startupmania

I remember it just like it was yesterday. I had an old Nokia phone, the one that looks like a technicolored brick. Suddenly I get this text message, it’s got something new in it – a ringtone. Up until that point when a phone rang, it was restricted to one of a few preinstalled little melodies. Most a variety of the standard “bring bring”. These where the days when a phone rang, everyone reached for their devices, as many people would have the same ringing tone. But this was a new era – all of our favorite songs were recreated in glorious monotone, like a 3 year old child playing on a broken xylophone. Naturally, I rushed to download the theme song from my favorite cartoon – Spider-Man.

Phones have evolved since, and the monotone ringtones were replaced by polyphonic ringtones, adding a baseline and a drum beat to the monotone song. Those, in turn, are now replaced by full-fledged mp3 ringtones, even with a little picture of the caller flashing on screen. But now it is time, the world is ready for the next step. The world is ready for the video ringtone. Enter Vringo.

Vrigno, a new Israeli start up operating out of Bet-Shemesh with offices in New York and London, is intent on revolutionizing the way we receive calls on our cell phones. The company was founded by John Medved, who ran the venture capital fund Israel Seed (which was involved with such big names as Shopping.com and Answers.com) for 11 years before decided to dive right into start-ups. Medved is acting as the company’s CEO.

Vringo’s service is what Medved describes as “Social calls, or ring-back tones on steroids.” For those unfamiliar, ring-back tones are those songs that play instead of the old fashioned dialing tone while you wait for the person you called to answer. They can be manually determined by the user, and they are slowly becoming more and more popular. Video ringtones, on the other hand, will be short clips that play on the screen of whoever you’re calling. The trick is, the user needs not have the clips installed on his machine, as they are pushed onto it through the provider, and the clip is determined by you. So, for instance, rather than just have the Spider-Man theme tune play when someone calls me, I could have the intro to the show play whenever I call any of my friends who have Vringo installed.

Now, you may be saying – hold on a minute, you don’t really mean Spider-Man, right? He’s a copyrighted character. Well, it just so happens that Vringo signed a deal with Marvel that allows them access to their vast library of character such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America and more.

Vringo will be offering their services through many providers, and are planning to launch in the coming months in many territories across the world. There will be a monthly subscription fee for the service, with some of the video ringtones offered for free, and a one time fee for downloading premium content. This model allows Vringo to, as Medved claims, “turn an exciting and cool application into a business”.

Medved says the company will offer its services to a wide variety of mobile devices, running nearly all operating systems. Currently, the company supports phones running Symbian OS, Windows Mobile and even Android. When I asked whether they plan to bring their service to the iPhone, Medved replied, “When the iPhone supports the service, you can count on Vringo being there.”

Sadly, there is no carrier in Israel that supports Vringo services. Yet.