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The evolution of IP communications technology has wrought profound changes in the way communications networks and systems are architected and designed -- and is surely well on its way towards completely replacing our legacy, TDM infrastructure.

But aside from the disruption this technology is creating within the global telecommunications industry, and the wealth of new features and capabilities being delivered to users, little is being written or said about some of the profound changes occuring in user behavior and expectations as a result of these new capabilities.

For example, I'm sure many Skype users (and I expect members of other competing Web telephony cum "voice community" services) have received calls from complete and total strangers -- even without the "Skype Me" status selected that invites such serendipitous communications.
Recently, I received a surprise call from a student from Moldova looking to make some new friends in America and an opportunity to practice her English speaking skills, which turned out to be fairly decent. (I was surprised since my Skype status was set to "away", and as a result I was not expecting to receive any calls.)

At first, I was sort of taken aback, uncertain how to respond. OK, l'll admit it -- I was suspicious -- deeply suspicious. I wondered if this was some scammer, looking to perpetrate some nefarious crime. After a while, though, I started to realize that my hesistation to engage in conversation with a complete stranger was firmly tied to the old TDM telecom world, where you would NEVER, EVER dialup a stranger, except of course when misdialing a number. You'd certainly never try to engage a stranger in conversation -- they'd surely think you were some kind of kook, making a phony phone call, or worse, and just hang up.

And in addition to the social incorrectness of it all, the prospect of significant toll charges are a great inhibitor to making International TDM calls -- especially from somewhere like Moldova to the U.S.

It turned out she was quite fun and pleasant, and we had a great conversation. After spending a few minutes with her, I realized that she was a new Skype user and was simply enjoying her newfound Skypeness.  She was doing what is a normal -- and indeed encouraged -- practice in terms of the Skype culture. And it didn't hurt that the call was completely free.

Her excitement reminded me of the excitement I felt, when many years ago, I made a telephone ring in Moscow the day International circuits went live between the US and the Soviet Union (I'm sure I made it onto some government watch list as a result

So, it's clear that the open, opt-in communications culture of Skype and it's ilk is changing  social practices and people's behavior with respect to engaging in live, voice communications. There is a grand experiment occuring before our very eyes (and ears), and it's going to be quite interesting to see how it all plays out in the years ahead. And it raises some interesting questions -- especially about protecting our privacy -- in this brave new world.

What do you think? Have you had any amusing, interesting (or even scary) Skype moments you'd like to share?

Skype seems to have dominated the VoIP news and blogosphere today, with their announcement of a new $29.95 annual, "all you can eat" calling plan today. What makes it even sweeter is they are offering a 50% discount to those that sign up before Jan 31, 2007, and throwing in a gaggle of extra bonuses. Check out Tom Keating's lowdow and assessment of the goodies, here.

Unlike Tom, I think this whole move is positive and a sweet deal to boot, and although it may open the door a bit wider for competitors like Jajah and Raketu who are sticking to totally free calling plans, I'm not sure this is going to make the doors swing open that much more for them.

My colleague and blogger buddy Jon Arnold has also written up a great analysis of the announcement, and I agree with everything he has to say on the matter, so I defer to his own words.

The folks at blog VoIP Lowdown have come up with a great list of ten leading-edge VoIP, VoIM, IP and mobile applications we should all be keeping our eyes on -- apps that go WAY BEYOND plain vanilla VoIP calls. The writer -- the mysterious "ewriter" -- is definitely a person after my own heart.

The numbers are in for the first three quarters of 2006: According to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst and Young, venture capital firms have invested $455.5 million in 79 deals involving Web 2.0 companies -- more than double the deal flow of the same period in 2005.

The amount represents 28% of the $1.6 billion VCs have plowed into consumer technology firms, and the interest is no doubt due to froth created by the recent Google/YouTube and News Corp./MySpace deals and the hope to get a front row seat for the next great buyout or IPO.

Are we in tech bubble territory? A number of firms feel that too much money is chasing too few good deals, and that there is a sort of "lemming effect" in operation.

