

Twilio Raises $3.7 Million For Powerful Telephony API - immad
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/30/twilio-raises-3-7-million-for-powerful-telephony-api/

======
MicahWedemeyer
I saw a demo of a startup weekend app built on Twilio. Before it started, a
box was passed around the room and people were asked to put their business
cards in it.

Then, while one guy ran the demo, another was putting all the phone numbers
into the app. The guy at the podium clicks 'submit' and 5 seconds later all
the phones in the room start ringing. It was an awesome effect.

Congrats to the Twilio team on an awesome product, and I can't wait to see
where it goes.

~~~
qthrul
I was there too :)

It was a very Lawnmower Man moment.

------
joshu
Congrats to Twilio! (Disclaimer: I invested in them also. I obviously think
they are neat.)

~~~
bretpiatt
They are neat, they're good people, and the VoIP enabled application market is
going to grow a ton over the next decade.

Disclaimer: The host on AWS, I work for Rackspace and I still like them.

------
patio11
Spiffy! I normally mostly ignore funding announcements but I was hoping to
integrate them into my next app and didn't want to build core features on
something which may or may not survive on a month to month basis. Them having
a few million largely eases my worries about that.

------
rjurney
A couple years ago I built IVR apps with Voxeo. Then Twilio came out. Game
changer. You can make calls from a bash prompt, through an utterly simple API,
and its cheaper than any alternative on a per-call basis. Twilio is
disruptive, and they will go far.

~~~
runT1ME
Why is it better than Voxeo?

~~~
rjurney
Voxeo has a much more complex, full-blow VoiceXML language, the setup is more
complex - you have to tune things, and overall the complexity of making calls
is higher. They were also much more expensive at the time. It started at 12
cents per minute in the smallest bucket, which is highway robbery.

Although they were launching their own version of an offering similar to
Twilio in response to the competition, it may be out by now? They also have a
pretty liberal development account policy, that lets you do a good deal of
testing for free. They also bill at half minute intervals, which I don't think
Twilio does... which can make 30 second calls with them cheaper, even if
you're paying 7 cents a minute (at a higher volume bucket).

If you need full blown VoiceXML, Voxeo is good. For most people, Twilio is
quite good enough - and lacks the enterprise XML baggage.

~~~
akalsey
Disclosure, before I start, I run Voxeo's Developer Network.

We think there's room in the world for both API-based cloud options and XML
standards-based development. We have a variety of options for building and
deploying apps and a wide range of pricing. From 3 cents per minute in the
cloud to enterprise apps with SLAs that run the voice applications for some of
the world's largest companies.

For our enterprise customers, many of them prefer to use the w3c standard
VoiceXML to avoid vendor lock-in. Some of them also use our proprietary
CallXML, a simplified language for building apps. These apps run on our
carrier-grade hosting facilities in the US and Europe or at the customer's
data centers.

For web devlopers, we have Tropo.com, a cloud service offers APIs for popular
web programming languages. Build in PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, or Python,
with more options coming shortly. Pay as you go, develop in your native
language, and run your apps in a cloud on top of the same infrastructure our
enterprise hosting customers use.

It's more than voice. Using one code base, your app can not only make and
receive phone calls, but also send and receive SMS messages and interact over
IM and Twitter.

As rjurney mentioned, we're developer friendly. You can create an account on
either Tropo or on our enterprise hosting for free and run there as long as
you need to without charge. We don't put any artificial limits on our dev
platforms. We'll give you a dedicated phone number for your app. We'll also
give you Skype numbers, SIP addresses, an XMPP address, and a toll-free
number. Build and test your app, hand it to your friends to try out. When
you're ready to move to production, let us know.

~~~
rjurney
Tropo is the new offering I was talking about, and at 3 cents a minute that is
a pretty compelling offering. Bravo. I should also add that Voxeo technical
support was some of the best I've ever dealt with. It could be 2am and the
night guy would respond immediately, and I got through to engineering promptly
if necessary.

I see now that Twilio is also now 3 cents per minute. Neck and neck :) Both
offerings look pretty good.

------
js3309
I think this could be a game changer. But sadly, they might infringe on
countless number of telecom patents if they introduce more than basic features
(call handling,enhanced IVR, enhanced conferencing, and etc).

They have to walk a fine line.

~~~
sandGorgon
patent infringement ?

could you elaborate how - I mean, if a developer uses their API to create a
product tailored around IVR, could it infringe?

Or is it at the infrastructure level?

~~~
js3309
I'm not sure if they infringe on the infrastructure level now because all
their examples are very basic (making calls, receiving calls, forwarding calls
and etc.) These have been patented and their terms have expired. I bet that's
one of the reasons they only have basic examples on their site.

I'm not a litigation expert but if you were to build a feature that infringes
on a patent you might be liable.

Below is a link to uspto telephony classifications.
[http://uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc379/sched379...](http://uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc379/sched379.htm)

