August 6th, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on August 6th, 2006.
Online advertising spending will reach $16.7 billion in 2006 according to research firm eMarketer. Google and Yahoo! are the two biggest players, with 23% and 19% of the market respectively, with a variety of other services collecting the other $10 billion this year. Advertising networks are popping up every week, looking for their own slice of the available millions through group targeting, niche marketing, and interactive formats.
The past week saw the introduction of new advertising networks from Adify, Automattic's WordPress.com, and FeedBurner. Om blogged about Adify yesterday.
Any advertising network needs to have enough inventory and targeting to cover their client sites. Large FM Publishing sites such as Digg and GigaOm might run through ad inventory from one network quickly, requiring the sites to serve ads from multiple networks. Advertising sales teams are a limiting factor in the growth of ad networks, and there are only so many talented individuals to go around. Is there a shortage of advertising talent in our new Web economy?
Om now relies on advertising full-time to run his new startup. We run through a few different advertising scenarios in this podcast, including ad-free memberships, in an attempt to better define the current marketplace and the options available to webmasters.
This week's PodSession, Slicing the Advertising Pie, is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Ever since YouTube’s CEO Chad Hurley participated in Herb Allen’s annual Sun Valley media mogulfest, there has been much speculation about who will acquire the young online video phenom. If the chatter in the blogosphere is a reliable indicator, many believe it will be Rupert Murdoch.
After all, with MySpace under his belt, it’s certainly logical for him to want to combine his 80% market share of social networking with YouTube’s 60% market share of online video… giving him clear dominance within the rising social media industry. But it’s not likely to happen, and here’s why.
If rumors are true and YouTube is valuing itself at $1 billion, they have essentially out-priced themselves for Murdoch. As I experienced personally when I negotiated the sale of Delphi Internet to Murdoch, he prefers to use hard cash as his deal currency, not News Corp stock (maintaining his ownership interest and avoiding dilution are key drivers). Therefore, the prospect of laying out $1 billion in cash for an operation with negative cash flow, particularly after spending nearly $600 million for MySpace, is a highly unlikely scenario. And even he wants to, Wall Street won’t let him risk his balance sheet without repercussions.
The only practical way for Murdoch to go after expensive deals like YouTube or FaceBook would be to create an alternative form of currency… by spinning off Fox Interactive Media (“FIMâ€). With FIM publicly traded, he would then have the currency to do such bubble-type valuation deals on an apple-to-apple basis. I’m sure Murdoch would love to have YouTube, and it must be frustrating to have your hands tied.
For this reason, I would attach a very high probability of an FIM spin off. So with Murdoch effectively out of the picture in the near term, which of the other media conglomerates like Viacom/MTV or the Internet giants like Google are possible suitors. From the perspective of Wall Street, the most likely contender is NBC Universal.
With parent company GE sporting a market cap of $340 billion, structuring a billion-dollar deal, using stock as currency, is actually quite feasible. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that NBC’s recent promotional deal with YouTube is essentially a form of due-diligence for an acquisition.
Robert Young is a serial entrepreneur who played a major role in the invention & commercialization of the world’s first consumer ISP, Internet advertising (pay-per-click ads), free email, and digital media superdistribution.
Written by Robert Young on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Rumors are buzzing that someone is about to snap-up Vancouver, Canada-based Hamachi, a peer-to-peer application we like a lot, and wrote about them over a year ago. We have not been able to bet any more details, and are treating it as a low intensity rumor for now. These days the company describes itself as “Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking application.” It comes in all three flavors - Linux, OS-X and Windows.
Written by Om Malik on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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The traditional PBX is dying a death by million cuts. Open source Asterisk has already bottled PBX into an easy to download, but slightly hard to configure open software package. Thought it is not a major issue anymore. There are tons of other options. And now comes another player, this time from Belgium with their own twist on a SoftPBX. Checkout SIPCat, and come back with your thoughts.
Written by Om Malik on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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With Apple’s WWDC hours away, the rumor machine is in full gear. There is a lot of speculation about iPhone, the fabled Apple phone that may (or may not) change the wireless handset world. Chances of its appearance this week are slim, but the clock is ticking for Apple. So while we debate all that, here is another more realistic rumor.
