So…the cat is finally out of the bag – yes we are in partnership with Match.com. It was written about here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Thanks to those in the blogosphere who covered this accurately. While we are going into open beta with the Jangl branded service any day now, we have been in production with Match.com across the U.S. for a week, and prior to now had been in a tri-city pilot for the last four months.
I won’t forget our first in-person meeting with Match. It was about a year ago with Jim and Thomas (CEO and COO), in West L.A., on the set of a commercial with Dr. Phil. There was even a Dr. Phil look-a-like who sat in for Dr. Phil, when the camera crew were setting up for the take. (Ben and I were wondering just what the look-a-like did for a living before Dr. Phil became a celebrity). Anyway, we went for a sandwich over at Jerry’s Famous Deli to discuss our approach for what is now dubbed "MatchTalk". It was clear in that meeting, that Match would only implement a voice solution if it was brutally simple, worked with everyday phones, used normal looking phone number schemes, and kept the relationship anonymous in both directions. In other words, it couldn’t be the typical softphone solution or phone number + extension solution. So Ben came up with our bidirectional, anonymous number approach. We called that relationship based numbering technology "flink" at the time, but when we went to TM it, it wasn’t available. This became the basis of how we would move forward, so we called it "jangl" and ultimately named the company "Jangl".
For those who don’t know, in Match.com there is a user behavioral flow that takes place. People wink, then they e-mail, both without revealing their e-mail addresses. (This same flow happens on many other sites too. Some sites call wink a "poke"). Well, the next thing they need to do is talk before going on a date. As it turns out, that’s a very large gap. That’s where MatchTalk comes into play. Joe hits a "Talk to her" button and Suzie receives an e-mail asking if she’s up for a talk with Joe. If she responds with a "Yes", a MatchTalk phone number is e-mailed to both Joe and Suzie. That MatchTalk phone number is a regular 10-digit phone number, typically in their area code. Joe calls it, and it auto-forwards to Suzie’s phone of choice (home, office, mobile, etc). The first time he calls her, a "Call Screening" function takes place. Joe is asked by the MatchTalk audio prompt to introduce himself, so he says "yo it’s Joe". While he holds, Suzie’s phone rings and the audio prompt says "You have a MatchTalk call, here’s the callers introduction", then she hears "yo it’s Joe". "Press 1 to accept this call or 2 to decline". She presses 1 and they’re talking. Suzie decides to keep the love alive with Joe, and maybe call him tomorrow. She calls the same number he dialed. The number is relationship-based, meaning it’s assigned to Joe + Suzie. That means it’s *their number*. Isn’t that sweet? Like they have *their song*, and now have *their number*:). Either of them can discontinue the number at any time, to never be reached again by another, if they aren’t feeling the love. Oh, another cool thing… let’s say Suzie called Joe and it goes to voice mail. Well, since we’re forwarding the call to his phone of choice, his phone of choice voice mail is where the call ends up. We’ll mask Joe’s voice mail greeting, and only then prompt Suzie to leave a message, thereby keeping things private. When Joe goes to check his voice mail later, the message he gets from Suzie will be prefaced by a MatchTalk earcon, which will help him know the origin of the call. So all this takes a paragraph to explain, however it’s very intuitive to the users, because it functions in their normal behavioral flow.
We’ve always been focused on building the company for consumer lifestyles, as opposed to building technology for technology’s sake.
Anyway, we’re pretty damn excited about all this. To have one of the largest online dating sites in the world running our service is both an honor and validation.
-MC
