where the  journalists sometimes cut, paste and reassemble other writers articles and claim it as their own. The journalist on the Ribbit launch spent considerable time interviewing us and digging deep into the  details. For a more complete list of  news coverage you can go to the Ribbit Press Page. (We apologize to the people who covered us who are not listed on the press page. So much went on this week that we were just in a scramble. We simply ran out of time to gather the posts).

Much to our surprise, we also ended up getting television and radio coverage, again where the journalist worked hard to get the story right.

This launch was not "designed" to be a consumer oriented story - it was actually focused on creating industry and developer awareness for Ribbit and the Ribbit API.  We expect the Ribbit business model to behave as a platform , as such it needs both developers to create applications and users to create marketplace "pull". This leg of the marketing was more focused on increasing the number of developers - and it was successful in that we tripled the size of the development community in one week, from around 650 to over 2,000.

In short, we are very grateful for the coverage we're getting. It's critical for a start-up to get coverage and exposure. Being a start-up, we can't buy the awareness we need, so we hope for  the journalist and bloggers to carry the story - which they did, so Thank You everyone who wrote about us, It's very much appreciated.

Here We Go Again

It's again been forever since I've put anything up. I've been posting for the companies I've been working for and neglecting my own blog. (I know, excuses, excuses). So here goes. I left Jajah Friday,September 14th and started at Ribbit, Monday, September 17. (That's a two day vacation).

How it happened that I took a new job: I was asked by some VC friends to swing by to listen to a pitch and give my input. Since I had just spent 15 months at Jajah, I knew something about the "Voice 2.0" space.  I immediately loved what Ribbit showed me.

What is Ribbit? Ribbit is essentially an "open platform for telephony innovation". Basically what we've done is create a carrier grade, multi-protocol soft-switch and then opened it up to non-telephony developers, so Flash/Flex developers can put a phone into a web site, community or application. But it's not just any phone  - its a really smart phone that knows how to move the call between previously disconnected voice protocols.

This is a lot of fancy words - what it means is, in the near future, developers by the thousands will be creating the next generation of communication products. And we don't even know what they're going to create. The really great thing about an open platform is that the rate of creativity goes off the scale.

For example, here is a  new type of phone created by a company in London called Square  Circle. It looks something like a phone, but  since the user interface was created in Flash, it does all kinds of cool animations in the process of making calls, getting your messages, etc

Which you can see some of by watching the video. The big deal is that using the Ribbit API, a non - telephony programmer can now create a real working phone, that lets you do everything your phone can do, plus things your phone can't do. Since Ribbit phones are "hard-wired" to your computer, they can take on levels of intelligence a regular phone can't. Ribbit phones are capable of treating voice as a "data object", so now you can do things like store and search voice mail messages as you would an email or a document.

I'll obviously be writing more about Ribbit. We just took the covers off the company Monday to some exceptional press coverage for a company this size. It turns out everybody is waiting for something to come along to breath some life back into voice communications / telephony space. It boggles the mind to think how quickly the Internet has changed the way we all communicate, while at the same time nothing truly innovative has happened around voice.

Ribbit's out to change that. There's a lot of information about Ribbit on the website. Best bet is to cruise the site and then go to the Press Kit section where you can download materials (Press ppt, About Ribbit, FAQ's).

 

iPhones + iChat

"The iPhone will soon have iChat integration which will  link all iPhone users to each other as well as to Mac desktop users, to create a first of a kind, mobile global linked community". Well, that's my guess anyway. It's not rocket science. Here is the evidence I'm looking at:

Adobe is said to be adding VoIP capabilities to the next version of Flash, as had been reported by Om , as well as Tom Keating  It's also generally believed  that Apple will announce support of  Flash on the iPhone, as suggested by Walt Mossberg and widely reported by everyone else. This would be a nice little relationship between the companies. Apple brings added differentiation to the iPhone (as if it needs it), while reinforcing the  advantages of being a computer company first and a phone provider second. Adobe extends the usefulness of Flash while reinforcing it's platform characteristics.

So who cares?

