Ribbit on Monday announced details of its Web-based telephony business, which includes a developer platform and plans for a voice service for consumers next year.

The company has built a telephony switch that can connect Web-based phone calls to a variety of phone networks, including voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services like Skype.

As previously reported, developers can access those voice services through Flex-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and with Adobe Systems' Flash browser plug-in.

Through the APIs, developers can add the ability to send and receive calls from a Web application and transcribe a voice message into text.

By having APIs available to others, the company hopes to create a rich set of features on top of its voice platform, according to company CEO Ted Griggs.

It also intends to make its own applications, including a consumer voice service, which it plans to introduce in the first quarter of 2008.

Ribbit has already integrated its service with Salesforce.com. It lets people keep a log of calls made to sales contacts, as well as view voice mail and e-mail messages.

Ribbit has already integrated it voice service with Salesforce.com.

(Credit: Ribbit)

The company intends to make money by charging directly for its voice service or sharing revenue with partners that use its platform to embed voice services, executives said.

In a demo, company executives showed how its voice component can be operate within a Web page. The phone pad appears as a small window that can be moved.

The company chose to build its platform using Adobe front-end Web technology, even though Adobe, too, is building peer-to-peer voice capabilities into Flash with a product code-named Pacifica.

Ribbit's Griggs said Ribbit has built on top of lower-level services with more traditional telephony services, including billing.