Background on "voice 2.0" apps - talk given at BarCampDublin

1. Voice 2.0
Sean O Sullivan
sos@rococosoft.com
© Rococo Software 2006

2. Overview
• Background on Rococo
• Telecom Industry Dynamics
– The commoditisation of Voice
– Pressure for new services
• Web 2.0
– Overview and Examples
– Characteristics
• Telecom meets Web 2.0 - “Voice 2.0”
– Some application examples
• Conclusions
© Rococo Software 2006

3. About Rococo
Founded January 2000
Background IT Background - IONA Technologies
Significant experience in Enterprise Integration, Middleware (CORBA, J2EE), Distributed
Systems, Web Services
2000-2005: Bluetooth Middleware and JSR82
Leading vendor of Java/Bluetooth Technology worldwide
Shipped on 100M+ phones since Q405 (Motorola, SonyEricsson)
Focus Voice 2.0
Voice-centric (not data)
Opportunity: Where the Web meets the Phone System
Bearer Agnostic: VoIP, PSTN, Mobile, etc.
Add value to social networks (small s, small n)
Product Range MobileFrontier
Value-add voice services
Variety of routes-to-market (via Operator, Direct)
Mysay.com - social telephony service
© Rococo Software 2006

4. Telecom Industry Dynamics
• Market Disruption
• Voip/Broadband/Cable/Wifi/Wimax
• Pressure
• Operator as a wholesaler/bitpipe
– Add “services” to show
value beyond voice and
• Voice becoming a commodity
connectivity
• Skype/Ebay
• Faster, better,
• Vonage
continuously
• And lots of others…..
• Internet model
• Open APIs – Data is part of the picture
• (SIP, Jingle, Parlay and ParlayX) • But - >80% data
revenues typically SMS
• Walled gardens coming down
• (3rd party VAS) Could some of the momentum around new
internet services help operators accelerate
their plans for value-add services?
© Rococo Software 2006

5. What is Web 2.0?
• Next generation of “hot” internet companies?
• Over-hyped, money-losing startups?
• A new bubble?
• All of the above?
• Easiest way is to look at some - so let’s look at some
examples
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6. mySpace, Bebo, Facebook
• Social networks
• It’s communication, and
exhibitionism
• It’s all about me, my friends
• Huge traffic (communication,
pageviews, search)
– 100M users of mySpace
• Potentially huge value
– mySpace acquired for
US$580M by News Corp
• Users spending hours per
day on these sites
– = hours they’re not
consuming other media
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7. Del.icio.us
• Store and share your
favourite links on the web
• “tagging”
• Power of community to
amplify e.g search
• Now part of Yahoo
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8. Flickr
• Share photos on the web
• Unique link per photo
• Innovation:
– Leave the photos open
– Embed photo in other
sites
• Also: Tagging
• Now part of Yahoo
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9. Tagging
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10. YouTube
• Broadcast yourself
• From nowhere to
powerhouse in 18
months
• Video, tagging,
“Channels”, etc
• Currently not owned
by Yahoo :-)
• Now owned by
Google :-)
© Rococo Software 2006

11. Google
• “Grandaddy of them all”
• Pagerank harnessed the
power of links between
sites to determine search
relevance
• Aggressively building out
new services
– Office
– Comms
• Major Deal with mySpace
for Ads
– $1Bn value?
• Doubleclick
© Rococo Software 2006

12. Some common Web 2.0
characteristics*
Architecture of Designed to encourage users to take part, to
Participation share, to customise, to connect
User Generated Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, mySpace, eBay
Content and Amazon all enable their users to create
content
Remixable flickr let users embed a photo anywhere,
datasources and google maps lets third parties build on top
mashups
Continuous Beta No release schedules - just a slightly
improved service, every day or every week
Tagging and the Tags power delicious, flickr, youtube; links
wisdom of crowds power google search
Network effects - the Bittorrent scales as more share the network;
more people use the Skype scales using user cpu; digg gets more
service, the better it accurate as more users rate stories
gets
* Shamelessly stolen from Tim O Reilly
© Rococo Software 2006

13. Viral Customer Acquisition
• For certain services, the cost of acquiring customers dropping
• YouTube (1 year old, 35million videos watched per day)
• Bebo estd. July 2005, 2.3m now registered users
© Rococo Software 2006

14. What do we mean by Voice 2.0?
• Voice centric telephony services that
– Work with IP and non-IP phone systems
– Harness the internet for some or all of those Web 2.0
characteristics
– Integrate web functionality with the phone system to deliver
new services
• Some examples
© Rococo Software 2006

15. Jajah
• Web Activated telephony
• Skype - “for the rest of us”
– No download
– No headset
– No nuttin’
• Enter two numbers and click the
green button
– Your phone will ring
– Then the other phone rings
– Then you talk
• Free jajah to jajah calls recently
announced
• Freemium model
– Small % paying for premium
services funds the service
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16. Jangl
• Privacy
service
• Get a jangl
number
• You control
who calls
that number
• Your real
number
never
revealed
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17. Chinswing
• Online conversations
• Like fora - but using
your voice
• Discussion groups
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18. SayNow
• Targeted at Music
Industry initially
• Artists phone in
upates, thoughts,
status
• Fans phone in
“shoutouts”,
comments,
requests
• Now exapnding
beyond music
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19. Snapvine
• Voiceplayer
for your blog
or social
network page
• People leave
you voice
comments
• Used in
personals
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20. evoca
• Also recording using
your phone
• Also post to blog,
website, etc
• Send messages to a
group, or your friends
• Pitched as “podcast
like”
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21. Pheeder
• Phone-casting
• Call the number, leave a
message, it appears on the
site, and people can hear it
• People can subscribe
• Profiles, pictures foster
social network dynamics
© Rococo Software 2006

22. Pinger
• Voice messages to
friends
• Dial, talk, and the
service sends your
message to some pre-
defined groups
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23. And of course…….mysay
© Rococo Software 2006

24. Voice 2.0 characteristics
Old way New way
People phone people People phone web pages, applications phone people;
people subscribe to other people’s phonecasts
Most Calls are 1-1 Calls are 1-1, 1-many, many-many
Most calls are private Calls are private, subscriber only, moderated,
podcasted, or anonymous
Services launched Services launched globally
geographically
Calls happen, then Calls may live a long time, on web pages, archives,
they’re over downloads
Calls are for talking, Calls are for messaging, to friends, to groups, to
SMS is for strangers
messaging
© Rococo Software 2006

25. How do they do it?
Many partner with a
Many of the SIP is quite
communication
Voice 2.0 often the
server provider -
services are protocol to talk
giving the connectivity
built on asterisk to the CSP
to the phone network
© Rococo Software 2006

26. Lessons so far
• Phone System fun
– Caller ID
– Tariffs
– SMS (time, directionality, shortcodes)
• RoR
– Great
– Fast, iterative, rapid “what ifs” in hours not days/weeks
• Asterisk and SIP
– Asterisk very flexible
– Learning curve
– SIP providers plentiful
© Rococo Software 2006

27. Summary
• Voice tends towards being free, on all networks
– Value Add services will determine value and drive revenue
• Operators can benefit from Web 2.0 momentum
– Innovation now rapidly creating services “from the web side”
• We now see roughly one per week
• Telecom industry = 1 per year :-)
– Partnering can accelerate adoption (Helio/mySpace)
– You may wait to acquire
• Then it may be too late
• SOA and IMS help ease operator integration
– SIP, Parlay-X
– Open APIs Open APIs Open APIs
© Rococo Software 2006