Web 2 Voice

I’m going to be sitting in a booth at Web 2.0 Expo, NY Wednesday and Thursday for IfByPhone.  If you are going to be around, stop by.  IfByPhone is announcing yet another application to go along with our ever expanding suite, so look for a press release soon.

I probably won’t be attending many of the talks, but the one I am hoping to see is Fred Wilson’s Keynote.  Today, Fred announced in his blog that his VC firm has invested in Zemanta.  You can check out related links provided by Zemanta below.  I think it’s a nice fit with their portfolio, and I like the service they provide.  Zemanta scans a post as you type, and suggests related articles and pictures to include in your post.  Pretty cool.

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Saw the news first on Luca’s blog (OFFICIAL: BT acquires Ribbit for 105 Million).  The press release can be found here. I discussed this previously here, mainly agreeing with take.  But in reading the press release, it sounds as if BT paid $105 million for easier access to developers.

Some snippets:

JP Rangaswami, managing director of service design at BT, said: ‘Silicon Valley is emerging as a hotbed of telecommunications innovation. With Ribbit, not only do we extend our presence in the Valley, but we also gain a groundbreaking platform, a growing community of developers and a world-class team that share a common vision. Buying Ribbit lets us accelerate that vision.’

Since its launch, Ribbit has attracted thousands of developers, launched an innovative solution for the enterprise software market, and has begun testing a consumer application scheduled for general release later this year. The acquisition of the Ribbit platform will complement BT’s existing capability in the software platform space with its award-winning Software Development Kit (SDK) initiative. BT’s SDKs enable developers to integrate new applications with BT’s services using a single line of code.

I’m in the Voice 2.0 industry.  This is great news for me, my employer, and the industry as a whole.  BT would seem to ‘get it’ so to speak.  When I translate this deal, I think that BT understand the value of CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processing), and apparently Ribbit’s relationship with developers (presumably mainly Flex developers).

So at this point, it’s not important whether they’re going to build a ‘Grand Central’ competitor or Skype competitor.  It seems like BT just wants to stay a step ahead of the game.  Just think if there was a company that had actual off the shelf applications, an API that didn’t force you to use any particular language and a low price point.  I wonder what that would be worth?  Just asking.

EDIT: You should go check out Thomas’ take here.

IfByPhone (my employer if you’re new here) released it’s Voice Broadcast application into the iTunes store.  It’s pretty simple actually.

You choose some contacts, record a message (IfByPhone will call either your iPhone or any other phone you’d like).  Then the message gets sent out when you want it delivered.
I spend a lot of time driving in the car - without the ability to safely send emails or SMS messages.  And I tend to forget to do things.  Like pick up the milk.  I’ve tried using Jott with Sandy.  The idea being that I could call Jott, have them interface with Sandy (a reminder service).  But it doesn’t really work.  Generally, the transcription of my voice isn’t relaiable enough to pick up both the task and the time.   But that’s a convoluted solution for a reminder call.  So I plan on using this app for that just as soon as I get an iPhone.

You can read my post at IfByPhone on the application here.

Today was a slightly confusing. Phone Boy wrote a post on GigaOM about Voice APIs, asking “is there money in Voice APIs?” His premise:

But is simply providing an API to your telephony infrastructure enough to prompt the world to beat a path to your door? Don’t count on it.

Before I get to his post, a personal nit to pick. Every Voice 2.0 post outside of this blog (and possibly post on the subject.

Today, the news hit that Voice 2.0 platform player Ribbit is being bought out for $55 million by British Telecom.  Great work by the Ribbit team. Full disclosure: My employer is IfByPhone, which - roughly speaking - plays in the same space as Ribbit.

It’s not particularly clear why BT is making this move, particularly for such a premium.  TechCruch thinks it’s about building a competitor to GrandCentral.  GrandCentral was bought by Google, and has been languishing on the sidelines since. hogwash, and I agree with him.  An excerpt:

It doesn’t pass Occam’s razor: there’s a simpler reason why BT would buy Ribbit. If BT recognizes that their Enterprise customers will deploy communications enabled business process applications, and Ribbit has some 3,000 developers already, and it looks like Adobe Flash has more traction than (ick) SOAP… you get the picture.

I definitely agree that BT buying Ribbit to build a GrandCentral competitor makes little sense.  The consumer end of things, which really is where GrandCentral is right now, is going to be higher cost of entry, higher risk (because the market of paying customers simply doesn’t exist yet).  The real reason, and Thomas hits it on the head here, is that businesses are coming on board with the idea that they can add voice to their existing business processes.  And one of the limitations of Ribbit (the idea that you have to use Adobe Flex) goes away.  BT can just build a team of developers that will build these processes for their customers.

This is similar to what many bigger Telco companies (like a former employer of mine, West Corporation) is doing.  So it shouldn’t shock anyone that  a Telco is interested in a company that will make it easier for them to integrate further with their existing companies.  They’ve been losing out on a great deal of business in this area, and buying Ribbit is a pretty neat and clean solution to get in the game quickly.

Also Read: VoipSupply on the Ribbit deal.