From scratch

Had a thought.
I doubt it is original.
Here goes.

•

VoIP has had two waves.

The first VoIP wave (1990s-2003) was mired in POTS emulation, right down to digital versions of handsets, dialing with phone numbers, and switching modeled on telephone switchboard operators. The only thing abandoned was the rotary dial.

The second wave started with Skype in 2003. Skype showed everyone you could wrap telephony in Instant Messaging clothes. Yet rivals followed Skype’s path without innovating the user experience. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook, and MySpace have all built voice into their IM. Skype still tweaks their UI, but IM remains Skype’s go to model.

VoIP’s second wave is as stuck in an old world view as the first.

••

So here’s our thought experiment.

How would you design live streaming conversation for the first time, starting now, from scratch?

Imagine we didn’t have landlines or mobiles or video conferencing or anything. Just a world of text (blogs, texts, emails, tweets, etc.) and asynchronous rich media (YouTube, Hulu, TV, radio, podcasts, vlogs).

Talking live to another person will be a radical reform. But you’d invent all the elements of live talk within the prevailing frames of reference, using familiar designs.

Your designs will reflect the intensely social nature of today’s life: at home, at work, at play.

You’d leverage existing application platforms on every consumer device.

You’d address using the many existing namespaces. Betty@Bebo, Nik@Nike, Frank@Facebook.

You’d assume people want to talk across namespaces; the idea of being stuck within just one (@Skype)would be silly.

You’d embrace our TiVo‘d world, shifting time and space with live pause, rewind, fast-forward, and skipping ahead/behind. You’d expect software to learn from behavior, getting better at recommendations, tuning itself for your convenience and satisfaction.

You’d facet identity, letting each person show the face they choose to each of their publics.

You’d assume what can be recorded should be recorded, and put to use on behalf of the parties to a conversation.

You’d know that metadata has as much value as the data it describes. So you’d collect it, mine it, and make it available to users and your users’ agents. 

You’d have large scale APIs because every business not only sells directly to users but is also a feature in other products.

The experiences you’d design, the business models you’d evolve, the communities you’d foster, would be completely of these times.

•••

This has all been about the What.

But Why?

What is your cause today?

Your purpose: 

Add immediacy, vividness, and intimacy to existing relationships.

Add dimension, light, sound and rhythm to the placid spew of tweets and the barrage of blogs and email.

Provide a new space on the net for the intensity you’ve only found in face-to-face talk.

To imbue shopping and ecommerce with the interplay live conversation can bring.

To bring nuance and fluidity back to conversation.

To bring people together in the most human ways possible.

To help us connect, bond, and trust each other.

You believe the simple act of talking, however we talk, defines our greatest relationships.

You believe the world is a better place in every way when people put down their keyboards, mice and touch screens and simply talk.

••••

So there.

From scratch.

For what it’s worth.

Heal the world.

A little VoIP 3.0 manifesto in time for Ramadan, the High Holy Days, Labor Day and Back To School.

Love,

Phil

Photo: By Ian Bailey-Mortimer