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.