Company Gives Voice to Online Service
Start-up Tellme Networks Inc. begins a public test today of its ambitious free information service that aims to tell consumers about everything from stocks and sports to nearby restaurants and movies through a single toll-free phone number.
The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., is among the first to unveil a so-called voice portal to the Internet, where customers use spoken commands such as “movies,” instead of keystrokes, and will then hear recorded information over their phone.
Consumers already have grown used to the voice-activated menus commonly employed by corporate phone systems, but these emerging voice portals will be far more advanced and interactive, capable of retrieving customized information from Web sources without the use of the tiny keypads and displays found on wireless phones and other devices.
To do this Tellme has converted databases, such as the 440,000 Yellow Pages restaurant listings, into spoken words. It hired 70 people across the country to actually record the names, while making sure the pieced-together recordings sounded as natural as possible.
“We wanted it to sound like a friend that you would call,” said Mike McCue, the company’s chief executive and a co-founder.
Analysts compare Tellme’s focus on the ease-of-use details to the kind of hand-holding that made America Online Inc. a hit with Internet newcomers. And they see the shift to speech portals as a natural extension of the Web.
“Tellme is saying, ‘you can use speech, you can talk to the Web,’ and we’ll see more and more of this from companies,” said Mark Plakias, vice president for voice and wireless commerce at the Kelsey Group, a New Jersey research firm. Indeed, the Internet is adding new possibilities to many speech-based services that have emerged over the years in fits and starts.
Customers calling the Tellme toll-free phone number will be able to request spoken reports on individual stock prices, sports scores, weather, traffic and horoscopes.
In addition, Tellme provides interactive guides for airlines, restaurants and movies, and can instantly connect the caller to the selected business.
Tellme hopes to pay for the service through advertising that plays between menus, sponsorships of special-interest “channels” (such as weather by AccuWeather), and eventually through transaction fees and premium services.
Beginning today, a limited number of consumers can test the system by registering on the company’s Web site, https://www.tellme.com, and waiting to receive the toll-free phone number and a user code.
The company gradually will increase the load of users until June, when Tellme formally launches the service and removes the registration and user ID requirements.
Tellme’s service has been under development for more than a year and is based on a mix of voice recognition, Web servers and telephone routing, as well as software that translates the Web’s programming languages into speech.
“It’s one of the most complex technology feats undertaken in Silicon Valley,” McCue said. “Yet it’s a very simple service, it’s free and it works on any telephone.”
The market Tellme is attacking also will grow more crowded, with a cadre of rival voice-based services in the works from BeVocal, U-Access, Tel Surf and scores of others aimed at converting electronic mail to voice messages.
McCue is Netscape’s former vice president of technology, while his co-founder, Angus Davis, was product manager for Netscape’s flagship Communicator browser and its next-generation “Gecko” browser.
Tellme raised $47 million in December from leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as well as from early backers Brad Silverberg and the Barksdale Group.
