Ingenio Launches Ether Application on Facebook® Platform
Voice-Commerce Application Empowers Users to Sell their Expertise
San Francisco, Calif. - May 24, 2007 - Ingenio, Inc. today announced an EtherT application built on Facebook Platform. Ether is a voice-commerce application that allows users to earn per call by selling their knowledge and expertise via the Internet. It combines today's two most powerful communications tools - the phone and the Internet - to enable sellers to reach a wide audience and create new revenue opportunities. Facebook Platform is a development system that permits companies and developers to build applications for the Facebook website, where all of Facebooks's 24 million users can interact with them.
Facebook users can now place a free Ether call "button" on their Facebook profile and earn money by interacting with ready-to-buy customers via the phone. Using Ether, anyone from experts - tutors, computer consultants, accountants, etc. - to enthusiasts, bloggers and other online personalities - can monetize their web presence and engage with audiences in a personal way. Ether manages the scheduling, communication, and transaction between sellers and their customers. Whether it is health and diet tips, tax advice, or computer support, Ether makes it simple for sellers to set up an account and get paid by callers for their knowledge and expertise.
"We are excited by the opportunity to empower the Facebook community to use Ether to sell what they say - whether it's tips on new music to check out, or lessons on learning a foreign language, or help creating a new website, to virtually anything you can imagine," said Scott Faber, co-founder of Ingenio and General Manager of Ether. "The next phase of communications isn't just connecting two web users through a phone call - it's associating monetary value to that dialogue and allowing both the buyer and seller to benefit from it."
How Ether Works
Ether provides sellers with the functionality to monetize their conversations via the phone. Ether provides a free call button or toll free phone number that sellers can embed on their Facebook profile, website, blog, business card, or any other marketing materials. The seller sets a rate that a customer must first pay, charging by the minute, hour or other block of time, before the call is forwarded to the seller's actual phone number, be it a cell, work, or home number. Customers are able to call the seller after pre-paying the established rate. Ether sets up the appointment according to the seller's schedule, debits the customer's account, and deposits the fee in the service provider's account, less a commission when a successful transaction occurs.
Ether also includes "Pay-to-View" functionality, which enables people to sell and deliver digital content such as documents, photos, computer code, podcasts or video via an email "button." "Pay-to-View" combines both payment and product delivery; buyers can read a description of the digital content for sale on a website but only view it after paying the seller's specified price.
With more than 24 million active users, Facebook is the sixth-most trafficked website in the United States. Facebook users communicate and share information through a network of connections and relationships they facilitate between people.