Telephony 2.0

Reading List: Plaxo Praise; VoodooVox; Facebook; Google; and more

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 8th, 2007

Things to get off my plate and into your head if you are following Telephony 2.0 issues and trends:

Telco 2.0 Blog: How Practical is Your SDP (Service Delivery Platform)?
also see: JNetX and NetDev

Scott Rosenberg: Terror of the Tiny URL
Growth tied to Twitter explosion

TechCrunch: Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant
Our take on Plaxo

TechCrunch: VoodooVox: Building a Voice 2.0 Ad Network
This is something we’d like to take a closer look at…

GigaOM: From Information Age to Connected Age
A nice leap, we’ll see if it sticks

Nick Carr/RoughType: Facebook and the Grownups
Turns out kids are laughing at the business users yielding opportunity for targeted social nets

HipMojo: Google’s Shock and Awe: 40% of of U.S. Online Ad Revenues
Classic partner decision point: Telcos can’t afford to ignore them, can’t help but fear them

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Facebook Becoming A Communications Hub: IM Launched, VoIP Proliferating

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 5th, 2007

Telcos may look at Facebook (and MySpace and Beebo and Twitter, etc) as interesting, faddish anomolies, or at most, something to copy and steal from (particularly in the mobile realm).

But as the social networking site continues to evolve, it is looking more and more like a communications hub. And that should put it directly on the Tier 1 carrier radar.

In the latest development, according to blog FaceReviews.com, the new Facebook instant messaging application is now live on the site. Built by Facebook (rather than it’s growing community of Facebook developers) , the IM application could keep its users on-site even more than they already are by adding a real-time communications element to the environment.

Not to be outdone, VoIP providers are flocking to Facebook as well with applications that let people do “click-to-call” meetups within the site or even conduct Skype-style peer-to-peer PC-and-headphone based calling.

For instance, VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, has begun positioning his long-incubated Free World Dialup project as a social media play, starting with a Facebook voice mail application. Another company, BabyTel, is rolling an Facebook-integrated VoIP application this week. Also on Facebook (live or in development): VoIP and click-to call apps from Jajah, Jangl, YackPack and Truphone, plus a nifty conference call app from Iotum. And that’s just the tip of the “social VoIP” iceberg. As a telco-competitive play, Facebook’s playback (or that of any other social network) is becoming crystal clear.

Users create their home page/profile page on the site, bringing in everything that is (virtually) important to them, including:

All their friends and colleagues, who:

Create a web (or social graph) of connections, comments, cross-posts and other inter-links

As the social graph deepens, social network communities begin to rely more and more on this new environment as the (powerful yet convenient) hub for ALL its communications, starting with:

Cross-linked comment posts, “wall” news feeds, etc., ultimately moving on to:

Online-centric communications extensions like instant messaging or newer modes like Twitter and then taking that mobile with:

Built in SMS cross-posting and mobile phone site-posting before ultimately adding:

Voice-based communications including on-site voice mailboxes, voice “blast” capabilities, conferencing or voice-based group chat applications and ultimately voice calling in its all its glorious forms but largely VoIP-based and peer-to-peer with PSTN (public switched telphone network) terminations where and when they are needed.

That vision posits Facebook or other sites as a be-all-end-all communications applications hub — and chillingly relegates telcos as (their biggest fear) dumb pipes at the outer-end of the communications value chain.

Does Facebook have your attention yet?

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Dynamo: Inside the Amazon Cloud

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 5th, 2007

Google, MSN, Yahoo, Amazon. These companies first and foremost are businesses, managing advertising- or e-commerce-driven Web sites.But these mega-Web-companies are also building the next-generation of computing utilities — George Gilder eloquently calls them “information factories.”

Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels opened the door just a bit to Amazon’s cloud factory, publishing a paper describing the massive storage infrastructure underlying Amazon.com (not to be confused with Amazon’s public-storage Web service, S3)

From the paper’s abstract:

Reliability at massive scale is one of the biggest challenges we face at Amazon.com, one of the largest e-commerce operations in the world; even the slightest outage has significant financial consequences and impacts customer trust. The Amazon.com platform, which provides services for many web sites worldwide, is implemented on top of an infrastructure of tens of thousands of servers and network components located in many datacenters around the world. At this scale, small and large components fail continuously and the way persistent state is managed in the face of these failures drives the reliability and scalability of the software systems.

