VOICE PORTALS
At iNetNow's LA headquarters, 75 professional Web surfers - a mix of college students and would-be movie stars - are standing by to take your call. Need a stock quote or driving directions? The latest ball scores? And what's the name of the song that played during that shoot-'em-up scene near the end of The Matrix?
Inquiring minds can call 1-888-iNetNow and ask a helpful, if sometimes overeager, operator to surf the Web for them. The findings are read over the phone or emailed within 20 minutes, depending on the customer's needs. The cost of using iNetNow's human surf engine: $19.95 per month.
"One guy called up and said, 'I have this song stuck in my head; it's driving me crazy,'" recalls Jacob LaCivita, 24, iNetNow surfer and aspiring screenwriter. "I asked him to tell me some of the lyrics. He said, 'Oh, it's an instrumental.'" With little more than that, LaCivita was able to track down the right song. "After that, we knew that we could find just about anything," he says.
Unlike voice portals such as Tellme, which rely on voice-recognition software to retrieve and answer customers' questions, iNetNow (www.inetnow.com) believes it can offer better results with a live surfer digging up info. "The truth about voice recognition is that it does some things well, and doesn't do most things at all," says Lenny Young, iNetNow's founder and CEO.
The angel-funded site, which launched in spring 1999, recently closed its second round of financing. Young has inked deals with several cell phone retailers and already has competition from New York-based quixi (www.quixi.com). Down the road, Young hopes to partner with one of the major voice portals, offering live backup.
Of course, iNetNow's human touch could prove to be its downfall: The greater the traffic on the service, the greater the need for professional surfers. Will iNetNow be able to hire enough Hollywood hopefuls to keep up?
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