Because *any* VoIP service can be configured on-the-fly - Skype just happens to be the best available and largely free.
Consider how important context is to everything you do. If you're in a deli having a business meeting and you recieve a 2 gigabyte PDF file on your PDA, it's not going to be very helpful - you can't read it, and if you could, the form-factor of your device is inappropriate for the "context".
The same will soon be true for all forms of voice and video communications; richer forms of contextual communications will emerge that will occur based on specific contexts; location, current activity, and even time of day will determine how each communications devices handles a communique. Only VoIP-based system possess the agility necessary to meet your growing demands for communications contexts - i.e., able to support different behaviors that are sensitory to the context they see you in.
"How do you see it being used in realestate?"
If you were showing a home and a call came in to your cell phone, the best it could do is take a message - the worst, you interrupt the buyer to talm to another buyer.
What if your cell phone could take a message but also prepare an email on your behalf that directs the caller to a blog post you made last week about the property they are interested? What if your cell phone could call the customer back and play a podcast about the property they mentioned in the voicemail message? What if your voicemail offered prospects the ability to subscribe to a web feed of recent listings matching their interest - a feed that they could get on their calling device whether it happened to be a cell phone, a Skype phone on a notebook or desktop? And finally (but only because I'm out of time) what if your desktop could watch all voicemail activity and send a quick text (or MMS) message to the caller with your colorful business card, and a short video introducing your team (in the case of a newly recognized telephone number)?
Sounds far fetched indeed - and it would be pretty difficult to achieve these ideas with traditional cell phone services. With VoIP-based services, ideas like this are very easy to envision [technically] and relatively cheap to implement.
Web 2.0 is all about eliminating friction between people and information and machines and information -- VoIP is easily programmed, easily reconfigured in seconds, and able to participate on the same network that has engulfed the planet. All communications are activities are moving to the "IP" (Internet protocol) in VoIP - adopt it early and you'll suffer from the bleeding edge of new technology, but you'll also reap the rewards of early adoption.
Comments(3)