Yahoo! Keynote at ITEXPO

Notes from ITEXPO posted from my Blackberry:

Brad Garlinghouse blew away the audience today when he talked about a quarter of a billion people having access using IM now that MSN Messenger works with Yahoo! Messenger. Every day there are 4 times more IM messages on the Yahoo! IM network as AT&T carries.

Brad does not think VoIP will kill the phone business like people predict. He thinks user behavior is tough to change. I agree with this last point. Brad mentioned VoIP 2.0 and personalization. He also mentioned how Web 1.0 evolved to Web 2.0. He sees this evolution happening in VoIP. I agree with this and my column in the November issue of ITMAG discusses this in detail.

He thinks VoIP 1.0 has limited appeal. We need rich applications. Yahoo! Sees Voice 2.0 as omnipresent. It is communications over IP. Not just VoIP. He also mentioned click to call in web search is coming soon. Devices are colliding. Cameras are phones, etc.

Yahoo! Sees applications colliding as well. Collisions occur and we can use this opportunity to make things easier for users. Presence needs to be more than on or off. We can't depend on users for this. We need apps to be aware of what is happening as well.

Brad says this time convergence is real. We are giving users what they want. Don't ask them to change their behavior. User complexity drives people away. Standalone does not win. The marathoner wins the IP Communications race.

Another item of interest is that SBC voicemail customers can soon see voicemail on Yahoo! Mail. This is a new opportunity for a phone company to add value. Brad exclaimed "Let's make voice part of the Internet. Not just on Yahoo!"