Tellme Networks, Inc. was an American company founded in 1999 by Mike McCue and Angus Davis, which specialized in telephone-based applications. Its headquarters were in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

. Tellme Networks was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

on March 14, 2007, for approximately $800 million; the deal closed in late April 2007. In 2006, Tellme's phone network processed more than 2 billion unique calls. Tellme established an information number which provided time-of-day announcements, weather forecasts, brief news and sports summaries, business searches, stock market quotations, driving directions, and similar amenities. Operating by voice prompts and speech-recognition software, it was set up in 2000 as a loss-leader service to demonstrate the Tellme functionality to U.S. consumers. The voice of the Tellme service is Darby Bailey. In early 2012, Microsoft divested itself of Tellme Networks' interactive voice response (IVR) service and the majority of its employees to 24/7 Inc. The service was moved to a non-toll-free number.

History

In April 1999, the Tellme founding team, consisting of Mike McCue, Angus Davis, Rod Brathwaite, Jim Fanning, Kyle Sims, Brad Porter, Michael Plitkins, Hadi Partovi, John Giannandrea, Andrew Volkmann, Anthony Accardi, Patrick McCormick, Danny Howard, Vicki Penrose, and Emil Michael assembled in

. In 2000, Tellme announced a service that delivered content to telephones—a concept called voice portals. Early competitors included TelSurf Networks, BeVocal, Hey Anita, and Quack.com. Quack.com was founded in 1999 and acquired in September 2000 by

America Online AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. The service tra ...

for its competing service, AOLbyPhone. At least ten additional competitors appeared in 2000 in various attempts to mimic the funding success of Tellme. Tellme was also featured in the 2001

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

''Wild at Start''. and was referenced in a 2000

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcast ''Revisionist ...

article in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' about recruiting. In 2008 the company debuted a feature especially for Christmas Eve; callers can hear recorded messages from

Santa Claus Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Chris ...

. If called on Christmas Eve, Santa will say what state he is traveling over, and exactly what he is doing. In 2009 they added a service that allows you to receive messages from Santa a week early which explain what he is doing to prepare for Christmas. At the onset of service, as a way to gain more users, they offered a free long-distance call feature called Phone Booth. Callers would call Tellme and were given 2 free minutes of long-distance call time to their desired phone number. That service was later stopped while other services persisted.

Services

Voice portal customers build Internet-powered, voice-enabled applications on the Tellme Network using Tellme Studio. Tellme Studio is a web-based

VoiceXML VoiceXML (VXML) is a digital document standard for specifying interactive media and voice dialogs between humans and computers. It is used for developing audio and voice response applications, such as banking systems and automated customer service ...

development tool. The Tellme platform is based on open standards like

, CCXML, and

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

. The Tellme Voice Portal which includes directory assistance used to be accessed by calling (800) 555-TELL (8355). When Microsoft sold Tellme to 24/7 Inc in 2012, the number changed to the non-toll-free (408) 752-8052, rebranded as The Information Line. In September 2019, the service was revamped and rebranded again as Voice Info, with once again a toll-free number (866) 895-3124, however this number was deactivated in July 2020. The old Microsoft Bing 411 1-800-CALL-411 number can now be used to access Voice Info by pressing 9 when connected. AT&T Wireless customers can access Voice Info directly by dialing *8 (formerly #121).

Customers

Some of the services running on Tellme's network include directory assistance ( 4-1-1) for

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

and Verizon (landline), AT&T's Voice Info (*8), customer service for Merrill Lynch, E*TRADE Financial,

American Airlines American Airlines, Inc. is a major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the ...

, and

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

services for

Fandango Fandango is a lively partner dance originating in Portugal and Spain, usually in triple metre, triple meter, traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, tambourine or hand-clapping. Fandango can both be sung and danced. Sung fandango is u ...

Notes

{{Microsoft Companies based in Mountain View, California Directory assistance services Telecommunications companies of the United States Telecommunications companies established in 1999 Microsoft acquisitions Former Microsoft subsidiaries Hadi Partovi 2007 mergers and acquisitions 1999 establishments in California

History

Services

Customers

See also

Notes