Our friends at Engadget point to this report, about Alpha Networks, aTaiwanese company is prepping a GPhone, a WiFi phone based on Google Talk. Google sources say that branded hardware is part of the Google Talk plans, and a way to grow its ecosystem. These kind of devices would help GTalk get market traction. Or as Andy says, “squarely taking AIM at Skype.”
Written by Om Malik on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Mobile people are all abuzz about Jaiku, that marries social networking with mobile presence. They call it rich presence.
Rich presence on Jaiku includes an IM-style away line, your phone profile (ring volume, vibrate), location (country, city/region, neigborhood), Bluetooth devices around, upcoming calendar events, and the duration how long your phone has been idle.
Though it works only on Series 60 phones (though not on S60 version 3) it has some serious potential of keeping track of your friends and family. Nice app to build a micro social network. You can put your presence button on your blog, MySpace page or whatever. I still think it is best suited for on the go presence. We will follow these guys closely. Meanwhile, try it out and let us know what you think. (via)
Written by Om Malik on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Deutsche Telekom (
T-Com) launched the "fixed-mobile convergence" product
T-One. With the dual-mode mobile phone TC 300 a customer may make calls via GSM and WLAN.
The core of the product is the TC 300 dual mode mobile phone, featuring a GSM phone, a WLAN client and a VoIP SIP client. The WLAN client is WEP, WPA and WPA2 enabled. It works at home, at T-Com hotspots and also on every WLAN Hotspot. Since I did not see any browser, you may eventually not use it on hotspots where you need a logon. I did not find any hint yet who is producing the TC 300. People already having a hands-on experience complain the battery drain if you use W-LAN.
The rest of the product is hastily put together from various other products. It comes in two options: one for a normal fixed network connection and one together with DSL.
With the DSL option you get also a VoIP account from T-Com and a 032 number. The "convergence" is done by call forwarding. Incoming calls to the 032 number can be forwarded on no-answer after 20 secs or on busy to the mobile number (which you pay).
You may also use the phone without DSL. In this case you use VoIP only locally at home from the basestation (kind of DECT replacement). In this case you may also use it with your geographic number.
After loosing 500.000 customers in the first quarter of 2006 alone mainly to mobile providers and also to VoIP, T-Com finally decided to react. The question is if the product is good enough.
Written by VoIP and ENUM on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Only 15 years ago on August 6th 1991, Tim Berners-Lee from CERN presented the HTTP code in the usenet group alt.hypertext to the public.
Written by VoIP and ENUM on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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The Toronto Star has a
lengthy feature today looking at how the Internet has progressed since
Tim Berners-Lee introduced his Web protocols in 1990/1991. In general, the story is fairly down on the Web and its ability to create or inspire change or solutions to major issues such as AIDS or cancer. (Notwithstanding the impact of e-commerce, social networking, e-mail, blogging, etc.) The story features several quotes from Berners-Lee, which appear to have come from interviews he gave a few years ago, including one with MIT's
Technology Review magazine in Oct., 2004. The story also takes a subtle run at the blogsophere - describing bloggers as "online diarists", and offers up a quote from the Globe & Mail's media writer Rick Salutin, who says the "main qualification for blogging is you failed to get a mainstream media job."
Update: For some other views on the where the Web is headed, check out this story on the
BBC and
Read/Write Web. The
BBC also has a story on how the Web emerged
Written by Mark Evans on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Here's a Sunday morning ethical issue to chew on based on a true story. A women comes into a busy drugstore in downtown Toronto to ask the pharmacist a question. After she leaves without buying anything (no customer information is collected through a credit card transaction), the pharmacist discovers the woman has left behind her 60GB video iPod with music and family photos on it. Several weeks have past and the iPod remains unclaimed - perhaps because the women is unable to remember where she left it. So, what do you do? Do you take over "ownership" of the iPod given it's unlikely it will ever be reclaimed? And, if so, what do you do with the 12GB of music and photos on the iPod that belonged to the woman who lost it? Do you just use the other 48GB just in case the iPod owners shows up one day?
I'm not sure but the ownership issue could be resolved if the iPod owner registered it with Apple/iTunes. If I remember the process correctly, you need to provide a serial number located on the back of iPod during the registration process. Perhaps the pharmacist could send an e-mail to Apple, which could then track down the owner and re-unite her with the iPod. If anyone has any suggestions, pass them along.
Written by Mark Evans on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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