Om Malik has a post about an Indian startup that's promoting VoicePHP, which it's pushing as a way to integrate voice with Web apps that's simpler than VoiceXML, which would be the current default choice. There's some discussion in the comments about which is better for accomplishing the integration, VoiceXML or VoicePHP, but one commenter cuts to the heart of the matter:
May I know what problem are they trying to solve with this? Target customer ? Business case?
Nobody ever actually gets around to answering those questions, either in the post or in any of the other comments (at least as of this writing). And it's funny that they don't, because the buzz around that neck of the blogosphere recently has been whether or not VOIP, meaning primarily carrier VOIP, is, to use the technical term, "dead." Well, assuming that a technology works in the first place, it won't live or die based on anything other than whether there's a business case and a reason for it to exist. And the "VOIP is dead" camp in this argument have basically said as much.
Om calls out some various implementations of a similar VoiceXML-based capability, and they're predictably annoying: voice(sneak) with its precious use of the parenthesis, promises you
the newest, most wicked-sweet way to keep in touch with people (or "peeps", if you will). Don't want to (or have time to) talk? Don't want the bad karma that comes from breaking up with your significant other via text message? (sneak) your point across!
voice(sneak) allows you to send voice messages up to 2 minutes in length to anyone (well, anyone with email), any time.
voice(sneak) allows you to send voice messages up to 2 minutes in length to anyone (well, anyone with email), any time.
Apparently voice(sneak) also integrates with Twitter, the value of which is apparently that, "Tweeting 'I'm listening to a totally bad-ass new band!' is nowhere near as good as letting your friends HEAR the band."
Honestly, does this kind of marketing even work on kids? I thought they were savvier than that.
Anyway, if you were me, and you wanted to sneak your point across to one of your peeps, and you decided that the karmically correct way to do it was to get a voice message into their email in-box, what you would do is record a .WAV file and email them the .WAV file. You could actually do that now, and you wouldn't need to sign up for your 87th social networking site.
I've been trying to thrash out these business-case ideas in the VoiceCon eNews for this week, which I've got to go finish now. My thesis is that voice just isn't as valuable to consumers as it is to enterprises, especially consumers talking to other consumers. If the target demographic for your product is people who need to break up with their significant others and want to do it electronically but would feel tacky about texting it, you may want to re-think your business plan.
