Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Back to the future? Return of the voice message


Pana.ma

I just got off the phone with a friend Matt Kweder in San Francisco. Matt has been working on an iPhone app for the last year with Pana.ma, Inc. I was interested to see what he’s doing and get his impressions of the application launch process. The app Pana.ma created allows iPhone users to send voice and text messages combined in SMS text format in a single conversation.

In his blog, Pana.ma founder David Hayden states:

“We started Pana.ma in early 2009 with the idea that voice could become a major new development in the mobile communication trend of messaging because it does something entirely overlooked — it adds the tone, texture, emotion and meaning we hear in others voices back into a social web inundated with text and emoticons. Pana.ma challenges how we use SMS, but it also challenges the clunky experience of voice mail, of being ’screened’ when we call, and then going through the endless routine of listening to computer voice tell us what we can do, and then all we can hope for is a call back, which we ourselves will screen followed by the eventual exchange of text messages. We set out to eliminate that experience from the culture, entirely.”


Sounds like a simple enough idea. Pana.ma works like text messaging over the iPhone, but you have a voice recorder to add to messages, which appear with text headlines if the sender chooses to add them.

The best way to get a feel and understanding for the product is to check out this video here.

According to Matt, there are a few thousand users since their launch two weeks ago, a relatively small user base, but Matt says the app still has bugs that engineers are working out, I asked him if Pana.ma would be in perpetual beta, and he said that they plan to be in beta mode for the foreseeable future as they will be launching apps for Blackberry, Google Android, and Microsoft Mobile… These operating systems, plus Apple, cover virtually the entire smartphone market. The Blackberry app comes out next and should launch in the next few months.

Regarding Pana.ma’s strategy, Matt says photo and video have been done to death, but nobody has focused on voice. That’s where Pana.ma comes in. The main form of competition comes in the form of Google Voice, Apple’s Voice Memos, and WhatsApp but none offer exactly what Pana.ma offers.

Feedback on the app has been mostly positive. Lots of users appreciate the ability to combine voice and text in the same messages and send voice recordings with text headlines. So far, users think the app could be quicker, and they wish it were easier to find their friends.

Pana.ma launched two weeks ago, and Matt says some of the Pana.ma engineers working with Apple’s App store found the process frustrating. Apple starts software developers off with a trial period where an app is available to 100 users. These 100 users are usually the engineers themselves, and potential partners and investors. After a month or two in this trial period, Apple apps store will launch the app to the general public. Matt says the team is working on bugs and other issues, smoothing out the user experience before they embark on a significant marketing campaign planned for later in the year.

Matt started working on Pana.ma with founder David Hayden and two others about a year ago in Marin County, California. At the time, everyone was working for free. Matt waited tables to make ends meet. As of January 2010, Pana.ma has 11 full time salaried employees, office space in downtown San Francisco, and Matt is no longer waiting tables. We’ll see where this goes. I asked Matt how they plan to eventually monetize Pana.ma, which launched as a free app. Matt says although the app is free; they intend to offer premium services in the future with monthly payment plans.

If anyone's interested in getting the app, go HERE (best to pull it up on your iPhone for quick download)

You can also pull them up on the App Store by typing 'Panama' into search.

Contact Matt at matt.kweder@pana.ma if you want more info or have feedback to offer.

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