However, many still believe that there are still opportunities in the market, and I for one believe that one area that can help an up-and-coming Web 2.0 company distinguish itself in this increasingly crowded space is to integrate VoIP, Video and other IP communications capabilities within their social networking framework. The technology has the capability to act as superglue for an online community -- providing a foundation for incredibly rich collaboration and other applications.

I've written a bit about this juicy opportunity before, most recently in my Internet Telephony magazine Mind Share 2.0 column, VoIP Mash-Ups in a Web 2.0 World.

I'm sure there are a bunch of great examples of IP Comm/Web 2.0 combinations out there -- and I'm all ears if you know of any -- and if so, please feel free to comment!

This past Tuesday and Wednesday, I had the pleasure to moderate and speak on a number of panels with a number of well-regarded and incredibly knowledgeable individuals, including Jon Arnold, principal of J. Arnold and Associates; Ron Gruia, Principal Analyst and Program Leader Information and Communications Technology at market research firm Frost & Sullivan; Richard Grigonis, Executive Editor of the IP Communications Group at TMC; Andy Mercker, Director of Marketing at Sphere Communications; Ray Hernandez, Managing Partner at VC firm ROTH Capital Partners LLC; and Ken Camp, speaker, writer and consultant who also blogs about IP communications technology at IPadventures.com.

I want to thank all the above profusely for their time, invaluable insights and for making the Summit a truly enjoyable experience.

For a great review of the first session on "The State of Industry: Focus on the Corporate and Government Enterprise Marketplace", check out Richard Grigonis' article ITEXPO West 2006 Powers Up, State of the Industry Discussed.

Nasser Manesh, CTO of Frucall, attended a recent seminar at Google focused on Social Search, which included such Web 2.0 luminaries as Kevin Rose, founder of Digg and Joshua Schachter, founder of Del.icio.us.

Nasser was able to glean some interesting statistical tidbits from the session. Read his session summary here.

Readers of this blog know I'm a big fan of EQO, based in Vancouver, BC.

EQO made waves early on due to its innovative service/software that basically Skype-enabled a host of mobile phones so that users of these phones can access their Skype buddy list, and make and receive Skype calls.

Recent news from the folks up North is notable -- EQO has released the latest version of EQO Mobile, a product/service that delivers online communities to mobile phones, enabling users of social networks such as MySpace, Friendster, Tagworld, Hi5, Xanga and Multiply to exchange web-to-phone, phone-to-web and phone-to-phone text and picture messages with their online buddies. In addition, EQO Mobile now enable users to use AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! IM, GoogleTalk, Jabber, as well as Skype on any one of more than 300 mobile handset models from vendors including Nokia, Motorola, Palm, and Sony-Ericsson.

EQO Mobile incorporates rich new community features enabling users to add friends and see what they've posted from their mobile phone. It also allows users to include a call back phone number or IM screen name as part of an EQO message, enabling the recipient to start a conversation using a simple click-to-call or click-to-IM feature.

The new version of EQO Mobile is available for free at www.eqo.com.

By now I hope all of you have heard about the IP Communications Business Summit, a new workshop that's been added to the agenda at the upcoming Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO in San Diego.

In case you missed the email blasts, TMC and yours truly (RCG) are presenting this unique workshop to help educate the investment community -- including venture capitalists,
investment bankers, financial industry analysts, M&A specialists, angel investors and any other interested parties -- about the leading industry trends and market drivers in the hopes of ultimately identifying attractive IP communications companies.

The discussion will be feisty, informal, and hopefully fun and illuminating for everyone.

And since admission is free with any registration plan, you have one less reason to not check it out!

Summit Speaker Update:

We recently added notable industry analysts and bloggers to the panels, including Jon Arnold of J Arnold Associates, Ronald Gruia of Frost and Sullivan, and Ken Camp of IPadventures.com.