A massive self-healing application infrastructure is an endlessly fascinating concept to consider. I got wind of the Amazon paper from Nick Carr, author of “Does IT Matter” as well as the upcoming book “The Big Switch,” which looks at next-generation computing architectures as represented by firms like Amazon and Google — and, one would imagine, tier 1 telecom carriers. Carr does a good job of putting Dynamo into context:

At the start of the last century, the great engineering project was the creation of an electric grid that could deliver power to millions of users with a reliability and an efficiency that were previously unthinkable. Today’s great engineering project, of which Amazon’s Dynamo is but one manifestation, is to build a computing grid that can achieve similar breakthroughs in the processing and delivery of information.At the start of the last century, the great engineering project was the creation of an electric grid that could deliver power to millions of users with a reliability and an efficiency that were previously unthinkable. Today’s great engineering project, of which Amazon’s Dynamo is but one manifestation, is to build a computing grid that can achieve similar breakthroughs in the processing and delivery of information.

Call it cloud computing or cloud OS or simply the “googleplex” — whatever. It’s an approach to next-generation networks/applications that telcos need to get in tune with as well.

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Veoh’s Peer-to-Peer Swich-Up: Internet Video and Bandwidth Overload

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 5th, 2007

Telcos and cable providers spend untold hours on network capacity issues surrounding video delivery. Video delivery via the Web can be a bit more of a wild card — it’s hard to tell what service or individual video will hit big. But when something takes off, what would seem like a great situation can quickly become a bandwidth nightmare.

That seems to be the challenge facing Internet video service Veoh. The service began offering full movie downloads from its site via its VeohTV application, but as it grew in popularity it is only offering short previews and relying more on a peer-to-peer infrastructure — in which users effectively stream video to one another — to help reduce its bandwidth costs. Blog Contentinople reports that early Veoh users aren’t too happy with the situation.

It’s yet another version of the old quality of service (QOS) question, one that is particularly important when it comes to Web applications. Web apps are based on the idea that “just good enough” is good enough. At least it is until customers revolt.

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Two-Dot-Oh Links: FriendFeed; Joost; Digium; and Google

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 2nd, 2007

Today’s Two-Dot-Oh quick links to the best Web 2.0/Telephony 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 news and developments:

Network World: Digium Buys SwitchVox: Open source IP PBX vendor goes full circle, buying a commercial provider of its Asterisk-based software that provides a nice install/maintain GUI.

NYTimes: Nokia Does a Map Deal, Signaling Strategic Bet: Look for maps and GPS to be the key enabler of cell phone advertising.

Telco 2.0: How’s Your Google Strategy?: Killer chart maps the future of Google/Telco “battles.”

WebWare: Joost Now Free and Open For Everyone: Internet video service is out of private beta; you can get your own invite now and see what all the fuss is about.

TechCrunch: FriendFeed To Aggregate Social Network Data into a Single Feed: In Web 2.0 parlance, this is called a “personal lifestyle aggregator,” or some variation thereof. FriendFeed has some strong pedigree — its founders are former Googlers — which of course lands it a NY Times profile as a kick-off

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Thomas Howe To Carriers: We Don’t Need You (Though Maybe Here’s a Penny or Two For You)

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 2nd, 2007

I’ve had a chance to interact with Thomas Howe a few times now. A story here. A podcast there.

But holy smokes, did Thomas cut to the heart of the matter with his latest blog post “Dear Carriers, They Didn’t Need You.”

In it, Howe talks about a series of telephony “mashup” contests he’s either participated in or helped sponsor in the past few months, including a “Reinventing Voice” contest that vendor Sylantro is holding this week, with his help. Let’s let Thomas take it from here:

I wrote a mashup to prove to myself and the audience that someone could write a compelling business application using voice that didn’t require large investment in equipment, a huge development staff, customer education or mass marketing. In short, I didn’t really need to work with a particular carrier. I think I succeeded, and I wasn’t alone. Our contestants proved it [too]. They didn’t need to get close to a carrier to create a compelling voice application. In fact, not to rub it in your face… but not involving you was a good thing for all concerned.Let me emphasize the totality of my statement. They didn’t use your new services standard IMS. They don’t use the application layer API : Parlay. They don’t use SS7. They don’t speak AIN. They don’t go to the same shows you do – they don’t read the same magazines. I bet they have never called you. They didn’t call Verizon – they didn’t call AT&T. They certainly used some Internet connectivity in the colocation center, but I absolutely guarantee they don’t know or care who provided the bits. I can guarantee that the services running on those bits are much more compelling, and have business cases that will knock your socks off. My dear carriers, this should get your attention, because I challenge you to list for me the last ten new voice services that were not only compelling, but made serious money. Did your entire list appear in the last twelve months? Didn’t think so.

