Archive for the ‘Partners’ Category

Ribbit’s Converged Communications Desktop for Windows 7 Helps Transform Provider Revenue Model

Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | located in Partners, Platform, Telephony | 1 Comment »

Ribbit for Windows 7 (code name: Meridia), will help carriers leverage their existing customer base and network assets to boost revenues and add more value to their subscribers. Co-developed with Microsoft, Magpie and Amadeus - this customizable desktop interface consolidates communications in a single place.

Built as a proof-of-concept, Ribbit for Windows 7 demonstrates how carriers can apply trends impacting the telecommunications industry to increase average revenue per user (ARPU). As a branded desktop application, Ribbit for Windows 7 brings the carrier brand to the forefront of the customer experience, and provides a revenue-generating vehicle through local advertising and international call termination. Using an opt-in model, the companies who own this data can market and advertise based on their understanding of their subscribers tastes, geographic location and social graph.

Ribbit for Windows 7 is compatible with Windows Live Contacts, and provides new ways to stay connected in a rich mobile desktop experience. It offers click-to-call/click-to-conference functionality, visual voicemail, SMS and instant messaging (IM) via an intuitive, customizable, drag and drop user interface using touch-screen features from Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Carriers and service providers are struggling to maintain growth and relevancy in an increasingly mobile-dominated world. In fact, according to a March 2009 IBM Global CEO Survey, more than half of the telecom executives surveyed plan to open their networks to external application providers, and a third of them are considering ways to capitalize on existing customer relationships and mobile networks to help boost ARPU.

Voice as an Application Drives Increased Revenue and Decreases Subscriber Churn
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, Ribbit understands how to help carriers improve subscriber productivity, sustain high value margins and reduce subscriber churn through bundled services. Ribbit’s open, cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model allows telecom companies to eliminate the tremendous cost associated with building out a network that would otherwise require 24 – 36 months to build, deploy and market.

Quotes:

• Joe Black, Ribbit VP of Strategy and Business Development: “This emerging monetization model will enable providers to deliver bundled applications and services that will yield a higher margin and reduce subscriber churn. By leveraging Ribbit’s powerful platform based APIs, providers can enter markets they were once unable to reach due to regulation of the telecom industry and the cost-prohibitive nature of building out networks.”
• Joseph Hofstader, Telecommunications Industry Architect and Evangelist, Microsoft Communications Sector: “Over the last couple of years, we’ve watched a number of trends create an environment that is now revolutionizing the communications industry – among those is voice as an application and communications networks as programming platforms. Today, network carriers have an opportunity to increase their revenues by applying the economic model of the Web to the telecommunications industry. By offering value-added communications services, they can capitalize on technological advancements. The application of the still-evolving Internet business model to a century old industry may seem contradictory to many passive observers but a closer look reveals that the main revenue drivers in both industries are remarkably similar: subscriptions, transactions and advertising—and that is where the opportunity lies.”

Ribbit for Windows 7, will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (taking place February 15-18, 2010) in the Microsoft booth #1D19. Ribbit is focused on helping carriers integrate rich communications into existing networks, build revenues and attract and retain customers and we feel Meridia is exactly the solution the telco industry has been looking for.

Tags: Ribbit, ribbit converged communications desktop, ribbit for windows 7, ribbit meridia, unified communications

LinkedIn to Ribbit’s social feeds

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | located in Developers, Partners | No Comments »

We were lucky enough to be one of the early participants to use the LinkedIn API, and it was a perfect fit to be one of our first four social feeds inside of Ribbit Mobile. Our target customers are mobile professionals and many are very active on LinkedIn, so our team was excited to use the API so early. Today, the LinkedIn API is now available to all developers, which we think is a great step forward as we’re a firm believer in open APIs for public consumption.

