Ifbyphone Blog

In the last couple days, there has been bad news for a couple Voice 2.0 startups, Jangl and TalkPlus.  There are people commenting on what this means for Voice 2.0: has the bubble burst?  What does the future hold for Voice 2.0 companies?

I feel bad for the people at Jangl and TalkPlus.  More or less, I’ve been in their shoes before.  I know how it feels, and it’s not pleasant.

But second, Voice 2.0 is poorly defined.  I consider IfByPhone to be a Voice 2.0 company in at least some ways.  But we are vastly different than both of these companies above and many other companies under the Voice 2.0 umbrella.  IfByPhone is sitting in the middle of a convergence of several different marketplaces, Click-to-call, Call routing, call tracking, voice broadcast, and IVR being just a few of them.

So, I for one, am going to suggest that we stop calling every new telephony feature or company or widget Voice 2.0.   Just becuase AT&T doesn’t offer it to their residential customers doesn’t make it part of the next wave.

For IfByPhone, I think the most appropriate term is Telephony Application Provider or TAP (I didn’t come up with the term, but I think it fits).  I think it’s pretty clear that there will be a huge marketplace for companies large and small to integrate voice into business processes and existing business applications.  And IfByPhone will be there at the forefront of that marketplace.