Profit from IM and VoIP?

November 8, 2005

FaceBridge Research announced a plug-and-play solution for IM/VoIP networks and portals to profit from IM/VoIP service. According to FaceBridge, "What's been missing is the ability of any individual user to bill for their time while communicating with one or more other users over a standard IM/VoIP network. In other words, if I'm a lawyer or a "life coach" or a psychic or an "adult entertainer" or anything else, I should have the option to charge by the minute for my time communicating with other users."

An interesting concept indeed. Instead of pay-per-minute 1-900 psychic & sex phone numbers they aim to bring that model to IM and VoIP. Of course, there already are very successful sex sites that incorporate pay-as-you-go video streaming often with audio/VoIP. Not that I would know anything about that sort of thing. Of course, this particular model aims to bring "pay to IM & talk" to the masses instead of just the sex/porn industry. I should mention that there are already tons of websites that let you post your problem, such as a programming issue and then people will bid on solving your problem or you set the bidding price. One example is GoogleAnswers. You then have to pay the lowest or first bidder if they help you solve your issue.

The problem with these websites is that they are simply text and graphics online. Some IM or even voice and video integration would make it a killer app. Hmmm, maybe I should make a prediction right now that Google will add Google Talk to Google Answers with voice, video, and collaboration capabilities. Online consulting could be a huge revenue source for Google, so if they make Google Answers "the" place for bidding on problems and of course they take a cut of the revenue.

In any event, FaceBridge's system allows individual users of any IM/VoIP network to charge each other for time spent communicating. For instance, one AIM user may charge $1.99/minute to be reached by another AIM user.

The FaceBridge system requires no changes to IM/VoIP networks and no changes to user software or behavior.

Users communicate using their normal IM/VoIP client software and automatically exchange payments while doing so. For each paid communication, the service provider collects a transaction fee.

According to FaceBridge, "With voice and video over IM/VoIP networks, paid communications are a viable business model for professionals, educators, musicians, entertainers, and many others. Once people realize they can profit this way, they'll find many ways to use this hybrid of communication and commerce."

The first public website to use FaceBridge technology can be seen at www.flavorsofa.com. This site caters to Apple Macintosh users of AOL's instant-messaging service (AIM).



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» Ether enables pay per advice service leveraging VoIP from VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Back in November 2005 I wrote about FaceBridge and their "profit from IM/VoIP" model. which enables lawyers, technical people, and other professions to "charge" for their time using their favorite IM or VoIP client. Yesterday, I men... [More]

Tracked on March 1, 2006 1:23 AM

Comments to Profit from IM and VoIP?


  1. Aswath :
    November 8, 2005 11:49 AM

    There doesn't seem to be a way to contact them via iChat/AIM. Is it ironic or I missed some obvious link somewhere?


  1. Tom Mornini :
    November 9, 2005 12:47 AM

    We're available via the FlavorSofa website (for free) as tmorniniproxy (AIM) and flavorsofalance (AIM). We're both iChat AV users.

    Additionally, we're available directly as tmornini and lwalley2002.

    Thanks for pointing this out. We'll include this in future releases and update the web site as well.

    Tom Keeting, thanks for picking up our press release. You hit the nail on the head in terms of what we do and where we see it headed. The adult analogy is what everyone comments on, but we see a much wider professional audience.

    A huge difference, of course, is that our system works over standard IM/VOIP networks and not via a Flash or Java based browser plugin. The big difference we see is direct integration with the IM/VOIP systems' natural presence abilities. A vendor's customers can immediately see their availability without visiting a web site.

    FaceBridge technology is entirely separate from the FlavorSofa demo site. We created it so people could easily try the technology in the wild and get a taste of what's possible and how smooth the billing mechanism is.

    Someday, separate tracking of time for professional communications will be a thing of the past.


  1. FlavorSofa Lance :
    November 9, 2005 4:02 AM

    Hi,

    Just added our FlavorSofa free AIM addresses to the home page. Sorry they weren't there already!

    --- Lance


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