<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The first company to bring you free directory assistance via the telephone, Jingle Networks, has raised nearly $13 million in Series C-1 funding.  With return investors Goldman Sachs, IDG Ventures Boston, Liberty Associated Partners and First Round Capital, this most recent round follows a $30 million Series C round from just a few months ago.  That round also included a few media companies including Comcast Interactive Capital and Hearst, as well as Lead Dog Ventures.  \nWith mobile search efforts sure to expand beyond the standard \"city and state please\" automated tools, will Jingle Networks change with the times?  I'm sure a good portion of you out there have taken advantage of Jingle's free service, which can be accessed by dialing 1-800-FREE-411.  An ad plays first, and you have an option of being connected directly to the advertising company.  Otherwise you can continue onto your query.  \nGOOG411 is obviously a potential competitor, especially on the advertising side, as the company already has a vast pool of advertisers to leverage for a telephone directory service.  But other directions we've seen for telephone search tools have come from ChaCha and Ask.com, experimenting with new, free ways in which to access the information using different components of your phone.  Most of the experimentation is of course taking place on the mobile front, as multimedia options on a mobile device lend themselves to varied approaches on th topic of search.  \nBut with so many search engines playing with alternatives, will Jingle Networks' growing market share be encroached upon?  Jingle has been expanding its service in the past year as well, to offer features like category search in order to simplify the process for the end users.  Perhaps Jingle Networks will also be tapping directly into the mobile market as well.\n[via pe hub]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/01/09/jingle-networks-funded/>