Michael Cerda is the CEO of Jangl. Michael thinks big. Cerda wants his company to be the biggest thing since Skype. In speaking with him you get the feeling he really wants to leave a mark – something huge.
His VoIP 2.0 company Jangl differentiated itself from others by focusing on spaces such as online dating where they provide Match.com subscribers with a bidirectional anonymous phone number for $6.99/month.
While online dating and associated websites are a nice opportunity the people at Jangl realized they couldn’t take over the world in this fashion. So like many other companies who have huge ambitions they came out with a widget which could be embedded on blogs, websites or social networking pages.
The widget allows you to enter a phone number. You then receive a Jangl number which you can use to communicate with others. The service supports SMS messaging as well.
But still, this is a nice communications niche – it isn’t world domination stuff.
So Michael is bent on unsiloing communications. He points out the various stores we check from voicemail to e-mail to IM. The company would like to collapse all of these modes.
Instead of being a typical call forwarding service like some other hot VoIP companies Mike’s company allows you to enter an e-mail address, get a phone number and have your voicemails e-mailed to you.
Users will be able to set up their modal preferences and in this way perhaps communicate more effectively. Jangl even has the ability to become a modality hub if they play their cards right and get enough subscribers.
They see their company as providing a mashup between the mobility and the web and again – like some other large VoIP players – it is all about scale. How big can you grow your network?
To that end the company just announced it has partnered with Tagged a social networking site for 13-24 year-olds. Now how do these age-limiting networking sites work anyway? Does your password expire on your 25th birthday?
Does it even matter as it seems this is the generation is in the heart of the social networking space and the older generation really doesn’t get it anyway? At least not yet. Rumor has it Geritol, Ben-Gay and Buick are joining forces to launch a social networking site available only to those who keep their teeth in a glass.
Getting back to the 40 million users and visitors to Tagged… This will make a nice target audience for Jangl and gives them an opportunity to grow their pie even bigger.
Greg Tseng is the CEO of Tagged and he thinks this deal is great for his company as it adds an offline way to keep users connected and also increases site stickiness. These are the reasons that virtually all online communities should consider such VoIP 2.0 services and it sounds like room for growth.
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