Thursday, May 5, 2005

NetZero Co-Founder Launches Net To Phone Startup

NetZero Co-founder Ronald Burr and two partners announced yesterday that they are developing a new pay-for-performance local search business, Jambo. Jambo is developing solutions to connect people to businesses across the Internet to a telephone connection. The new firm is headed by John Melideo, founder of Callsource and JamboTECH, and is joined by Burr as Chief Strategic Officer and former CFO of Overture Todd Tappin. The company said that it will provide local serach solutions which allow consumers to connect directly from search listings to a business via telephone. Internet-to-phone connections have become one of the hottest sectors of the local search market, as companies look to connect to merchants who do not need or want to maintain a web presence. The company is going up against technology providers Ingenio, a pay-per-call provider that services AOL, FindWhat, and other Internet portals.

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