Product takes advantage of how domain names are easier to remember than phone numbers.
I got a pitch for an interesting product today called Siter.com. The idea is that instead of needing to know a phone number to call someone or business you just need to know their domain name.
For example, let’s say you need to call your bank to ask a question. Normally on your smartphone you’d need to go to the banks web page and search for their phone number. With Siter.com you just type in “mybank.com” and it automatically calls your bank.
Between the domain name and the phone call is of course a database of phone numbers corresponding to each web address.
Siter has apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
I like the idea, although it won’t work in all situations. For example, it will be difficult to contact a particular branch or location of a chain. If I want to reach my local BestBuy.com store to see if they have iPads in stock and type in “BestBuy.com” then it’s going to call a chain-wide number.
Still, the point is clear: remembering a domain name is much easier than remembering a phone number. Siter is capitalizing on that.
Andy says
Great idea, but wrong approach. I don’t want to go on a rant, but relying on one provider’s silo should be enough to worry about.
The .tel approach is more suitable: high availability (DNS), extremely fast, fine-grained privacy, open standards, choice of competing providers, standardised APIs, full ownership and control of your data, simple to implement across all sorts of devices, etc.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Andy – here’s the problem with doing this through .tel — it only works if everyone has a .tel address. If I type in BestBuy.tel today I’m not going to get connected.
todaro says
once a big company computerizes all this stuff it will work.
fizz says
IMO a very positive selling point for domains as it adds value for an end-user to consider: the domain will work double-time for them on both the Internet and phone system.
Andy says
@ Andrew – True, but we have to start from somewhere.
I just want the best solution to succeed, and the Siter approach is vulnerable to too many problems. But at least they’re validating the right problem/solution generally, which is the most important thing. ๐
fizz says
Would be great if the phone makers added this type of app as standard on all their devices ๐
hairy says
google may have some thing
w/ similar features – google voice
thanks , 2w
Deke says
Fu*king brilliant!
It’s much easier to remember a word than a number.
This might make domains worth a whole lot more — especially short domains.
Deke says
@Andy — if you study the current phone system there is a big database that routes all these phone numbers. It was all started by Ma Bell.
Somebody will have to administer the corresponding database no matter what system we all choose use.
Andy says
@ Deke What I’m concerned about is a single company having control over how we publish this data.
The key thing is I can claim to “own” the data I’ve published on andy.tel, because I can move it across different providers, who may compete with one another. Choice == Freedom ๐
Domain Report says
This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve always thought could create a huge demand for vanity domain names – the ability to call someone through a domain name.
A phone number can’t really be your brand (maybe exceptions like 1800-Flowers), but a domain name can.
If it catches on, it could increase demand for short and ‘username’ type domains that people would want to go buy, and that are easy to remember.
All it would take would be a big push by a company with a lot of users, or the technology used in a movie or video to make people want this. Hopefully this is the start of a trend.
Andy says
@ Domain Report – You mean like..?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m50xrDcj0fc
๐
DR.DOMAIN says
It’s a workable idea.I think people identify and are identified in ways geographical & social by their area code.(212,310,949,512)
Say you went with a domain like 212TAXI.COM
(I wish I owned it.:->)…You have an advantage over the people who own 1800TAXI.COM in that yours is specific to what a traveler / local needs in New York.
Andy says
@ Dr Domain – You raise a good point. It’s difficult to incorporate localities into names without making them inconveniently long, so perhaps the area code will survive as a relic from the era of numbers ๐
Ricardo Vaz Monteiro says
Hi:
I just would like to remember that at Siter you can insert multiple telephone numbers under just one domain, and you can define if you want this phone list to be delivered by Location Based Services or not… and is 100% free. It means that Siter is perfect to chain stores. Try: costco.com (for example)
I think Siter might help grow the domain name marketplace and domain names will have a value increase.
.TEL ? C’mon ! People want .COM domain names. Its obvious.
StevenJ says
Why not just use a meta tag on the target’s website which contains the phone number? You could pull up the home page and extract the meta tag to dial. No need, or desire for a centralized database of numbers.
Andy says
@ Ricardo – I hope you don’t take my criticism the wrong way, as you’ve obviously made a good job of Siter, and we both believe in the same concept ๐
You can publish multiple telephone numbers (or any other URI) on a .tel domain, and in sub-domains, so it’s also suitable for directory services.
You say it’s free, but what’s the business model? If you go out of business then what happens to the data and the people who rely on it?
@ StevenJ – You could do that, but it’d be painfully slow (especially from mobile) and there’s likely to be a single point of failure.
DNS is the most distributed and resilient network we have – it’s /that/ good most people don’t even realise it exists! You could perform around 20 DNS queries in the time it takes the human eye to blink.
C.T. Kirkpatrick says
I just tried this out. There are a few things domain owners especially should know about this app if it takes off.
This service works off the phone number in your whois for your domains. My friend accidentally called me from a domain I did not sign up for on Siter.com.
In other words this app allows you to call any phone number listed in the whois for a domain whether you sign up for this service or not. If you have a large number of domains with your phone number listed this might be a problem if this service takes off.
Also as someone else pointed out you can use sub domains with this app. So you could use
Austin.walmart.com , Dallas.walmart.com as numbers.
I think over all this concept will take off. If does not take off for Siter then some other company will create something similar that will do the trick. This should be a positive things for domain names as a whole if this concept takes off.
Ricardo Vaz Monteiro says
@Andy: Thank-you for the compliment. I do not agree that we have the same concept. Especially from the end-user’s point of view. To tell you the truth, we respect the .TEL proposal, but is not really the most important thing to us. What is important to us is what is in the end-user’s mind: .COM
By far, the most time consuming operation is related to Cel. Internet access itself and not database query X DNS…
We have a list of great new features that we are going to announce soon. Lets see what happens.
Note 1: @C.T. Its true. If the concept takes off, domain dialing should be a positive things for domain names as a whole !
Note 2: I would like to thank you all for the posts. Is not common to have valuations like: Fu*king brilliant! Thank-you.
_/\_
Andy says
@ Ricardo – Best of luck to you! ๐
Jennie says
This is nice, but I think they should sell .tel domains.
My problem with this service is that its a single website and not a standard such as .tel.
What happens if the company start to demand people to pay big cash for the calling app or if your site is down?
Still I like the idea of calling a name instead of a number.
Ricardo Vaz Monteiro says
@Jennie: The application will be always free and we are going to release our API soon… Right now our system is under Amazon EC2.
Thank-you for your considerations !
๐