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February 04, 2007
Jeff Pulver Channeled via Tom Evslin: "Voice is just an Application"
Tom Evslin: Voice 2.0 – Fuggetaboutit!
"There isn’t gonna be a new killer voice application! Old friends from my VoIP days aren’t gonna believe it’s me saying that but (with lots of hindsight) it’s the truth. New phones? Yes! Different pricing? Yes! New features? Sure. Major new capability? Nope!
My friend Jeff Pulver has been right about almost everything to do with voice on the net and now video on the net. But I think he’s wrong (as I was) when he looks for major functional innovation in the delivery of voice communications."
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Not to burst any Voice 2.0 bubbles here, but I agree with Tom on this. On many levels "Voice is just an Application." Here lies both the beauty and the beast.
While Andy wants to believe this is a fundamental marketing issue, the fact is that what we have been lacking all along is the "change agent" that turns something into something that we can't live without. These are products/services that become nouns in our everyday life. Skype is the closest thing the consumer VoIP industry has that represents such a change agent, although it was the advent of Vonage that drove the worldwide Cable companies to adopt their own voice over broadband strategies.
I remain bullish on the ability for the startup Mobile VoIP community to deliver an application that becomes a change agent for the space. But only time will tell whether or not this is a practical reality.
So maybe Tom and I were just dreaming when we were looking for those killer IP Voice Applications/Services all those years ago. I do believe the advent of IP Communications had a profound effect on the future of the communications sector. I still would like to believe we will one day see a new generation of applications (other than voice), enabled because of the existence of an IP layer which will redefine the way we all communicate.
Tags: Tom Evslin, Andy Abramson, voip, voice 2.0, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on February 4, 2007 04:59 PM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
I think Tom is voicing (ouch) a general frustration with the lack of really widespread adoption of VoIP at the retail and end customer level. However, it is interesting to see how the new start up line-up at Demo was so mobile and social communications heavy, so perhaps life in the old dog yet. Mostly, everything looks like "lets do the old thing a little differently"; take out non value adding lock-ins at network and device level; disaggregate; get social, etc. But what do people want to do with their new freedom? Perhaps we will see the advent of a new "open applications" iPhone-clone...
Posted by: PaulSweeney at February 5, 2007 06:36 AM