End Users - End users are going to be able to carry on conversations over wi-fi networks to any other iPhone user and probably any other Mac user seamlessly and hopefully for free. (Apple could charge for the connection, but hopefully will instead see the benefit of increasing the size of their user base). The solution will have built in presence across all Mac OS devices, (and conceivably all "opted in" flash players?). If you're on Mac or iPhone and you are on the network, the system will indicate your availability.  I would watch for a video camera and video iChat to be built in before Christmas,

Telcos / Carriers - Telcos will certainly be taking notice because this play hits right at a ridiculously profitable category for them and could signal the end of their walled gardened "playground". Long distance charges and roaming revenue will rapidly decay as users simply make sure they are in a wi-fi before they make international calls. When this happens, by the way, watch for  Apple to start using telco terms like "network size" and  social media terms like "community members". Apple will be disrupting an estimated 250 billion dollar slice of the 2.5 trillion annual communication  pie.  The telcos will need to be very concerned that they don't find themselves in the position of the music industry,  trying to  negotiate with Steve Jobs on how much they can charge their customers.

Skype - Skype, and all the current VoIP players will care. Skype, being a 1.0 downloaded client, will be made technically obsolete as soon as the Flash voice component hits the streets. The Apple integration of Flash VoIP  will certainly run right through the iPhone microphone and speaker so there won't be any special equipment and there won't be a download, in the traditional sense - it will simply be supplied in an iPhone software upgrade.

Apple - Apple cares because for the last 10 years they've been trying to position themselves at the confluence of computers, entertainment and communication and this is the last leg of this three legged stool. Demonstrating massive innovation in the communication sector is positioning them for ten years of industry leadership. What comes out of the merger of the Internet and telephony is yet to be defined but it will be significant and landscape changing.

The Catch - There are two catches actually. The first issue will be VoIP call quality. The quality of a VoIP call is usually defined by a combination of the speed of the connection (size of the pipe) and the power of the processor translating the analog voice signal to digital. If the wi-fi connection is weak, the call quality will be unacceptable, leaving room for non-bandwidth dependent solutions like Jajah. The other catch is, it might not be free. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple require a .mac like account to use this service, possibly adding Voice 2.o features on the back-end to justify the cost.

PSTN Gateway - I doubt we'll see this in an early rev. but you can be sure they are also working on a wi-fi to PSTN bridge of some kind, possibly not unlike T-Mobiles recently announced Hotspot at Home service that reportedly lets you walk out of the wi-fi coverage area and get picked up by the T-Mobile cell service without dropping the call.

Any way you look at it, the telephony industry as we know it, is in for a roller-coaster of change. The good news is, the end user is about to win as a result.

 

Perception Is Reality

Brand is often considered to be a "soft science", because it's difficult to directly quantify the effect of brand on a particular business. We all know we make decisions based on brand preference, but even when we do it, it can be difficult to articulate why we do it. At the same time, we all understand that brand drives market behaviors and influences company revenues.

This study, originally published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine , demonstrates how brand perception directly influences customer opinion. It describes how you can take food items and simply by wrapping them in different packaging, you can dramatically change the perception of the taste of the food. This study was conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine and involved testing 63 young children.

The researchers took identical food items and wrapped one in plain wrapping and one in a McDonald's packaging. Alarmingly, the food wrapped in the McDonalds packaging received consistently  higher scores for taste. When the food items were tested while both in plain wrapping, they were rated as tasting the same by the children.

Fries and Chicken Nuggets both rated as 6 times as tasty when wrapped in McDonald's packaging. In addition, the results were not limited to " junk food" items. Foods such as fruit juice and milk were also rated higher by the test subjects.

The study goes on to make a correlation between the degree of brand preference among the children and the numbers of  TV's in the home - suggesting that the brand preference is being driven by McDonald's  commercials. While almost certainly true, I would guess that the brand promise would also need  peer and parental validation to have this effect on the test results.

