Cell Phone Service ‘Brrings’ Users Profits

If you have ever found yourself wishing that you could get paid up to $1 every time your friends call your cell phone, a Harvard junior’s new business may be just what you’ve been waiting for.

“Brring!”, the idea of Currier House resident Daniel “Zachary” Tanjeloff ’08, allows interested individuals to sign up online for a free second phone number. When dialed, the caller hears an approximately eight-second sponsored message before being redirected to the cell phone of the “Brring!” user.

The company’s customers receive a payment each time their special number is dialed; initial payments are as high as $1, and average $0.05.

As a bonus, those who sign up for “Brring!” can select a ringback tone their friends will hear after the ad is played and as they wait for an answer.

“Anything you can put on an mp3 player can be used as a ringback,” Tanjeloff said in an interview last night. “What we’re trying to do is create a phone service that is user-friendly and that people will enjoy using, something that has a function and purpose.”

And starting next Wednesday, “Brring!” will offer users the option of donating their accrued earnings to the non-profit “Aid Darfur” campaign. The company will also play messages from the campaign in place of some advertisments.

“This is definitely one of the more exciting things about the service we’re offering,” Tanjeloff said.

All told, there are eight members on the “Brring!” team, a mix of Harvard undergraduates—including Daniel Chen ’08 and Umang Bhatia ’08—and others, including Robert W. Carney ’89. The team was first formed to develop a hybrid entertainment system that Tanjeloff had proposed at an entrepreneurial competition his freshman year.

While Tanjeloff did not win that competition, one of the judges saw promise in his idea and introduced him to some of the individuals that ultimately would prove crucial in the genesis of this latest entrepreneurial advance.

“I came up with the idea behind ‘Brring!’ at a brainstorming session with the rest of the team in April 2006,” Tanjeloff said. “Ultimately, we wound up scrapping our old project, and since that day, we’ve been working on this.”

“I’ve learned a ton from the breadth of knowledge and experience on our team,” he added. “Watching it grow from an idea to reality has been amazing.”

To learn more about “Brring!”, go to www.brring.com.