Um, wow.

That’s not hyperbole, that’s feet-on-the-ground from a self-proclaimed former teleco-geek and current “Web scripting guy.” Thomas has taken the time to learn the Web world of application development — AJAX, Web APIs, Ruby On Rails — and he hasn’t looked back. In fact, he’s bet his career on it. And he’s not building Facebook-extensions or VoIP-click-to-calls. His focus is on mission-critical Web/telephony apps upon which companies can run — or reinvent — their businesses.

So what is Howe looking for from telcos? It’s a good question, and one I’ve wondered about myself. What exactly do service providers need to do to open up their networks and services to Web-based application developers? Howe has at least his answer:

Take a minute to count how many web scripting guys are out there. Our message is quite simple : if you would just simply provide some compelling APIs that we could use in our voice mashups, we just MIGHT start to need you. Or at least we’d use you. Really, we would.What sorts of APIs? How about an API that I can use to get the location of a cell phone? What about one that will let me send a simple voice message to any phone? How about one that gives me click to dial? One that lets me setup a conference call? I could use those as I’m extending a business process for some fortune 500 company. It would be cool – and it would pay the bills. For both of us!

If you’re a service provider that has tip-toed curiously over to this Telephony 2.0 blog, this appears to be a legitimate call to arms pointed right at you.

What do you think of Howe’s charges — and his vision? Does it ring true, or is it off-base. Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

UPDATE: Sylantro and Thomas Howe Co. announced the winners of its mashup contest:

Infosys Technologies Ltd. developed an innovative and intelligent mashup of a subscriber’s personal information management system (like Calendar, Contact address book,etc.) and Sylantro Synapps Call Web Services named “CallPal.” CallPal delivers the incoming call to a home, business or mobile phone based upon caller identity, time of call and availability. The caller identity is received from the contact address book and availability from their calendar. CallPal is capable of proactive and automatic scheduling of appointments, notification of availability and integrated messaging. In addition to providing a creative mashup of voice technology, the Infosys team identified how this new application service could add billions of dollars in revenue to carriers by improving the call completion success rate and providing new monthly revenues for value added services.

UPDATE 2: Over at the similarly-named Telco 2.0 blog (a member of our blogroll as well), a deeper analysis of the telephony mashup environment, including a look at deploying Howe’s original doctor alert app in the real world. Well worth a read.

UPDATE 3: Howe continues his roll with a rant on IMS –particularly why it isn’t what application developers need to build true telephony-integrated applications, or as he puts it: Why IMS Stifles Innovation.

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Intrusive, Ad-Supported Voice Service? Don’t Be So Quick To Pass on Pudding

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 2nd, 2007

Maybe it’s their name: Pudding Media. Or maybe it’s the enabling technology behind their service, which *listens in* on your phone calls, an approach many have dubbed just plain “creepy.”

But if carriers don’t take seriously the basic value proposition Pudding put forth in announcing their new offering this week — free VoIP phone calls in exchange for viewing targeted advertising — they may miss one of the silver-bullet revenue drivers they need to reinvent the voice business.

First, let’s get the Pudding details out of the way. The San Jose-based startup is offering free voice-over-IP calls to users willing to let the company — not individual “operators” but automated voice recognition software — to monitor the conversation for keywords. The company then delivers targeted on-screen (the VoIP service is PC-based) during the call (see screen shot – click to enlarge).

Said Pudding Media’s Chief Executive Ariel Maislos, to the New York Times: “We saw that when people are speaking on the phone, typically they were doing something else. They had a lot of other action, either doodling or surfing or something else like that. So we said, ‘Let’s use that’ and actually present them with things that are relevant to the conversation while it’s happening.”

