BUSINESS WIRE –July 10 — Expanding the capabilities of its Flash voice and video communication platform, Userplane, a pioneer in community software, announced that its unique Anonymous Calling feature has triggered more than 20,000 calls worldwide during the past 60 days. Userplane Anonymous Calling is now seamlessly enabled for every instant messaging conversation within the Userplane Webmessenger and Webchat client. "The new anonymous calling feature in the Userplane IM has been a great help in building user retention," said Markus Frind, CEO of Plentyoffish. Said Michael Jones, cofounder and CEO of Userplane. "This service enables two users to connect via phone completely anonymously – without giving away any personal information." Userplane will be exhibiting at the 9th Internet Dating Conference in San Francisco on July 13-14th, 2006.
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Mark Brooks: Phone Matrix Privatecall is the leading alternative option and can be integrated into instant messaging clients. 'Throw away numbers' are another option. A throw away number should look the same as a regular number i.e. 415-762-8869, not 415-762-8869 ext. 3565. Also, if I'm dialing from 212-444-1636 then it should be possible for me to call out from this number and have the service mask the number so it looks like I'm calling from 415-762-8869. Watch this space 😉
I would argue that the vox-enabled instant messenger clients and Skype are the leading alternatives. Pay to call services like PrivateCall are nice but overkill for most sites. How soon we forget DateNumber, who were doing this two years ago, and you could get your calls as MP3’s via email as well.
We ran a survey among our online dating customers recently, on whether they would be interested in an anonymous telephone calling service. Our feeling was that it was as I call it “a solution looking for a problem” – that is, an excellent idea that nobody would really use. The results, for reference were:
Anonymous telephone calling
Would you use a service that allowed you to talk to a potential date over the phone, without them knowing your phone number and without you knowing theirs?
Sounds brilliant – I would definitely use this 967 (26%)
I would consider it 1267 (34%)
Sounds good but too complicated for me 152 (4%)
Pass – I’m not interested 1171 (32%)
Don’t understand it 138 (4%)
So I think the reality is there is a market for this service, but it’s by no means a killer app.
A few things:
1. anyone doing this 2 years ago didn’t have the same cost structure advantages and scaling options as today.
2. as for the dating survey, you should experiment and pilot the service. If executed well, you’ll likely find more enthusiasm.
3. it won’t be a killer app within a dating site necessarily, since sex is the killer app. Not many things trump sex. Remember your users are lookin’ for love. Adding voice is something that if done properly bridges the gap from e-mail date hell to what people really want…
4. As to softphones being a better alternative, find me two people that don’t know each other, that happen to have a headset laying around. I’ll bet this is the most fundamental problem ebay will have with skype. A dating site will be no different. People like to talk on mobile phones since they’re more ubiquitous and more functional, i.e. they do more than voice.
It is good to see people in the online dating industry finding successful ways to expand the services they offer to customers, providing more of the things people want when they are dating. By itself anonymous telephone systems are not a killer app, except possibly in mobile dating where it is hard to see mainstream adoption until users can use their mobile telephone as a telephone within the service. What this example shows is that anonymous telephone systems are going to become part of the toolkit for attracting and retaining users.
As to your description of how an anonymous telephone system should appear to the users, I can hardly disagree – can I 🙂