Freeconference.com reports 140% growth for January: Ends 2003 with 150 million minutes of “free” calls
And their run rate is now nearly 240 million minutes a year
So who is it that said conference call minutes were flat in the fourth quarter?
“Why Elliot, it was you, Oh Crystal Bald! It was after you reported the financials for Raindance and ConferencePlus. And you hint at this in your story on Premiere Conferencing in this edition.”
Hmm, I should have looked at who's coming up behind before I went forward with that. Freeconference.com closed out 2003 delivering 149.9 million minutes to customers around the globe, with well over 99% of the minutes being “free.” The company's toll-free, 10¢-a-minute operation, introduced last June, delivered just shy of a million minutes for the year, growing nearly threefold from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.
What makes this all the more interesting is that the company (which has only six employees), reported that minutes in the fourth quarter grew 9% sequentially (over the third quarter), while most others in the industry reported flat or negative growth in minutes for the same quarter.
And it didn't end in December.
For January this year, Freeconference.com reported minutes were up 140% over January 2003, delivering 18.0 million minutes of “free” conferencing, compared to its delivery of 7.6 million minutes of “free” conferencing last January.
Hear's what I think!
Folks, if they ain't talking to your customers now, your customers are about to hear about them. I've seen Freeconference.com's business plan and financials, and yes, it's making money even though the calls are “free.”
For earlier stories on Freeconference.com see Electronic TeleSpan, July 22, 2002, pp. 7-10, March 31, 2003, pp. 2-3 , June 23, 2003 p. 1, and September 8, 2003 pp 9-10.
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Reprinted from the February 23, 2004 issue of Elliot Gold's Electronic TeleSpan, with permission.
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