Facebook the Next Game-Changer in Telecoms ?

Facebook announced yesterday that they have opened up their XMP/Jabber backend to the public, enabling you to use your preferred Jabber client to chat with your Facebook friends.

Quote:

To make Facebook Chat available everywhere, we are using the technology Jabber (XMPP), an open messaging protocol supported by most instant messaging software, including iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda and more.

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=297991732130

For me this is a potential game-changer in telecoms, putting Facebook one integration step away (voice) from becoming one of the Worlds largest phone companies with 400 million users.

Alongside the likes of Twitter and Google, Facebook already own what is in my opinion the third killer app in the world of communications - the address book. This puts them in a solid position to start, as my friend Andy Abramson would say, "stealing minutes" away from the incumbent operators.

Facebook has already changed the face of communications in the wider sense. It's not a huge leap of imagination to see where voice can now be slotted in.

And if you did a Google search for "World's largest phone companies" and the result looked something like:-

1. Skype (500 million users)
2. Facebook (400 million users)

3. AT&T (120 million users)
4. BT (?)
etc

... would you be so surprised?

Or look at it this way. Facebook already has more than two billion chat messages being sent through its site every single day.

How many of those conversations transition to voice? Should Facebook facilitate that ?

Reply from andyk on Feb 11, 2010 - 08:15 PM

Quote:

And if you did a Google search for "World's largest phone companies" and the result looked something like:- 1. Skype (500 million users) 2. Facebook (400 million users) 3. AT&T (120 million users) 4. BT (?) etc ... would you be so surprised?

I certainly would.

That misses out the mobile companies, like China Mobile with over 500 million and Vodafone with over 400 million, and combined operations like Telefonica with about 270 million

and I bet they have proportionately a lot more revenue than Skype

Reply from dean on Feb 12, 2010 - 01:34 PM

Quote:

That misses out the mobile companies

Oh I'm sure there's quite a few missed. It wasn't meant to be a conclusive list which would be irrelevant to the point. Just replace it with "in the top 10" if you like.

Quote:

and I bet they have proportionately a lot more revenue than Skype

Don't mix up ARPU with APPU. APPU is the key (profit).

A very famous (but appears anonymous) statement made in the early 1980's was "Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity".

The mobile operators (and many fixed line POTS operators) have had to invest millions-billions on infrastructure cost (and in mobile cases spectrum licences).

That's where the disruptive element of voice on the internet really comes into play.

Cost to serve is one of the overhead elements that eats into the revenues of the vain. Skype is both profitable and a large influence on international minutes traffic churn.

Reply from mazilo on Feb 12, 2010 - 02:13 PM

Quote:

... would you be so surprised?

Not at all. I believe Google's Buzz + Google Voice will take over in no time, let alone Google super-fast broadband project when done.

Reply from satphoneguy on Feb 12, 2010 - 06:32 PM

with federation with gtalk and other xmpp we could see the start of traction for direct P2P calling for consumers with services other than skype. the question is whether yahoo, microsoft and other will open there IM networks for federation. this would be a real step to voice calling without PSTN interconnection.

Reply from dean on Feb 12, 2010 - 08:56 PM

I heard from Suzanne Bowen from DIDx that FaceBook were "...incognito at PTC & ITEXPO in black t-shirts and with IP communications interests".

Reply from dean on Feb 12, 2010 - 11:09 PM

Quote:

with federation with gtalk and other xmpp we could see the start of traction for direct P2P calling for consumers with services other than skype.

Wouldn't that be a great thing (for the consumer at least).

Quote:

the question is whether yahoo, microsoft and other will open there IM networks for federation.

Yes, that's the billion dollar question for me too.

Problem is, if you do, how would you monetize that service? At least with PSTN breakout you still have something you can charge for (with a margin on top, even if it is a dwindling one now).

I always thought the reason Facebook hadn't opened up that XMPP/Jabber backend was because they wanted the user on the web (keeps advertising revenues up). That clearly isn't the case, or isn't the case anymore.

So if the drive is to the desktop, and it's on open-standards (so you don't have to use a Facebook "client") then where is the money to support it and generate a profit going to come from?

My gut feeling says it's in the address book, in the long term. Somewhere (not quite sure where yet).

In the short-term I think it may still be PSTN break-out.

Reply from satphoneguy on Feb 13, 2010 - 03:55 AM

i am not so sure monetization is so important to the big internet players when it comes to IP telephony. they be willing to see it the way they do email and IM now, a sort of brand advertising/good will gesture. with a properly designed network they do not have to handle the RTP packets at least much of the time. i believe this would make it a less expensive platform to handle than email where they are responsible for storing all the data. if you look at google voice today you see google picking up the tab on the PSTN breakout. so a move to P2P calling would be monetization in the form of lower expense which at the end of the day could mean as much as increased revenue, at least for as much as the bottom line is concerned. i have been wondering if the real reason for not giving P2P VOIP a stronger push is that the internet players all see telecom as potential partners when it comes to the mobile apps, OS's and other services and therefore do not want to make moves that would upset the likes of AT&T, vodafone, etc.

i do see a day in the future when android has gtalk VOIP built in, windows mobile has live communicator and palm, RIM and others make deals with yahoo, aol and others. none of this will mean so much if we can only talk to those people with the same cell phone platforms and any third party clients will likely not work near as smoothly. that to me is why federation is so important. and the thing is that XMPP/Jingle may make the most sense in terms of an offering integrated with presence, IM and voice(and maybe video) all together. this could bring us to a place that we just have not gotten too with SIP(specifically SIP URI calling.) of course the XMPP/Jingle protocols spell out how to interconnect with SIP as well, so SIP would still be an option that makes sense especially for hardware based dedicated phones.

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