At VON Canada 2005 I first met Stuart Henshall, the founder of Skype Journal; this Canadian VON event attracted bloggers from across North America. It was the only North American opportunity to hear Skype founder Nicklas Zennstrom personally while he was in legal limbo in the U.S. Later that year I was asked to write a couple of posts for Skype Journal; effectively Stuart had seen my personnel post about Skype’s newly launched email toolbar for which I had been a beta tester and asked if he could post it on Skype Journal.

The following April when VON Canada held its third (and last) show in Toronto, I had just completed a client business development assignment and was asked to blog on behalf of Skype Journal. Stefan Oberg, Skype’s current Vice-President for Business, spoke about Skype’s goal to be “Better than a phone…”. Today, with the SILK codec, Skype is much better than a phone; since its introduction I cringe politely when I have to go back to normal phone conversations.

But, more importantly, since then I have had a wonderful opportunity to meet many keen and passionate Skype employees, develop an understanding of what it takes to be a Skype Partner – especially with business applications — and participated with a network of great bloggers who all contribute to a better understanding of the business and technology issues of the emerging communications world.

Yes, there have been challenges; Skype has had to reorganize and restructure as a viable and growing business. Several players have attempted to get into the real time communications space; they need to find their niche and attract users and develop revenue streams. But, when I look at the outcome of the past three years in this space, Skype remains a strong player; it has become synonymous with disrupting communications barriers around the world at little or no cost.

New services have evolved; small businesses can enjoy the advantages of services that were previously only available to large enterprises.16 million users online concurrently every day around 2:00 p.m. EST (GMT-5) is half the population of Canada. And there are probably 30 to 40 million who use Skype daily with about 30% in business applications. Free video calling has become a reality.

But over the past eighteen months:

• Skype’s business application partners are looking for ways to have third party support marketing their leading edge services
• Other significant players have come into the real time emerging communications space offering a range of unique products and services
• Cell phones have evolved into smartphones
• Social media keeps everyone informed in real time about news, personal activities and individual opinions
• It’s the year of the Voice 2.0 world.
• WordPress has become the most powerful platform for not only blogging but also complete websites.
• Search has become a key tool in developing a significant web presence

As a result today I am launching a new website Voice On The Web – facilitating personal and business communications across a Voice 2.0 world. Check out my initial post for more details about the goals and objectives I hope to achieve. Note that all my Skype Journal posts are archived there and readily searchable. There’s still lots of warts on the site but one has to start somewhere.

At the same time Phil Wolff will continue to blog on Skype Journal, continuing to bring his perspective on the technology and business opportunities in the Voice 2.0 world. I will be providing him link love frequently for posts I feel should be checked out.

Time to move on… see you at Voice On The Web. And, thanks to Phil for the opportunity to participate on Skype Journal over the past three years.

When I received this Twitter message earlier this afternoon:

clicked on the embedded URL and immediately was listening in on a conversation involving not only Stuart Henshall but also David Beckemeyer of Televolution (producer of PhoneGnome – now known as the PhweetGeek), I found I was in for a most interesting conversation experience. Within minutes we had a multi-party call involving as many as eight participants from India, Italy, Ireland (actually, Pat was calling in while on vacation in Spain) as well as others in the U.S. They had all joined “spontaneously” from a Twitter message (in my case initially seen via Twitter4Skype) as Stuart and David launched an Alpha version of Phweet this afternoon.

First thoughts and comments:

• The immediacy – send the URL via Twitter and any of your Twitter Followers can join with three clicks – the URL, the TringMe VoIP Flash Player widget and the “Allow” button within the Flash Player. At that point the call host needs to “accept” your request to join and you’re into the conversation.
• You monitor the call participants and participate in a chat session via a web page with a URL dedicated to the specific call (www.phweet.com/[four character call code]). When the host ends the session, the URL dies also; however, tweets are the only traces left of the call.

• It’s a mashup of Twitter, TringMe, and SIP-based services all hosted on a Televolution server.
• While, if you just send out a general Tweet all your Followers can join; you can Direct Message an individual, or individuals, if you want a totally private call.
• You can join from a browser or a SIP ID; for instance Pat Phelan (of MaxRoam fame) called in from a Nokia N95 via his Truphone SIP ID (Truphone number@truphone.com) but you can also join in from Gizmo 5 and other SIP-based services.
• It’s Alpha: TringMe would periodically drop the call connection but a web page refresh would bring back the Widget button and you could instantly be in the conversation again.
• It’s Alpha: when I attempted to host my own call with Stuart as the invitee, we could “see” each other on the related web page but the audio connection did not work.
• Joining a conversation actually involves a call out from the Televolution server; as a result they are only working with connections that do not involve termination charges. Eventually they would like to have a way to join from, say, a mobile phone while letting another party worry about the back office transactions.
• Call quality was quite good; David needs to up his mic volume but other parties were very clear. On the other hand there is no echo cancellation capability, so headsets are a requirement unless you have echo cancellation hardware embedded into your mic.
• This is totally an Internet based service: effectively your Twitter followers are the directory; there is no other form of intermediation, such as a softphone client, involved in setting up, and participating in, the call. It does require you have the Adobe Flash Player installed.
• It’s Alpha: Stuart and David are still going through the discipline of defining a basic feature set.

Stuart and David are inviting Twitter members to give it a try; they want user feedback before even calling it Beta, to ensure it at least has all the basics of a service that provides reliable connections, total host control (for instance, they need to add the ability for a host to remove a participant) and meets basic call support needs. Overall it looks to be a promising concept and a unique “click-to-call” service that supports ad hoc social networking.

Other posts:

• Stuart Henshall: Why Phweet?
• Stuart Henshall: Who created the Phweetman?
• Pat Phelan: Phweet.com Talking on Twitter
• Phil Wolff: Phweet public alpha – from tweet to talk in one click
• TechCrunch: Call your Twitter pals with Phweet
• All public Phweet sessions

Tags: Phweet, Stuart Henshall, David Beckemeyer, Twitter, Televolution, TringMe, Pat Phelan, Truphone, Nokia N95