Do you envisage a time when people will leave a voicemail for you on Facebook rather than on your landline?
Yes absolutely, I think for younger generation under 25 they would rather do it that way. It will be easier for them to be on social network than have a phone with a list of numbers to program in. They prefer to buy a phone and be connected with network where all their information controls are setup. On a social network you can, for instance, prioritize voicemails. And as an extension device or a UI to social networks, all those preferences are stored on your phone as well.
How will OpenSocial affect the take up of your services?
Very positive. Remains to be seen how quickly OpenSocial deployment will become reality.
Do you think OpenSocial like any other standard will commoditize or homogenize social networking experience? Because you will get the same features and applications on all social networking sites?
What has happened to every standard in the past is that you propose and put a standard up there and everybody agrees to it and starts to implement it. But in reality every stake holder has their interest in their mind as well and tries to differentiate from everyone else. So it doesn’t become a uniform experience in the end. My prediction is if you are as big as MySpace you have incentive to provide OpenSocial and proprietary extra extensions.
In text blogs you scan and select which part you want to read. With voice you are running blind. You don't know which are the interesting bits to jump to?
There are pros and cons to every service. One advantage with our kind of services is that I would much rather listen to my Mom than read her text?
Voice spam is a growing threat. Could there be a danger of voice spam with your system and if so what are you doing to handle that?
It is going to come out in our next announcement. We are doing some basic community policing. We can’t monitor everything but our policy is to give the user the tools and control so that they can get the necessary protection they want.
Services such as yours and those from Jaxtr, Jangl, and Rebtel give out numbers for each user. What if I have 20 friends in 20 different countries. I would then have 20 different numbers. Does not sound like a graceful way of doing things?
It is true at Snapvine you get numbers for all your friends, like local numbers. But that is not all what we do. You can dial a number on our website and can enter a contest and all your friend through, say, OpenSocial capabilities with a single click on their directory can join in. That it what value added services are all about. Our subscribers can have a single number to contact 20 friends at a time.
The voice blogs and voice comments and other voice related stuff that you do is largely user generated content. So I guess we can call your application a Voice 2.0 application. Apart from user generated content, what other criteria does the market have to label an application a Voice 2.0 application?
I think services that converge web and mobile. Things that converge devices giving you more control over who you talk to when and where. When people use the term Voice 2.0 they are typically talking about find me follow me type of call control applications and other enhanced self-management that are outside carrier controls.
There are people who talk better than they write. Voice blogs could be ideal for them. But would it not be nicer if you were able to transcribe that voice blogs for them?
We are planning that feature in the future.
Some companies like Spinvox let you post your voice blog in form of text. But they use a speech-to-text engine. That is not an accurate conversion method. What are your comments?
There are plenty of companies that are experimenting with speech recognition for voice blogs. It is good for certain situation but you can get into lot of trouble if you don’t get accurate translation. However it is a convenient way if the text can be searched etc.
Another service that you can enable is citizen journalism by integrating your application into a news site that takes reports from general public. Am I thinking along the right lines?
Yes that is a great application. We had it implemented during the recent fire that took place in Santiago. The local newspaper was using Snapvine for that. Couple of reporters were giving hour by hour update of the fire and interviewing people and that was being published on website. Because of the mobility and voice it was a nice supplement for reporters. Reporting can be informal and up to date.
You have worked at OpenWave. Did you ever work with Satish Dharamraj at OpenWave who recently sold his email messaging company Zimbra to Yahoo for 350 million dollars?
Yes I have met him but he worked in a completely different department.
Did Snapvine application idea develop at OpenWave?
Openwave was top vendor for mobile industry. For me inspiration that drove to formation of Snapvine was how to use VoIP technology and provide a service that can work for any phone anywhere and market as an internet service rather than market as a carrier service, which is the main problem in mobile applications today. The other thing is that the entire mobile industry is focussed on data services which is fine but it is ignores the fact that voice is number one application and you already have everything desgned for you. You just have to know how to use.
By September 2007 you had 5m downloads. Is there any updated information available?
That is the latest number we are publishing at the moment.