The Ripple Effect: Only the Beginning

July 30th, 2008 by Don Thorson | located in Ribbit | No Comments » | trackback

Announcing our acquisition by BT brought the expected tsunami of response, which we loved—and it also brought some more subtle and insightful responses from literally around the globe. We really liked watching people jump into the conversation about open telephony, the “talkification” of the web, and the growth of Ribbit’s platform into the international arena.

Blog posts, Twitter updates, and conversations with the media and industry partners—all gave us proof that our community really understands where this Ribbit/BT synergy is leading.

It also showed us, once again, how much value this community will add as we continue to grow.

We’re sharing just a few links below in hopes that you’ll take a look.

UK blogger Jon Moss discovered Ribbit through Twitter yesterday, and after learning about what we do, had a lot to say about Ribbit and Amphibian.

Adobe’s Ryan Stewart stopped by the office and talked with Chuck Freedman about what our news means to the Flash community. We even filmed it; watch it here.





C|Net News responded with three insightful articles; all are worth reading but you can start with Marguerite Reardon’s perspectives on open development. In one of the first commentaries on the acquisition, Mashable had strong thoughts, too.

What about you? What have you heard or thought about the Ribbit/BT partnership, and what would you like us to know? Comment here. We look forward to the conversation.

Don Thorson
VP of Marketing 

Tags: Amphibian, BT, cnet, developer platform, Developers, marguerite reardon, mashable, open development, Ribbit, Voice, voice 2.0

Ribbit + BT. The Future of Communication Starts Today.

July 29th, 2008 by Ted Griggs | located in Ribbit, SaaS | 2 Comments » | trackback

Today we’re sharing the great news that Ribbit has been acquired by BT one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services. This marks the most important day yet in Ribbit’s history. As part of BT will be able to more quickly extend our vision beyond Silicon Valley and bring our products and technology to the entire world. We couldn’t be more excited than to announce this new partnership.

Why would we agree to be acquired so soon after our December, 2007 launch? The answer is easy. In these seven busy months, we’ve learned from our customers and partners that our market opportunities are bigger than we had imagined and that aligning with a large-scale partner was the most direct route to building the Ribbit vision.

BT expressed an early interest in Ribbit and we’ve spent months getting to know one another. The teams at both Ribbit and BT deeply believe that our collaboration will serve our developers, the people who use our products and services, our partners and even the global communications industry. We like the idea of “rethinking communications” with a partner as strategic and visionary as BT. You can read more about that direction here. We will be sharing more details on this partnership, and introducing you to some key people on the BT team, here on this blog in the next few days—so please stay tuned.

Please join in our enthusiasm and excitement for this new partnership, and accept our thanks for the support you have shown to Ribbit so far. Both the Ribbit and BT teams promise to do all in our power to bring you the communications solutions you’ll need and want as this exciting space continues to evolve.

The best is yet to come!

Ted Griggs, Co-Founder and CEO

Tags: British Telecom, BT, communication, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, ted griggs, Voice, voip

Voice Peering and the Telephony (R)Evolution

June 27th, 2008 by Crick Waters | located in Crick Waters, Uncategorized | 1 Comment » | trackback

I enjoyed being part of Tuesday’s Voice Peering Forum and joining a panel exploring Service Delivery Platforms and the intersection of Web 2.0 and telecom with an outstanding lineup of telephony innovators:

Thomas Howe (moderator), CEO of The Thomas Howe Company
Garry Galinsky, Director, Product Innovation for Call Genie
Shai Berger, CEO & Co-Founder, Fonolo
Pankaj Shroff, Chief Applications Architect, Sonus Network

Ribbit’s content on this panel garnered some great attention, including a post positioning Ribbit as “the phone company of the future” by voice peering expert Rich Tehrani. We also like moderator Thomas Howe’s comments on this video interview fresh from the Voice Peering show.

The audience at Voice Peering was as interesting as the presenters tuned in professionals representing carriers, Homeland Security, Web properties, new-age Voice 2.0 companies and more and everyone came to exchange thoughts on the whole new dynamic of interconnected voice services using this emerging peering fabric.

An “aha moment” came as I considered the visionary work that voice peering is generating, and the impact of this work on the established telephony landscape.

I associate this with natural selection. What’s happening now resembles what we see when a new species entering an ecosystem with certain inherent evolutionary advantages over the incumbent species. The species will co-exist for a while, but after a time the more efficient species, with advantages that better suit it to the environment, will become dominant.

We all felt the rumblings of this coming change on Tuesday’s panel. The technologies being deployed and relationships being formed right now will create global connectivity that transcends the legacy economic and infrastructure barriers that are a by-product of the last 60 years of telecomm history.

The way it was done is not the way it will be. It’s exciting to be part of the change and perhaps, to reference Rich Tehrani, to be a pivotal part of the phone experience of the future.

-Crick

Tags: call genie, Platform, sonus networks, telephony, thomas howe, voice 2.0, voice peering, web 2.0

AppExchange and CRM Community Showcasing Ribbit for Salesforce

June 19th, 2008 by Greg Goldfarb | located in Appexchange, Ribbit, SaaS, Salesforce, Voice | No Comments » | trackback

Ribbit enjoyed a landmark day on Tuesday as the AppExchange and CRM Community showcased the news that 250 enterprise customers had adopted Ribbit for Salesforce since we released the application this month.