A New World

I can't add any words that would make this any more compelling than it already is -  just take a minute and watch this:

glumbert.com - Shift Happens

Customer Loyalty

" The Ultimate Question". Here is a book you Marketing 2.0 people might not notice with it's poorly presented horrid, screaming cover design,  but this book is a breath of fresh air. Insightful and useful. leading edge and grounded in common sense. In it,  Fred Reichheld confirms what we all know to be true. Satisfied customers drive growth and profits. By measuring responses to a single question " would you recommend us to a friend", you can gain clear insight into your company's performance. In the book, he introduces us to NPS, Net Promoter Score, and shows us how to differentiate from a growth detractor and a growth promoter.

From the jacket

" too many companies are addicted to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short term earnings but burn out employees and alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors - customers who sully the firms reputation and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity"

" Analysis shows that, on average,  increasing the NPS by a dozen points versus the competition can double a company's growth rate"

He goes on to talk about why customer surveys don't work, how incentive based sales programs can backfire and he gives us the tools we need to configure a Net Promoter program in your own organization. This book fills in the missing gap between relationship marketing and profitable growth.

More info: theultimatequestion.com

Jajah - Year One

Today marks Jajah's first birthday and it's as good a time as any to circle back around to my own neglected blog and get everyone up to speed on what Ive been doing. I joined Jajah about 10 months ago and since then, I've been spending most of my time doing the rocketship / start-up thing. Today we announced that Jajah has signed up 2 million users in the first 12 months. We're pleased!

Importantly, these users are from 55 countries, which speaks volumes about the power of marketing 2.0 techniques and also about the global dissatisfaction users everywhere have with their existing phone companies. I'd like to take my fair share of the credit for winning these customers  - but the truth is, people are just tired of handing over large checks every month to traditional phone companies and are anxious for a better, cheaper way to stay in touch with their friends and family.

The fun part, from a marketing perspective, is that we've been able to reach these 2 million customers using low-cost social media and public relations. We are now sometimes being compared to traditional phone companies who regularly spend hundreds of dollars on customer acquisition ( Vonage , for example, spends over 300.00 to acquire a new customer) . While we spend something in the neighborhood of 2.00 dollars.

While we treat telephony as a web business, our competitors often use 1.0  marketing techniques. One of the reasons your phone bill is so high is because they are getting you to pay for the TV advertising which tries to win you as a customer - kinda crazy. We would rather use low cost out-reach and viral techniques and then pass the savings to our users. Apparently we are onto something.

The Jajah Year

It's been amazing actually. Unlike many start-ups, you could say Jajah suffers from too much news. Our problem is managing it's global distribution - this is because of the state of the art engineering team that innovates faster than any company I've ever worked with.

Check out the Jajah 12 month milestones:

• October - December 2005 - Sequoia and Globespan invests in JAJAH
• February 2006 - ICQ Founder, Yair Goldfinger joins board
• March 27, 2006 - Global launch
• May 2006 – JAJAH named to “Red Herring 100”
• May 2006 – JAJAH offers scheduled call service
• September 2006 - JAJAH offers conference calling with up to 10 callers
• September 2006 - JAJAH Mobile announced at Fall DEMO and ETRE
• October 2006 - Firefox Integration
• November 2006 - Google Gadget
• December 2006 – Free calls on Christmas - global calling promotion
• December 2006 - Media Integration - T-online, ProSiebenSat1
• January 2007 – JAJAH reaches 1.2 million registered users
• January 2007 - Apple Widget
• February 2007 – JAJAH Mobile Web (for smartphones) is available (my favorite Jajah solution)
• February 2007 - Dynamic Buttons Beta (customized click-to-call options)
• March 2007 – JAJAH named to “Pulver 100”
• March 2007 – Joyent, Gumiyo, call center integration
• March 2007 - Free 411/free Yellow pages
• March 27, 2007 - JAJAH turns one and serves 2 million users

If you want to know how these stories evolved, check out the Jajah Blog, most of these events are chronicled there and it makes an interesting progression of events - from there you can also check out the youtube and flickr presence. And stay tuned, the second year promises to be even bigger than the first and as we like to say around jajah:
" Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times".