Startup Spinvox dumps users by text
Summary
Controversial speech-to-text startup Spinvox is ditching its consumer accounts, SMS messages sent to its user base on Thursday and Friday have said. Texts relayed to social media services such as Twitter read: "We regret to inform you that SpinVox is no longer supporting individual user accounts. Although not confirmed, one third-party source said that redundancies in the start-ups were also on the cards, and that Nuance planned to push the text-to-speech system to network operators rather than to individuals. "As you know, Nuance acquired SpinVox in December 2009 and, to further align with our commitment to serving our mobile operator customers and partners, we will no longer offer our voice-to-text services directly to consumers. Last summer, accusations flew that its core technology for translating audio messages into SMS texts was so ineffective that it had quietly employed Indian workers to carry out the task.