Web 2 Voice

There are days when I feel like a Fred Wilson portfolio fan boy.  I am seriously high on Twitter (their vision of what’s to come, I think is impressive).  But I also love Disqus, the comment system I use on all my blogs.

Both of these technology companies do something that is both an obvious need and difficult to accomplish.  Simply put, that’s making the conversation more interesting.  One of Fred’s common themes in his blog is that the comments are much more interesting than the actual posts.  I don’t know that he gives himself enough credit, but the underlying point is accurate.  There is real value in the conversations that are going on on blogs, on tweets, and other places.

I really value technology that brings those conversations to new audiences, and allows for more conversations. Disqus just released a new version (which will be appearing here shortly).  Go check out Fred’s post, and the official Diqus post.
You can follow me on Twitter here.  My Disqus profile is here.

In the last eight years or so, I’ve worked for a few different startups (organically funded, VC backed, Angel backed, etc).  I am nothing if not a sucker for information, so I tend to be hyper aware of perceptions of both the company I work for as well as the industry we are in.

One thing that it took me a while to realize is that people likely aren’t going to be a fan of what you’re doing.  More to the point, if what you’re doing is really popular, you probably aren’t doing it right.  Think about it.

What do all startups have in common?  First, the vast majority fail.  So if you’re a pundit, you’re going to be right most of the time betting against.  Secondly, a startup is about doing things differently than what other companies that are already successful are doing.  It’s not hyperbole to say that startups are mini-revolutions.

If it’s not revolutionary, there is probably someone out there who has more money that can do what you’re doing reasonably well.  It’s the vision of the founders and leaders of a company that set it apart.  It’s having a vision that is unique.

Honestly, it took me awhile to realize this.  But now that I had that little epiphany, I think it’s pretty obvious in retrospect.  And it makes me worry a lot less about public perception as well.

My favorite VC blogger, Fred Wilson has a post today “The Lazy and Smarter Web.”

He talks about how great social media is because you can ask almost any question, and get great answers.  I commented that it’s great for Fred, because he has thousands of followers in his social net.  For regular people, not so much.  And thanks to Disqus, you can see the back and forth it generated here.

Anyway, his reply is that sooner or later, people will start following places (and presumably things and concepts).  So the limitaiton in followers (at least for Twitter) will go away.  This particular solution is limited to Twitter (I’d love to see something like dynamic rooms in FriendFeed).  But it’s a step in the right direction.

That’s yet another reason why Twitter is a big part of the future.  It’s really the best way to track the Internet Zeitgeist.  It’s a fast moving, reactionary, real time conversation.  We’re not quite there yet, but it’s getting closer.

Another reason Twitter is great is that someone now added voice to it.  Go check out Phweet.  It’s very cool - developed by Stuart Henshall and David Beckemeyer .

I had a meeting with a smart prospect yesterday.  We had a short talk about  how our companies might work together, got to know each other, complain about the weather.  At the end of the conversation, he said “so, you blog a lot huh.  I google everyone I talk to.”

It was the first time anyone had admitted to Googling me before we talked.  It was validating in a way.  A big reason I blog is to raise not only the profile of my employer, but my own personal profile as well.  And when I did an ego search, it was pretty interesting.

I have two main blogs that I write on in a professional sense, this one and IfByPhone’s.  When I googled my name, the first two pages were filled with a guest post I did at VoipSupply.  That’s great, but it would have been much better if I had been paying attention to what people were going to see when they searched for me.  You see, my prospect thought I was a VOIP guy, which I am not. The reason it shows up all over is because I blogged there under my full name, not just my first name.

So a short lesson is that if you’re going to build a personal brand, you might want to make sure to:

• Ego search every once in a while
• Market your full name

Saw the news first on Luca’s blog (OFFICIAL: BT acquires Ribbit for 105 Million).  The press release can be found here. I discussed this previously here, mainly agreeing with take.  But in reading the press release, it sounds as if BT paid $105 million for easier access to developers.

Some snippets:

JP Rangaswami, managing director of service design at BT, said: ‘Silicon Valley is emerging as a hotbed of telecommunications innovation. With Ribbit, not only do we extend our presence in the Valley, but we also gain a groundbreaking platform, a growing community of developers and a world-class team that share a common vision. Buying Ribbit lets us accelerate that vision.’

Since its launch, Ribbit has attracted thousands of developers, launched an innovative solution for the enterprise software market, and has begun testing a consumer application scheduled for general release later this year. The acquisition of the Ribbit platform will complement BT’s existing capability in the software platform space with its award-winning Software Development Kit (SDK) initiative. BT’s SDKs enable developers to integrate new applications with BT’s services using a single line of code.

I’m in the Voice 2.0 industry.  This is great news for me, my employer, and the industry as a whole.  BT would seem to ‘get it’ so to speak.  When I translate this deal, I think that BT understand the value of CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processing), and apparently Ribbit’s relationship with developers (presumably mainly Flex developers).

So at this point, it’s not important whether they’re going to build a ‘Grand Central’ competitor or Skype competitor.  It seems like BT just wants to stay a step ahead of the game.  Just think if there was a company that had actual off the shelf applications, an API that didn’t force you to use any particular language and a low price point.  I wonder what that would be worth?  Just asking.

EDIT: You should go check out Thomas’ take here.

IfByPhone (my employer if you’re new here) released it’s Voice Broadcast application into the iTunes store.  It’s pretty simple actually.

