The telephone-time monetization system Ether officially launches today, after beta testing since March. The company calls its new stage “zeta.†Ether allows you to set a price for people who want to call you on the phone. The company provides a phone number, billing services and will also do pay-per-view for documents or other files. A button on your website lets potential callers click for information about your services. All of this for just 15% off the top of what ever you decide to charge callers.
Ether is a service of San Francisco based Ingenio, a company founded in 1999 that says it does 20 million minutes of paid voice commerce transactions each quarter for customers including AOL, Microsoft, YellowPages.com, and the IRS. Ether seems like a pretty cool model, though concerns are consistently raised about the quality of offerings available.