“LinkedIn’s open API is perfectly matched to Ribbit’s open telephony API.  Mapping callers’ “communications” identity with LinkedIn identities allows Ribbit to bring “Caller ID 2.0” to market – bringing LinkedIn users’ updates and content right to the desktop of Ribbit Mobile users is groundbreaking – and made possible because of the ease of use of LinkedIn’s new open API.” - Crick Waters, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Ribbit

As a platform company ourselves, it will be interesting to see how developers leverage the LinkedIn platform as there seems to be a lack of good business applications available in the various app stores right now, so finding ways to access your professional (and personal) relationships with API mashups has solid potential. We would love to see developers building apps around Ribbit Mobile, and also using our API to bring communications into other applications. Interested in learning more? Click here.

Tags: API mashup, linkedin, linkedin API, mashup, Ribbit Mobile

Ribbit and Sprout Partner to Seed Online Engagement Campaigns With Voice

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Partners, Platform | 1 Comment »

We are pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Sprout, the premier platform for developing and managing creative engagement marketing campaigns, to offer easily integrated telephony features for any online social engagement campaign built on the Sprout platform.

The combination of Ribbit and Sprout offers a new realm of interaction opportunities through integrated voice, SMS, click-to-call, call transcriptions, and other Ribbit-enabled telephony functions. The innate richness of voice and telephony enables brands and agencies to easily build higher levels of engagement and social awareness with their target communities, resulting in enhanced value, brand “stickiness” and desired community action.

Online communities today have a growing expectation for a closer level of interaction with the brands and personalities they follow, which presents continued opportunities for creative agencies and innovative brands to develop exciting campaigns with the latest technologies. The Ribbit communications platform, a carrier-grade telephony-plus-software infrastructure, is enabling people and brands to completely rethink the way they communicate and interact. With Ribbit, voice or communications-enabled media provides closer, more personal engagement for online communities. Available directly through the Sprout platform, agencies and brands now can dramatically increase the reach and effectiveness of their campaigns with easily integrated and feature-rich voice and telephony capabilities.

Quotes:

Ray Lee, Director of Platform Strategy and Business Development at Ribbit: “Ribbit and Sprout provide a powerful combination for creative agencies and brands. Integrated voice and telephony fundamentally change the way organizations can now interact with their target online communities, and enhances the relationship for better value on both sides. The new telephony features in the Sprout platform give agencies and brands the cutting edge tools to quickly and easily develop highly engaging, rich media campaigns – a big advantage in the highly competitive online marketing world.”

Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout: “Agencies and brands are always looking for ways to make their campaigns stickier and more engaging. Our technology platform allows them to launch the most creative online campaigns and by adding voice with Ribbit, brands will experience an unprecedented level of value, awareness, and engagement. We are excited to see how this will be used in the next generation of online social engagement campaigns.”

TELEPHONY IN THE ONLINE CAMPAIGN
The creative possibilities of telephony integration with Sprout are limited only by the creator’s imagination, and can easily turn interested customers into live leads or transactions.  For example, an innovative auto brand could develop a dream car-building application on their main website or other social media property, allowing user customization with all of the bells and whistles available. To continue the potential customer interaction, a stylish Ribbit-enabled “click-to-call” button could instantly connect the customer to a live operator to answer questions, schedule a test drive, or initiate a sale.

The movie industry is another example where voice and telephony integrated with online marketing campaigns can create better community engagement. Leveraging the interest of movie fans for frequent updates on cast news and movie progress, studios can integrate movie-themed widgets into any online campaign to distribute information and dynamic voice content. For example, a cast member or director could privately call a Ribbit number to send real-time, voice updates to all widget users. With Sprout functionality, fans could then forward the voice updates or transcriptions to their social network profile, and even leave their own comment for all of their friends to hear. News from the set, reaction to personal developments, updates from the red carpet – these are all personal, engaging updates that will keep fans coming back to the widget and brand for more information.  The integration of voice and interactive communication dramatically increases the widget value to the user, and can significantly increase brand visibility, reach and stickiness.

