Voice discuss coming to Facebook
Look out, Facebook users : Here comes voice chat. Sometime in the following couple of weeks, the social network's tens of millions of users will start to be ready to have fine quality voice conversations, even as its 3rd party developers are able to start including voice in their applications.
Vivox plans to supply free dial-in numbers which will permit anyone to call into an existing conversation.
The new technology is not being offered by Facebook itself, however. Instead, it's from Vivox, a Boston-based company that provides the integrated voice service for virtual worlds like second Life and EVE Online, and which already has more than 15,000,000 users worldwide .
The service, which is presently in closed beta, will permit Facebook users to have high-fidelity chats with any one on their buddies list. Each user , however , will have to download Vivox's plug-in. But once installed, the service works virtually elegantly with Facebook, and is designed for all kinds of things from one-to-one talk with massive group discussions.
Further, even non-Facebook users will be in a position to take part, as Vivox plans to offer free dial-in numbers that will allow anyone to call into an existing conversation, much as is possible today with call-in telephone conferences.
perhaps just as importantly, according to Vivox co-founder Monty Sharma, the company is making its technology available to any third-party Facebook application developer, suggesting just about any app, from games to resources, can have a voice part.
for now, it isn't clear what percentage of Facebook's users will decide to adopt Vivox's technology, and for the moment, at least, Facebook is not concerned in any way in promoting the new service. But while some folks may decide that they do not want to employ a tool that needs an add-on, many others may actually find that it's worth the difficulty in order to be in a position to easily start a talk that rivals, or even betters, telephone call quality.
one individual who may be an early adopter is Charlene Li, a well known social media consultant, and the co-author of the book Groundswell.
'I would ( use voice service on Facebook ),' Li asserted,'because I see it as a continuum of communications with the people i want to stay in touch with.'
'It is about time,' Pirillo announced. 'I assure you this is going to bite into Skype.'
For Pirillo, the Vivox system will supply a valuable motivation for Facebook users to streamline their buddies lists since it's likely that they won't want to be getting voice discuss invites from people they have friended but might know only peripherally.
'When these tools come about,' Pirillo said,'it becomes less valuable ( to have too many friends ) and really promotes a cleaner ecosystem.'
superb for shops To Li, giving 3rd party Facebook developers the power to integrate voice discuss into their applications may mean a gigantic victory for shops. She pointed out that a firm like Overstock.com may find it very valuable to put out a Facebook app with voice built-in--without having to build the voice system themselves--because it would give folk a method to efficiently chat with their mates about products they see.
'Retailers don't have to put in chat themselves,' Li recounted. 'They can just put in Facebook chat. That is's where it begins to get very interesting.'
And to Pirillo, the ability for Facebook friends to have a voice chat during, say, a game of Scrabble, is a particularly'smart' creativity that suggests users can streamline the amount of different tools they're running at the same time.
To be sure, Vivox's offering is not the first to make voice possible for Facebook users, though it may well be the most seamless.
Other options have included Equals' Party Line, which offers group chat for at least five folks, and, of course, a work-around like Skype.
Vivox disagrees that its technology rises above anything more available today because of its scope and scalability. For one, the Vivox system has been proven on services like second Life and EVE Online -- and is preparing to be built into a series of online electronic arts games, starting with Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight -- and has been shown to support thousands of simultaneous users on a single channel.
