Call-the-Cloud

Yesterday, we announced that Fonolo is now in open beta testing. This is a big milestone for the company. It was met with great applause from the press, and great enthusiasm from the general public.

Here’s the press release:
Fonolo Gives Consumers Relief from Phone-Menu Frustration for More Than 300 North American Companies

The significance

One of the key challenges for any web service (whether it’s Google or Facebook or CNN) is its ability to "scale". That is, does it work as well when a million people use it, as it does when ten people use it? Today, we are sufficiently confident in the infrastructure we’ve built to give up that control and open our doors to the public. By announcing free, unlimited calling, we’ve said "Yes, Fonolo can handle full scale calling".

But Fonolo actually has two scaling challenges. The first is handling large call volume, as described above. The second is being able to scale up our database of companies. The foundation of Fonolo is our "spidering" that maps out the phone menus. It goes without saying that Fonolo is not going useful to you if the company you want to call is not in our index. By announcing that over 300 companies are available on Fonolo, we’ve said "Yes, our database is big enough to be useful to the general public."

The response

CNet:
"[Fonolo] lets you browse company phone trees and dial straight to that section, skipping having to sit through tedious voice menus or remember specific buttons to press. Better yet, it does it all without you having to actually dial the number on your phone."
Fonolo’s easy deep dial service opens up

Skype Journal:
"we all love to navigate our way through those pesky…  phone trees that go through menu after menu to connect you directly to an appropriate destination service or person. NOT!"
Fonolo Takes Its "Deep Dialing" Into Full Public Beta

Lifehacker Blog:
"Pick a company, browse their phone directory tree by title and automated dialog, choose where you want to jump in, and Fonolo calls you with a direct connection there… auto-dial jujitsu."
Fonolo Cuts Through Corporate Voicemail Trees

Crunchies
Oh, and one last thing: Please vote for Fonolo in the Crunchie awards. It’s dead simple. There’s no form to fill out. Just click here and then click "Nominate". Today’s the last day for votes, so please do it before midnight.