But it got even better. One of our customers—Greg Voisen (pictured left), founder of Compassionate Communications, which provides cards of support to people with critical illnesses—was so impressed with Ribbit for Salesforce that he sent the following message to 1,800 business contacts: I have recently come across the most amazing technology, and thought that I would share it with you. I normally do not bother to share information like this, but I believe that this is so user friendly and easy to use that you will want to know more. The best way to explain how Silicon Valley’s first telephone company works is to go to their website and watch the video demo. You will be glad you did. I am currently using Ribbit everyday in conjunction with my Salesforce client management system. It has made my job of making contact with customers and prospects simple, easy and fun. Please do take the time to check out this amazing voice to text technology, you will be pleased you did. And don’t forget to ask for Lorene Andrews if you have any questions. Call Lorene Andrews at (650) 440-2500 or email: lorene.andrews@ribbit.com for more information.For more information go to: www.ribbit.com/salesforce/ Sincerely, L. Greg Voisen Founder, Compassionate Communications, LLC

We love the evangelism…thanks, Greg.

Greg’s experience with Ribbit has also inspired innovative thinking on his core business. “We are in the process of evaluating Ribbit as a means to connect individuals who come to our site wanting to send a healing card to critically ill patients, and providing them with the service as a mechanism of connection with SMS text and voice mail to our patients. I believe that this feature added to our website would be a big plus for both the patient and our supporters.”

One more thing: Crick Waters, Ribbit Co-Founder and SVP Strategy & Business Development, will speak on “The Intersect of Web 2.0 and Telecom” at the Voice Peering Forum, right here in Silicon Valley, on June 24. Planning to be there? Drop us a line and we’ll make sure that Crick says hello.

Big Week for Ribbit for Salesforce

June 9th, 2008 by Greg Goldfarb | located in Appexchange, Conferences, Events, Ribbit, SaaS, Salesforce, Voice | No Comments » | trackback

Team Ribbit hit the demo floor at Salesforce SuccessTour L.A. last week, welcoming a stream of visitors through our green-ballooned booth to show how Ribbit and mobile phones boost productivity for Salesforce users.

People really “got it.” We enjoyed hearing insights on the time savings, improved responsiveness, and the upside of letting people use their phones (which they’re already near) rather than their keyboards (which they never have enough time for) to keep sales records, notes, and input up-to-date.

Exciting to share Ribbit with the crowd; we’ll do so again at the Dallas SuccessTour on June 10 (let us know if you’ll be there).

Amplifying these thoughts, Denis Pombriant, the voice of CRM Buyer, said this about Ribbit in his blog yesterday:

“I love disruption…an opportunity to roll the dice and start over…Ribbit made an important contribution to changing the user interface from something that is only written and silent to something more…[to] kick off workflows that make things happen — send a letter, invoice, schedule follow-up, whatever.”

Read the whole post—we think you’ll like it.

Know someone who might want to try Ribbit for Salesforce? Let them know: we’re adding some fun to the mix with a chance at a “dream” getaway in Napa Valley for folks who give it a try. Our 3-day, 2-night, 5-star prize would be a winning combination with Dreamforce 2008 (Salesforce.com’s global user and developer conference, 11/08, San Francisco).

Tags: Appexchange, dreamforce, dreamforce conference, mobile, mobile voice communication, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS, Salesforce, salesforce.com, visual voicemail, Voice, voice automation

Big Thoughts on “Big Things Next”

June 4th, 2008 by Crick Waters | located in Uncategorized | No Comments » | trackback

As all in the Ribbit community work hard, join forces and drive forward to build “the phone company of the future,” it’s so refreshing to hear a voice other than the ones around us describe the vision of what’s possible in new telephony. Read what telco thought leader (and fellow eComm speaker) Martin Geddes recently wrote in his outstanding blog, Telepocalypse.net:

“Integration of Web and Telco is probably the Next Big Thing. The phone experience (address book, call logs, presence, voicemail, etc.) comes with you into the web sites you visit, and vice versa. Why can’t someone leave me a ‘Skype’ voicemail, but I collect it on my T-Mobile handset’s voicemail system? Bags of cash in getting this to work together…”

It’s worth reading this whole post, and clicking through on the “2-sided markets” link if you like what Martin says. We do…he expresses some high points in the evolving Ribbit story. Want more? Martin’s eComm keynote shares a clear vision for what’s coming in communications. Enjoy.

Thanks to Lee Dryburgh for sharing this post with us.

What’s Happening with Amphibian

June 2nd, 2008 by Don Thorson | located in Amphibian, Ribbit, Voice | No Comments » | trackback

I’m taking a moment to look up from all of great things happening here at Ribbit—Flash Components, Salesforce integration, active development internally and with third parties—to bring the Ribbit community up to date on what’s happening with Amphibian. I’ll explain what Amphibian means to users and developers, and will try to briefly answer the question, “What is Amphibian?”

