Jangl to dead pool; execs, assets to Jajah

Web VoIP crowd gets smaller by one

That’s one less “j” Web VoIP provider for service providers to worry about.

But with subscriber claims seemingly easier to come by than revenues, it’s not clear the Jangls, Jajahs and Jaxtrs of the world have incumbent service providers quaking in their boots just yet, anyway.

The latest news is the seeming dissolution of Jangl, one of the first Web voice-over-IP players out of the box and perhaps the most aggressive to pursue strategies such as social network widget integration and audio advertising services, in partnership with Pudding Media.

Jangl was a small company but not fly-by-night. It had raised almost $9 million in funding from Storm Ventures, Labrador Ventures and Cardinal Ventures and was part of a growing ecosystem of companies and services -- including the still-closely-watched-though-yet-to-fully-launch Google Grand Central -- to pursue Web/VoIP telephony integration.

Jangl cut deals with social networks Facebook, Bebo and others to provide VoIP and Web-based SMS widgets to their users. That gave it access to potentially millions of users, but it couldn’t turn that into regular customers or, more importantly, subscriber or advertising revenue.

Jangl CEO Michael Cerda described the end of Jangl on his personal blog, recounting efforts to raise more VC funds and find a more formal company merger partner before agreeing along with chief technologist Ben Dean to resign from Jangl on Tuesday and be subsumed into Jajah.

“The end result is Ben and I, along with five others, have been acquired as a team into Jajah,” Cerda wrote. “It’s a perfect complement, and in a fast-growing environment, and with a great group of people. Jajah have obviously found a sustainable groove, so we're going to round out their team and take this to the next level.”

Just last week, Jajah announced a deal to serve as VoIP provider for Yahoo’s Web-based telephony provider, including providing the managed VoIP service for Yahoo’s 97 million instant-messenger customers -- sealing the type of deal that Jangl would have needed to stay alive.

Jangl and Jaja had actually agreed to work together last November, however they stopped short of a full combination. That deal had Jangl contributing its click-to-call widget deals with sites including Match.com and Jajah focusing on its back-end network strengths.

Rumor has it that another early Web VoIP player, TalkPlus, may be looking for buyout partners as well.