 20050930 Ringback Tones
I heard my first customized Ringback Tone last night. I dialed my friend's number and immediately heard Maroon 5's She Will Be Loved playing mid-song. I thought it was her voicemail greeting -- so I prepped myself to leave a message, but then I heard "Hello?" and again, for a second, I thought this was part of the recording. Well, it wasn't. She pays for the service through Verizon's Ringback program. Essentially, this allows her callers to hear a song of her choice, instead of the *ring ring*.This will get annoying very quickly, won't it? Especially once everyone is using the service, and you can't go through the day without hearing another skullcrushing HOT Pop 40 single. I think it would be neat if I could choose what I heard when I was ringing someone. If that were possible, I would select Soul Coughing's True Dreams of Wichita or Schubert's Ave Maria. Not sure yet. What about you? 10
Comments:
Dominic said... I totally agree. It was annoying the first time that I heard it. I have hung up multiple times thinking they're voicemail greetings. Ringtones are one thing, but ringsbacks need to go. 2:41 PM Toby said... That's crazy. Here's an evil idea... How about cheaper phone service if you agree to play ads as your ring. THAT would be messed up. I bet a lot of people would do it to. 3:29 PM Toby said... Oh yeah, and the ads could be locally targeted by looking up the caller id with the option to connect to the advertiser instead of the person you're calling....Evil. 3:32 PM mk said... about six months ago, my company offered free "caller tunes" to our department, so my coworkers signed up(I declined). the most ridiculous feature is when people add a voice memo disclaimer preceding the music that says something like, "please don't hang up, what you are hearing is a new feature called caller tunes." 3:56 PM Mareen said... Wow, we have had these for a long time. In Mobile "Services" Germany seems to be one of the faster developing countries. Just not it the plans. 4:53 PM Mareen said... in* the plans... 4:55 PM will said... What if you had some 2 Live Crew or something, and then a potential client gave you a call? Awkward. A friend of mine has the Rocky theme as his ringback, and it's rather annoying. 5:38 PM Lou said... Yeah, I'd definitely hear "Princess and the Pony" by Sean Na Na. It'd be atough choice though. And I'd bet I'd throw my phone down after the 30th time. 10:45 PM Herbie said... Urghhh...hope it doesn't come over here. 11:38 AM Zach said... Toby -- what a scary but true prediction! 1:31 PM Post a Comment |
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 Hi, I'm Zach. I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and graduated from Wake Forest. After college, I moved to Manhattan to get serious about a company I ran with friends. We sold it to Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in 2006. I just wrapped up with a project I co-founded called Vimeo and left CV to focus on being a twenty-five year old. I have another blog called Copy and Taste, where I post about learning to cook. I live in Brooklyn now.  Del.icio.us My Flickr Me on Flickr Last.fm Linked in MySpace Netflix History Vimeo  Amir Blumenfeld Chris Bodenner Mareen Fischinger Fort Wayne Observed Nick Gray Hype Machine Jake and Amir Jakob Lodwick Oh My Rockness Jonathan Marcus Youngna Park Megan Scheminske Eliot Shepard Shorpy Signal vs. Noise Alex Soth Stereogum Ricky Van Veen Khoi Vinh Eugene Wyatt   Postal Skype SMS (via AIM) |