IRVINE, CA--(Marketwire - Jan 31, 2012) - YouMail, Inc. (www.youmail.com) today announced that any owner of a US phone number can finally control their own personal brand through caller ID -- controlling how they appear when they call people or leave them messages.
Users "own their caller ID" by simply going to http://who.youmail.com from their smartphone or computer. They can enter their phone number and see what their current caller ID says. They then can update it by connecting to Facebook and/or filling out a simple form. From then on, any call to anyone in the YouMail network will display the information they provide.
YouMail's network consists of well over 2 million registered users of its YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus and WhoAreYou applications, which together have had over 100 million unique callers and handle over 50 million calls each month. These users all have "Visual Caller ID," which identifies callers with a name, city/state information, and a representative image, such as a Facebook photo or business logo, even when the calling number is not found in the user's address book.
"It is high time users weren't pigeonholed by a 15 character name entered within a telco's database somewhere," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. "Our apps focus on providing visual information, such as a picture and location, and being a one-click gateway to deeper information about the caller, such as where they work, their job title and more. Our http://who.youmail.com website makes it easy for users to get out ahead and control how they appear."
This new website has come from caller demand. Any YouMail user can "publish" information about any phone number into a public directory used by the service -- and this helps the Visual Voicemail Plus and WhoAreYou apps provide valuable caller ID information on over 200 million different numbers, and YouMail's services are already doing over 2 billion searches per month that utilize this information.
Given that caller ID has become "community based," it's now critical for business and consumers to take ownership of how they appear in caller IDs by supplying the brand image they wish to project. Otherwise, it's very easy for a business or individual to be presented in an unflattering light, with incorrect information or pictures, when placing calls to the millions of YouMail users.
"YouMail is focused on reinventing the enhanced telecommunications layer, where services like voicemail and now caller ID are moved out of the network and into the cloud, made social, optimized for smartphones, and sold direct to consumers using a freemium model," Quilici said. "Letting users own their own caller ID is a natural outgrowth of this process."
Creation of the http://who.youmail.com website follows on the heels of YouMail's recent launch of WhoAreYou for Android, the first real-time, network-based visual caller ID application. WhoAreYou lets users:
- See and access detailed information about the caller, in real-time, so they can decide whether or not to take the call.
- Run the app as a stand-alone "search replacement" to get more information on any phone number.
- "Ditch" callers with a single click that automatically sends calls from that number to voicemail without ever ringing the phone. The "ditch" feature works especially well when the user's voicemail is handled by YouMail's Visual Voicemail Plus application, where all ditched callers will be played a "This number is out of service" message, making it extremely convenient to get taken off of call lists.
- Edit their caller ID right from the app.
About YouMail
YouMail, Inc., is the leading provider of cloud-based enhanced telecommunication services. YouMail's completely free flagship Visual Voicemail Plus application offers a true multi-platform, unified and social voicemail experience for its users on BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, WebOS, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 6.5 platforms, and is being increasingly adopted by consumers and by carriers as either the default or recommended voicemail service. WhoAreYou is the company's completely free Visual Caller ID application for Android phones that is revolutionizing the incoming call experience. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Irvine, Calif., YouMail is backed by VantagePoint Capital Partners, the Tech Coast Angels, the Tech Coast Angels ACE Fund, Siemer Ventures, and the CrunchFund.
Additional information can be found by visiting the YouMail website at http://www.youmail.com/
Contact Information:
Contact:
Jessica Hasson
Social Radius
323-710-3556