In addition, Ray J. Hernandez, Managing Director, Investment Banking at VC firm ROTH Capital Partners, LLC, has agreed to present a session described below:

Valuing Voice over IP Services:  A Public Market Perspective
October 10, 2006, 2:15 pm -- 3:00 pm

Certainly one of the most exciting things about the IP communications market is the growth of new businesses offering Voice over IP services.  Indeed, there is still a vast amount of untapped market potential in the industry, and the dramatic rebound of the economy together with renewed confidence in the industry’s prospects has helped the growth of Voice over IP services across all market sectors. As Voice over IP services providers build their businesses, they will want to know how much their businesses are worth.  In this session, you’ll learn about how Voice over IP is being valued in the public markets and what adds to and detracts from building value in a Voice over IP business.  

Some background on Roth Capital Partners:

Since 1984 Roth Capital Partners, LLC has been a leader and innovator in the small and micro cap markets.  Roth provides a full spectrum of investment banking services, including raising capital, research coverage, creating liquidity, trading and market making, merger and acquisition advisory services, sales support, and investor conferences.

Over the last ten years, Roth has raised over $8.7 billion for small and micro cap public companies and completed over 123 merger, acquisition and advisory assignments.  In 2005, Roth raised $1.7 billion for its clients, and the firm has been the leading placement agent in the U.S. over the last two years for the number of PIPE transactions, raising over a billion dollars.

If Mary Hodder, the brilliant mathematician CEO of Dabble, has anything to say about it, the answer is a resounding yes, and no...

Let me explain. Dabble -- currently in beta -- was founded with the singular mission to be the primary "search engine" of choice for videos from all over the Web. Dabble gathers video data from hundreds of hosting sites, as well as from tens of thousands of other websites, and then keeps a record of where Web-based videos are located, descriptions about the video, who made it, what it's about, how popular it is, and so on.

This record, called "metadata", makes it easy to search and find videos. But Dabble goes further than simply indexing this metadata -- and this is where similarities to Google end. The site also employs the power of social networking, where the community of Dabble members adds details and notes, corrects mistakes, and shares what's valuable to them about the media, enhancing the metadata in a massive team effort that goes far beyond what any one site can do alone.

Although you don't need to join Dabble to perform a video search, there are many benefits to becoming a Dabble member. With a Dabble membership, users can start collecting and organizing favorite videos. Wherever a user travels on the Web, they can quickly and easily import links to the videos they discover into their own personal Dabble collection. Members can also add their own comments and "tags" (keywords) to share with the member community, and they can organize videos into playlists, like all the videos about a favorite person or topic.

Because all the other Dabble members are organizing videos too, chances are they can find existing playlists in the Dabble community about whatever they're interested in, and find new videos that way.

So far, Dabble has added over 1.5 million videos to their database from more than 240 video hosting sites and thousands of individual users and other sites, and Mary expects the site to ultimately maintain records on the more than 15 million videos expected to be on the Web by next year. The company is also in high-level meetings with a bunch of 800-pound Web gorillas  that have an interest in licensing Dabble's services. Clearly, many see the incredible value that Dabble has created and how the company is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the IP video tsunami that's hitting the Web, and I wouldn't be the least surprised if the company quickly finds a deep-pocketed partner in the very near term.

Enterprising young teens (including my own son) eager to join in the Myspace.com festivities, have easily found a gaping loophole in the site's security measures: Although kids under 14 are "not allowed" to publish profiles, it seems that all an enterprising youngster needs to do in order to circumvent this restriction is to enter his age as something north of that demarcation point.

As a result, there are more than 3,000 91 year-old kids that have set up house on Myspace. And lord knows how many kids have registered under other inflated ages! Clearly, something needs to be done to correct this completely inadequate security arrangement. In my opinion, all children should be required to register on Myspace and other social networking sites only with the implicit consent of their parents or authorized adult guardian -- in an arrangement somewhat akin to co-signing for membership.

I know this position might be considered extreme by some, but I've heard my share of some fairly unsettling stories and ancedotes about unsavory characters trolling the waters of Myspace sending all kinds of inappropriate messages and photos to underage kids that managed to sneak under the rope and aren't old enough to know how to handle it (or savvy enough to know how to protect themselves online, such as making their profile private rather than public and therefore accessible by anyone trolling the site, or omitting all manner of personally identifiable information.)

As a concerned parent, I'm not interested in preventing my son from discovering the wonders of the Web, but I am keenly interested in making sure he is safe and sound when he is online.