public industry telecommunications founded 2005 in burlington ma headquarters seattle wa u.s. key people russell c. horowitz ceo products 1 800 free411 directory service parent liberty media 9 % 1 website www.free411.com 1 800 free 411 is an american service offering advertising supported directory assistance operated by marchex . contents 1 service 2 corporate overview 3 see also 4 references 5 external links service edit callers dial 1 800 888 or 866 free411 373 3411 from any phone in the united states to use the toll free service . sponsors cover part of the service cost by playing advertising messages during the call . callers always hear an ad at the beginning of the call and then another after they have made their request . callers then identify the city and state for the desired information and can then search either by name or by business type . free directory assistance is also available from an application for the iphone and android mobile phones 2 and from their website . the service provided entirely by computer and with no human operators uses a voice recognition database to recognize names or places spoken by the user . corporate overview edit the original parent corporation jingle networks was formed in 2005 and received its initial funding from first round capital of 400 000 . 3 by the spring of 2008 it had according to techcrunch captured a six percent market share of directory assistance calls . at that time jingle networks received 20 million calls per month . 4 since that peak the company has reported fewer calls around 15 million per month as consumers shift to smart phones to get directory information . 5 on october 23 2006 jingle networks announced that it raised 30 million in fourth round financing from goldman sachs and hearst corporation . this came after a 26 million round in april 2006 and a 5 million round in december 2005 . also on that date jingle network s ceo volunteered on techcrunch that his company was losing on average 5 cents for every call they processed . 6 on june 25 2008 techcrunch repeated jingle s press releases that they had reached per call profitability . 7 jingle networks aims at attracting customers away from an existing fee based market . the wall street journal described it as inspired by the business model of google . 8 from 2005 through the early 2010 jingle networks guessed they saved consumers 1 billion 5 based on an inflated rate of 2 a call for directory assistance . in april 2011 marchex bought jingle networks for 62.5 m in combination of cash and stock . marchex says jingle networks will generate more than 26 million in 2011 revenue up more than 40 percent over 2010 . marchex said it expects call driven revenue to make up 75 percent of the company s 2011 revenue . 9 see also edit 4 1 1 800 the info bing mobile goog 411 service discontinued list of speech recognition software speech recognition tellme networks references edit list of liberty media assets jingle networks inc. bloomberg businessweek . retrieved 2011 03 13 . michael arrington 2005 10 03 . 1 800 free 411 free directory calls . techcrunch . retrieved 2011 02 03 . rick schonfeld 2008 05 21 . on the road to an ipo jingle networks prepares to launch a voice ad network . techcrunch . retrieved 2011 02 03 . a b 1 800 free411 expands reach into mobile search with launch of iphone and android apps . eon . 2010 02 03 . retrieved 2011 02 03 . talkcrunch blog archive interview with jingle ceo and venture capitalist jingle networks proves their free business model works rebecca buckman 2006 04 20 . your listing and a word from our sponsor . the wall street journal . retrieved 2006 11 03 . article reprinted on kelseygroup.com . greg lamm 2011 04 11 . marchex buys mobile ad company jingle networks for 62.5 m . tech flash . retrieved 2011 05 10 . external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title 1 800 free 411 & oldid 737200569 categories companies established in 2005companies based in seattletelecommunications companies of the united statestelephone numbers in the united statesdirectory assistance services navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 1 september 2016 at 09 13 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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