09.14.05
Voice everywhere
Voice seems to the major play these days. After years of browser based online play, I think more and more merchants and technology infrastructure vendors are looking at next generation features to enhance the value of interaction. Voice seems to be it. Google recently release its google talk, yahoo introduced its new IM with voice and MSFT acquires Teleo, suddenly the voice becomes the front and center of the next battle, especially VoIP.
eBay acquired Skype for $4B confirms that voice for commerce is very big. Just like paypal for transaction, Skype can become the interaction platform for eBay, so any buyer can talk/chat/interact to any seller quickly.
To me, the long term play is to build a deep integration between online and offline communication and transactions, I think this battle is just starting and a lot more features can be build on the voice platform as the infrastructure matures
Boundaryfree - Technology, Innovation, Globalization - Where limitation does not exist » Paypal for time said,
September 15, 2006 at 1:24 pm
[…] Paypal for time By Ray Wu I think voice is going to be the next killer app, which everyone seems to getting into this. But most of the large technology companies are mainly looking at the infrastructure side with VoIP, vs killer apps that is what will keep the value over time. Here is an interesting service called Ether, from Ingenio, used to be called Keen. I looked at its blog and found a nice description which I think explains it well “Unlike directories like Keen.com, Ether is a entirely distributed model rather than centralized in a directory. It turns the model inside-out giving tools to sellers to sell their time wherever they have customer relationships and has built new functionality to serve these sellers. […]