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Startup Company Ribbit has introduced a new technology platform designed to let developers add Web-based telephony to both desktop and online applications, everything from business software to popular social network sites like Facebook.

Ribbit's back-end technology includes a software switch that essentially connects Internet-based voice communication services with mobile phones, landline phones and text messages. On top of that connection is the Ribbit API that lets developers build applications that unify the wide variety of communication methods.

"The world doesn't need another phone company," said Ted Griggs, co-founder and CEO at Ribbit. "What it needs is new kind of Phone Company, one that liberates voice from its current confines-- devices, plans and business models -- and more readily integrates into the workflow of our professional and personal lives."

Ribbit has already built an application that businesses will be able to use within Salesforce.com Inc's customer relationship management software. This lets workers dial clients via the Internet from within the application and automatically stores a log of client calls and voicemail transcripts alongside the rest of that client's information.

Ribbit for Salesforce will cost USD 25 per user per month for end-users. It is currently in a private beta with more than 30 companies, and should be widely available in February, according to Ribbit representatives.

"Ribbit is bringing more business class services on the Internet, more than just phone services, but as voice, email, and searchable voice mail, along with the ability to have it all as flexible as other business services,” said Adam Gross, Salesforce's vice president for developer markets.

Ribbit designed its own softswitch, which runs on Linux blades and has been certified in an Alcatel-Lucent lab to meet the capabilities and reliability that telecommunications providers typically require, said Griggs. Ribbit's network operations center is hosted by a third party in Virginia, and the company is working on opening one on the West Coast to offer geographic redundancies. It can add capacity simply by adding more servers.

Ribbit says that more than 650 developers are working on new applications, although on only two were listed on the developers’ site. "Dozens" are near release, a few additional applications should be available in the coming days, and many more should be available in the early months of next year, according to the company.

Griggs described his company as the “Android of Web telephony.” He expects Ribbit to be cash flow positive in the second quarter of 2009. Ribbit has reportedly raised USD 13 million funding from investors including Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital and KPG Ventures.