TELEPHONY AT CREATIVITY AND TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (CaT)
Catch Ribbit on June 3rd in the Metropolitan Pavilion Gallery at the Creativity and Technology conference, in New York. Featured demonstrations will include Sprout, Ribbit Labs, communications-enabled ad banners, and Ribbit augmented-reality calling. Hope to see you there!

We are also hosting a Ribbit Bayou on Tuesday, June 2rd at the Maritime Hotel, and invite you to join us for a drink on the roof deck with the Ribbit team.

Tags: Ribbit

Ribbit and Best Buy Debut First Social Mobile App at SxSW

Friday, March 13th, 2009 | located in Partners, Platform | 1 Comment »

I am a fan of beating our own drum now and then, and the release of the Consumers Price application seems like the perfect opportunity to do so.

A Ribbit developer created the application that represents an exciting new category of retail solutions: social mobile commerce. Built using the Ribbit Communications Platform and the Best Buy Remix API, Consumers Price enables consumers to tap into social conversations to get the best prices on the best products at Best Buy, and is the first voice-enabled big-box retailer social shopping experience.

The application integrates key Ribbit communication capabilities with Best Buy’s comprehensive online product pricing and availability data, as well as social tools including Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr. Consumers can save money by setting a target price for a product and receiving SMS or email updates when a product is available and in stock at a local store. Shoppers can use the integrated social conversation capabilities to create and obtain friend recommendations via SMS, email and Twitter, and create and listen to voice reviews of the products. For products such as cameras, users can even view Flickr photos shot by a specific camera model.

Whether they are shopping for a gaming console or a new camera, consumers can access voice reviews and friend recommendations, check store availability, set the price they are willing to pay, receive SMS updates when the product is locally available at the target price, and complete their purchase.

We will be demonstrating the Consumers Price application in the Circus Mashimus Mashery Lounge at this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, March 14-17 (meeting room 2 on the first floor of the Austin Convention Center). Come on by and check it out live.

Quotes:

• Chuck Freedman, Ribbit’s director of developer platform - “Consumers Price demonstrates the ability of Ribbit to let developers generate revenue by quickly building a robust application and creating a viable business using just a few easily accessible APIs.  Consumers Price was built by combining Ribbit with APIs from Best Buy, Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr, but the possibilities for developers are endless.”
• Dan Seyer, vice president of product management for Ribbit - “Just as Priceline changed the travel industry, social mobile commerce is set to change the way consumers and retailers communicate, interact, and even negotiate. Consumers Price is just one example of the power of Ribbit to transform the retail experience, providing consumers with more options for finding the product they want at the best possible price, offering communities the opportunity to influence product inventories and pricing, and giving retailers such as Best Buy an important new way to engage consumers and move product in a down economy.”

And thank you to Kristin Niciole for the nice writeup on the announcement as well.

Exciting times ahead for sure as this is just the beginning of the cool things we’ve got up our sleeve.

Tags: API, best buy, Ribbit, social mobile commerce

Google, Skype, and Ribbit

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 | located in Partners | No Comments »

We are pleased to announce that, along with our friends at Google and Skype, Ribbit will delivering one of the keynote presentations at the eComm 2008 event this week. eComm is a new show, being assembled by Lee Dryburgh, focused on advancing the “next generation of communication” conversation.

We meet Lee last year while he was in the early days of bringing this event together and he has been working tirelessly to assemble an unprecedented list of presenters for all over the world. if you are interested in the future of communication, this is a “must attend” show. As you’ll hear at this show, the communication industries are about to go through massive fundamental changes as Silicon Valley begins to apply its knowledge and processes to the fusion of the web and voice. As multi-protocol and open systems replace walled gardens and proprietary models, everything changes.

Ribbit will be represented by one of Ribbit’s founders, Crick Waters, who will be speaking at 9:30 in the Grand Hall. at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View, CA and last we heard, tickets were still available.