Amphibian is a service that takes everything your phone already does and makes it better by bringing new levels of phone functionality online. We all can probably agree that if the phone system were designed today, many things would be different, and more aligned with the online world. Amphibian delivers that rethink of telephony.

Amphibian delivers an online home for information that moves through your phones: your incoming and outgoing calls, your voicemails, and data related to how you use your phone.

By registering your phone into Amphibian, you can centralize phone activity, messages, and anything else you do with your phone, and decide how and where you want to manage this activity. Amphibian stores, tracks and organizes messages for you, letting you forward, search, save and work with them as text, email messages, or in other ways that you choose.

Because Amphibian is an open API, these features—to skim the surface—can be integrated into the Web environments that people use as part of their daily life. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, blog pages—really, any open Web destination becomes a place where Amphibian can live, delivering phone network functionality wherever people already spend time online.

There’s much more to say, so stay tuned. Amphibian is about to enter formal beta, and it’s exciting to see it ready to leave the pond, so to speak, and starting to walk on land. Thanks for being part of our first steps. We can’t wait to see where you help us go.

Don Thorson
VP Marketing - Ribbit
http://www.ribbit.com

InfoWorld Salutes Ribbit as a “Rising Star”

May 19th, 2008 by Don Thorson | located in Ribbit, SaaS, Salesforce, Voice | No Comments » | trackback

Good news: InfoWorld honored Ribbit this morning by choosing us as one of the Hottest Tech Startups of 2008: part of an elite list highlighting “newbies whose technologies could make a huge difference to business IT.”

This recognition is especially meaningful to us given InfoWorld’s selection criteria. They award start-ups based on:

“…real technology innovation — what will drive technology forward in ways that could revolutionize some aspect of business IT…We seek at least one of three qualities: truly new technologies, innovative approaches within existing technology areas, and technologies applied in new ways to solve different problems.”

Ribbit’s founder and CEO Ted Griggs added his perspectives:
“We’re very happy to have stood out from an impressive pack of startups, and especially from some outstanding new mobile and telephony ventures that InfoWorld considered. We’re also pleased that InfoWorld really got it right in their grasp of vertical application integration and the real convergence of voice into business workflow and productivity.

“Voice automation is a game changer—a ‘new way to solve a problem,’ ” as InfoWorld says. It’s exciting to us to see how productivity changes when voice hits Web apps, and we’re really glad that InfoWorld saw the power of this transformation.”

InfoWorld reporter Bill Snyder dug deep to get an insightful grasp of Ribbit’s whole story—the technology, business model, and developer outlook—during the research that led up to the award. He definitely captured the vision when he said:

“Expect to see Ribbit go beyond sales force automation; integration with vertical applications in finance, real estate, medical, and others is on the way.”

Thank you, Bill, and InfoWorld. We are thrilled to be on this illustrious list.

Ribbit Voted Crowd Favorite at SF NewTech

May 16th, 2008 by Dan Seyer | located in Events, Ribbit, SaaS, Voice | No Comments » | trackback

Tuesday’s NewTech Meetup (a much-acclaimed monthly event in the Bay Area tech community, featuring full-house events showcasing demos of hot new technologies) was a great success for Ribbit. We took to the stage as the the final presenter, and liked how NewTech honcho Myles Wessleder introduced us by saying he’d “saved the best for last.” When we asked Myles why he saw Ribbit as such a good fit for this event, here’s what he said.

“Since Ribbit is ‘Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company’ I was extremely excited when they agreed to the May NewTech event. We packed the house and featured a great line-up of leading local companies. I scheduled Ribbit as our last presenter because the Ribbit offering is so compelling that people would be waiting on the edge of their seats all night to hear about it. And they were. Chuck Freedman stole the stage and Ribbit made a great impression on the room. I’m glad they joined us and look forward to Ribbit’s ongoing work!”

Thank you, Myles. We loved the event and the crowd and the great reception your very impressive technical crowd gave us.

Breaking news: Ribbit was voted the crowd favorite among all presenters…winning 37% of the vote as “Favorite” among the five featured companies. Thanks, SF NewTech!

Here are photos from the event courtesy of Matthew Silvey:

Tonight’s NewTech Meetup & Visual Voicemail with Ribbit & Skyfire

May 13th, 2008 by Don Thorson | located in Flash, Ribbit, Voice | 1 Comment » | trackback

Tonight Ribbit is presenting in San Francisco at the NewTech Meetup, a great local showcase of cutting-edge tech innovation. It’s going to be fun. Chuck Freedman, our Director of Developer Platform, will take to the stage and—using the whole 5 minutes each presenter is allocated—use Ribbit Voice Components for Flash to drag-and-drop his way to a working application, right before the audience’s eyes.

Then he’s going to call a pizza parlor and place an order. We think the crowd will go wild.

We’ll show you what it looks like on Thursday, but in the meantime, here’s a little drag-and-drop just for you. Enjoy watching Chuck, filmed right here at Ribbit Headquarters, share some Ribbit magic on his mobile phone. Chuck, Skyfire and Ribbit equals visual voicemail!