The Pudding service hasn’t received the best of press/blogger receptions. And it’s not surprising. There’s something almost alarming about the idea until you look at it a little closer. Pudding isn’t actually “listening” to the calls, they are just looking for keywords. They aren’t recording or saving them. Random Web sites — not to mention Google’s opt-out saved search history — probably know more about you from the cookie trail you leave across the Web.

Indeed, the most successful Web companies have seen their business take off only when they were willing to test the limits of what their users would accept.

For instance, it wasn’t a slam dunk that Google would be generating billions today by targeting ads against user searches. And it certainly wasn’t clear that those same users would let Google deliver ads against their incoming emails, as they do in their Gmail service. Facebook, meanwhile, drew the ire of its user community when it started generating “news feeds” that let members of the service know what other friends were doing. But Facebook talked its users off the ledge, offered optional opt-out and the news feed capability drove the social networking site into the stratosphere.

In the case of both Google and Facebook, their ultimate business model is driven by delivering advertising. But it was their savvy in walking the thin line between intrusion and utility — monitoring and privacy — that really made their businesses soar.

Pudding Media may not be the right company, nor may they have the right approach, to finding a new, lucrative business model for voice calling. But it’s definitely worth the risk to try out new approaches — even at the risk of potentially offending users — as part of the search for new monetization models for voice 2.0 services.

Just ask Google and Facebook if the risk is worth the reward.

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At Your Service: Verizon’s New WebMail

by Rich KarpinskiOctober 2nd, 2007

Today, we review and visit the builders behind Verizon’s new Web 2.0-style Webmail service, which the service provider is integrating into it’s broadband portal (click the screenshot to enlarge):

SERVICE SCENARIO: Verizon needed a next-generation Web e-mail client to keep its broadband customers using its portal applications and content. E-mail drives the majority of customer page-views on the portal and serves as a foundation upon which Verizon can up-sell and cross-sell other content and services.

SERVICE SOLUTION: Verizon’s messaging team searched for a best-of-breed Web e-mail application/service that it could integrate into its existing application infrastructure. That infrastructure is largely open-source-based, relying on Tomcat application servers and messaging infrastructure from Sun Microsystems, including authentication and single sign-on capabilities. After evaluating several Web e-mail front-ends, Verizon chose Laszlo Systems’ WebMail, an AJAX-driven Web client. Telephony reviewed an alpha version of the application. The new Verizon-branded WebMail client works in a browser but feels like a desktop app, including a preview window for message view, drag-and-drop capability, built-in searching and automatic e-mail alerting. An integrated contact list can pop up or be docked in the top navigation toolbar.
COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE: Verizon users have the option of using Verizon WebMail or using third-party e-mail and portal services from AOL, Microsoft or Yahoo! “Owning” the customer experience and user interface on the desktop outright — vs. working with a content partner — is an important consideration for service providers like Verizon as they work to provide more telecom/Web services directly to customers.
THE QUOTE: “[Customers] were looking more and more for features like drag-and-drop and auto-complete, all the things that got introduced with AJAX on the Web. Our goal was to go with an advanced product … and for our customers to have the most advanced features on the Web.”— Shamik Basu, senior manager of broadband product development for Verizon

Want to hear more about Verizon’s portal Webmail strategy and the new Laszlo app?

Listen to a podcast with Shamik Basu at TelephonyOnline.com.

* Have a telephony 2.0 service you’d like reviewed? E-mail rkarpinski@connectedplanetonline.com.

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Introducing: At Your Service

by Rich KarpinskiSeptember 27th, 2007

New product reviews are a staple of the PC trade press and the Web 2.0 blog world.

But what about us telecom-folks? It’s not often you see hands-on reviews of telephony services.

But that’s about to change… we’re going to start publishing a new type of story in this blog that we’re calling:

At Your Service

The stories — part review, part behind-the-scenes stories — will take a look at new telephony services (weighted heavily to Web 2.0/Telephony 2.0 services). We’ll show how they work for the end user, talk to the developers/service creators about how they were built and provide a look into the service creator’s Toolbox for the platforms, tools and APIs they used to build the application or service.

If you’d like to have your telecom-related service reviewed, email me at rkarpinski AT telephonyonline DOT com.

I’ll be looking for cool services to review; hope to hear from you.

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