Voice 2.0 Talk at BarCampDublin April 07

© Rococo Software 2006

Voice 2.0

Sean O Sullivan

[email protected]


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


About Rococo

MobileFrontierValue-add voice servicesVariety of routes-to-market (via Operator, Direct)Mysay.com - social telephony service

Product Range

Voice 2.0Voice-centric (not data)Opportunity: Where the Web meets the Phone SystemBearer Agnostic: VoIP, PSTN, Mobile, etc.Add value to social networks (small s, small n)

Focus

IT Background - IONA TechnologiesSignificant experience in Enterprise Integration, Middleware (CORBA, J2EE), DistributedSystems, Web Services2000-2005: Bluetooth Middleware and JSR82Leading vendor of Java/Bluetooth Technology worldwideShipped on 100M+ phones since Q405 (Motorola, SonyEricsson)

Background

January 2000Founded


Telecom Industry Dynamics

• Market Disruption• Voip/Broadband/Cable/Wifi/Wimax• Operator as a wholesaler/bitpipe

• Voice becoming a commodity• Skype/Ebay• Vonage• And lots of others…..

• Open APIs• (SIP, Jingle, Parlay and ParlayX)

• Walled gardens coming down• (3rd party VAS)

• Pressure– Add “services” to show

value beyond voice andconnectivity

• Faster, better,continuously

• Internet model– Data is part of the picture

• But - >80% datarevenues typically SMS

Could some of the momentum around newinternet services help operators accelerate

their plans for value-add services?


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 someexamples


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


Del.icio.us

• Store and share yourfavourite links on the web

• “tagging”• Power of community to

amplify e.g search• Now part of Yahoo


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


Tagging


YouTube

• Broadcast yourself• From nowhere to

powerhouse in 18months

• Video, tagging,“Channels”, etc

• Currently not ownedby Yahoo :-)

• Now owned byGoogle :-)


Google

• “Grandaddy of them all”• Pagerank harnessed the

power of links betweensites to determine searchrelevance

• Aggressively building outnew services– Office– Comms

• Major Deal with mySpacefor Ads– $1Bn value?

• Doubleclick


Some common Web 2.0characteristics*

Bittorrent scales as more share the network;Skype scales using user cpu; digg gets moreaccurate as more users rate stories

Network effects - themore people use theservice, the better itgets

Tags power delicious, flickr, youtube; linkspower google search

Tagging and thewisdom of crowds

No release schedules - just a slightlyimproved service, every day or every week

Continuous Beta

flickr let users embed a photo anywhere,google maps lets third parties build on top

Remixabledatasources andmashups

Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, mySpace, eBayand Amazon all enable their users to createcontent

User GeneratedContent

Designed to encourage users to take part, toshare, to customise, to connect

Architecture ofParticipation

* Shamelessly stolen from Tim O Reilly


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


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


Jajah

• Web Activated telephony• Skype - “for the rest of us”

– No download– No headset– No nuttin’

• Enter two numbers and click thegreen button– Your phone will ring– Then the other phone rings– Then you talk

• Free jajah to jajah calls recentlyannounced

• Freemium model– Small % paying for premium

services funds the service


Jangl

• Privacyservice

• Get a janglnumber

• You controlwho callsthat number

• Your realnumberneverrevealed


Chinswing

• Online conversations• Like fora - but using

your voice• Discussion groups


SayNow

• Targeted at MusicIndustry initially

• Artists phone inupates, thoughts,status

• Fans phone in“shoutouts”,comments,requests

• Now exapndingbeyond music


Snapvine

• Voiceplayerfor your blogor socialnetwork page

• People leaveyou voicecomments

• Used inpersonals


evoca

• Also recording usingyour phone

• Also post to blog,website, etc

• Send messages to agroup, or your friends

• Pitched as “podcastlike”


Pheeder

• Phone-casting• Call the number, leave a

message, it appears on thesite, and people can hear it

• People can subscribe• Profiles, pictures foster

social network dynamics


Pinger

• Voice messages tofriends

• Dial, talk, and theservice sends yourmessage to some pre-defined groups


And of course…….mysay


Voice 2.0 characteristics

Calls are for messaging, to friends, to groups, tostrangers

Calls are for talking,SMS is formessaging

Calls may live a long time, on web pages, archives,downloads

Calls happen, thenthey’re over

Services launched globallyServices launchedgeographically

Calls are private, subscriber only, moderated,podcasted, or anonymous

Most calls are private

Calls are 1-1, 1-many, many-manyMost Calls are 1-1

People phone web pages, applications phone people;people subscribe to other people’s phonecasts

People phone people

New wayOld way


How do they do it?

Many of theVoice 2.0

services arebuilt on asterisk

Many partner with acommunicationserver provider -

giving the connectivityto the phone network

SIP is quiteoften the

protocol to talkto the CSP


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


• 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

Summary