You choose some contacts, record a message (IfByPhone will call either your iPhone or any other phone you’d like).  Then the message gets sent out when you want it delivered.
I spend a lot of time driving in the car - without the ability to safely send emails or SMS messages.  And I tend to forget to do things.  Like pick up the milk.  I’ve tried using Jott with Sandy.  The idea being that I could call Jott, have them interface with Sandy (a reminder service).  But it doesn’t really work.  Generally, the transcription of my voice isn’t relaiable enough to pick up both the task and the time.   But that’s a convoluted solution for a reminder call.  So I plan on using this app for that just as soon as I get an iPhone.

You can read my post at IfByPhone on the application here.

Today was a slightly confusing. Phone Boy wrote a post on GigaOM about Voice APIs, asking “is there money in Voice APIs?” His premise:

But is simply providing an API to your telephony infrastructure enough to prompt the world to beat a path to your door? Don’t count on it.

Before I get to his post, a personal nit to pick. Every Voice 2.0 post outside of this blog (and possibly post on the subject.

Today, the news hit that Voice 2.0 platform player Ribbit is being bought out for $55 million by British Telecom.  Great work by the Ribbit team. Full disclosure: My employer is IfByPhone, which - roughly speaking - plays in the same space as Ribbit.

It’s not particularly clear why BT is making this move, particularly for such a premium.  TechCruch thinks it’s about building a competitor to GrandCentral.  GrandCentral was bought by Google, and has been languishing on the sidelines since. hogwash, and I agree with him.  An excerpt:

It doesn’t pass Occam’s razor: there’s a simpler reason why BT would buy Ribbit. If BT recognizes that their Enterprise customers will deploy communications enabled business process applications, and Ribbit has some 3,000 developers already, and it looks like Adobe Flash has more traction than (ick) SOAP… you get the picture.

I definitely agree that BT buying Ribbit to build a GrandCentral competitor makes little sense.  The consumer end of things, which really is where GrandCentral is right now, is going to be higher cost of entry, higher risk (because the market of paying customers simply doesn’t exist yet).  The real reason, and Thomas hits it on the head here, is that businesses are coming on board with the idea that they can add voice to their existing business processes.  And one of the limitations of Ribbit (the idea that you have to use Adobe Flex) goes away.  BT can just build a team of developers that will build these processes for their customers.

This is similar to what many bigger Telco companies (like a former employer of mine, West Corporation) is doing.  So it shouldn’t shock anyone that  a Telco is interested in a company that will make it easier for them to integrate further with their existing companies.  They’ve been losing out on a great deal of business in this area, and buying Ribbit is a pretty neat and clean solution to get in the game quickly.

Also Read: VoipSupply on the Ribbit deal.

epiphany (as defined by Dicitonary.com): a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

I was writing this post on IfByPhone’s blog today (JumpForward and IfByPhone in partnership), and immediately after that I found Garrett Smtih’s (Who is Voice 2.0 enabling?) and iLocus (Emerging merging with the ordinary). The three posts all deal with Voice 2.0 and the services that companies are providing.

A sample from Garrett:

“For a few years now, we have all been touting the promise of Voice 2.0, the death of the PSTN and the revolution that is upon us, yet to date, this new wave has not come crashing down on the traditional voice world with the might that one might think. It isn’t for a lack of trying, but mainly from a lack of a focused vision.”

and from iLocus:

“But the value of your network is proportional to the number of people that are inside that network, not outside that network. Look at the most successful IM clients.”

I think it’s a little sad that the Voice 2.0 sector hasn’t had more success in monetizing their services.  But Garrett is right.  The focus isn’t there.  Providing low cost phone calls is the WalMart approach to this problem.  We need to add real value - true innovation.  Right now, companies are fighting a battle between creating this market and monetizing it.   That’s why you see the WalMart approach.  Revenue needs to be there.

But what we really need to be focused on is adding voice to the places where it needs to be and really isn’t.  Where does voice have an advantage that Email, IM, wall postings don’t?  There are some conversations that need to happen by voice.  Voice 2.0 companies can bring that to a wide audience.

So the question is: Where is that audience?  It’s in social media.  The audience is on Facebook, on Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, even Plaxo.  Allowing people to have conversations that interest both parties is monetizable.  Be it a company wanting to know if you’ll be there to accept a package and using Twitter to ask for a real time response (assuming the fail whale goes away permanently), or be it a college coach wanting to connect to potential recruits that meet specific criteria via JumpForward.  Those are conversations that people will pay to have.

The real challenge is in finding people that want to talk to each other, and providing them the ability to do that.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been spending a decent amount of my social networking time over at Plurk (here is my page).  My first reaction is that it is much better than Twitter for conversations (with much less down time).

They solved many of the problems that Twitter has - threaded replies being the biggest.   You post a plurk and see as direct replies what people have to say.  It ’s a real conversation instead of the hunting and pecking that is involved with Twitter.  If you go back to a plurk from yesterday, you see the entrie conversation.  With Twitter, you have a serious problem with that.

Then I noticed Karma.  The general idea is that the more you contribute to conversations in a positive way, the more karma you get.  The more karma you get, the more options (avatar, keywords, emoticons) you have available.  And on the face of it, it seems like a good idea.    In theory if you spam the community you’d be penalized.

But what it ends up doing is creating conversation for conversation’s sake.  If you want karma, you have to plurk all the time.  You go to sleep you lose karma.  Which irritates people.  And really, what is karma but a way just to keep people on the site?

Really what they should be focusing on is the utility.  The ability to bring the conversations to other devices, sites, applications, etc.

Twitter has that.  In a post on TechCruch today, Arrington notes that Twitter is branding itself as a communicaiton utility.  The real power of Twitter is that you can use it for so many different purposes and from so many different devices.  The threading will work eventually.  They’ll figure it out.

And soon enough, you’ll see Twitter being used as an integration platform by players trying to tie together different forms of communication.  Meanwhile, Plurk will be a glorified chat room.