When will a cool voip company team up with SocialUrl?

SocialUrl is a nice site for storing and handling your online identity. You fill in information about your existing social networks, so that your friends and visitors can see your full Internet identity (what's my name on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, do I have a blog).
It's also a social network which is pretty fun. Reminds me of old "Who watches the Watchmen" comic. Will there be a social network where you can include you SocialUrl identity?
Also, apparently SocialUrl is a site driven by a couple of very nice college students. At least that's my impression from some conversation with their founders.

Anyway, except for the fact that it was fun that Linus "the social marketer" at Rebtel turned up on their first page when I created the screenshot above, it's an obvious and great idea behind SocialUrl. Looking at myself, I'm registered at many different networks and have lots of friends from different social contexts. I want a better overview of both my connections and my own profiles, and that, in some ways, is achieved with SocialUrl.

Another thing I would like to achieve is to reach my contacts and friends at the appropriate platform at every given time. If they are very active users on Facebook, and I want to send a postcard "hello, how are you these days", I want to send the message to Facebook. If I want to reach a person fast, it would be nice to know if it's phone, mobile text message, msn or email to use.
I want to use the right message type for each message context.

The coupling to Web2.0 voip services is obvious - Some of the people I know very well, some I don't know and many are abroud. To be able to store all my connections in one place, and make or receive "anonymous" calls from people I don't know, or public calls from people I know, is all possible with service like SocialUrl connected to the voip service. Most of the functionality exist already, as widgets for blogs or social networks, so it wouldn't take a to big effort to reach my Utopian communication ideas. You can even spell it in a three letter word - API.

So the conclusion is, work together with a network as SocialUrl or create an open API! That's right, you heard me. Create that open API now!

The possibilities for great communication are endless - the success factor in most cool startups is to what degree the startup can fulfil peoples need for communication!

Why I like Rebtel, Jajah, EQO and their likes!

I get a few recommendations on different voip operators now that I've written a couple of posts on web2.0 voip services. And I am impressed of both services and the ideas that companies as Rebtel, Jajah and EQO offers! I think like this:

• If it's possible, I want to do all my communication with my cellphone. I love java applications since it adds value to my cellphone usage, and also because the mobile browser is really crappy (well opera is pretty good, but my experience is that custom written java apps for mobiles is far better than a mobile web page).
  
• A unique number for every contact, that I can store in my ordinary contact list is the best way to make me happy!
  
• If mobile phones is not an option, or way more expensive than landlines, I'm willing to use my land line
  
• I think it's great to use web applications to set my preferences - It's easier that way than on a cellphone. Every tool should be used for what it's best at.
  
• I'm willing to use web applications to place calls if the price is much lower than that I get with a service where I don't have to use the web service.
  
• I like widgets where I can make it possible for people to reach me, without giving them my real phone number.
  
• I expect pretty OK sound quality from my calls.
  
• I don't want to download any new applications to my computer. Remember, I'm a web2.0 guy believing in the web application revolution. Actually, a downloadable executable will actually stop me from trying a service.
  
• I don't want to call with my computer. That means I need extra gadgets like headphones and microphones - I already have a phone for that.
  
• Value adding features are a great plus. A nice example of this is the Facebook app from Rebtel.
  
• I don't care about text message services
  
• Open API's would be cool - imagine all 3rd party solutions that would be created for you! But I haven't seen that yet.
  
• Ok, I lied about downloadable executables. I would try an app if it was an Adobe Air app.
  

What do you think? How do you think when it comes to services like these?

I've added Rebtel's Facebook application!

And I think this might have a big impact on Rebtel! It's a great feature and I now I'm waiting for the Rebtel blog application.

I will try it out for a while and come back with a somewhat longer report of my Rebtel / Facebook experience. To find the Facebook application, just grab it on from my Facebook profile.

My first EQO.com experience

Now I've tested my EQO account a couple of times and my experience as a user is so far not very convincing:

* The sound quality is not very good. I've tried a large number of voip solutions earlier, and I'd say that EQO's sound quality place itself somewhere in the middle, not the worst quality, but certainly not the best.
* A few times the sound is breaking up. You probably know what I mean, if you are long time voip users.
* Calls has been disconnected a few times. There's a chance that the call termination has happened when my mobile looses contact with the EQO-site, but I don't really care, disconnected calls are not acceptable to me.
* EQO was really easy to install and it imported all contacts from my phone without any problems.
* It's easy to find and to use the contact list with EQO, they've done a great job there.
* The msn messenger client is really good! Far better than other [java based] clients that I've tried.
* The client looks very good!

So my conclusion so far is that the client is really good, but the quality of calls was disappointing.

Now, this is a first impression, so the overall impression might be different. What is your impression of EQO?

EQO.com - it's crowded out there...

Once again a I was informed about another voip operator with Internet and Mobile applications.
This time it's EQO.com, which has a slightly different packaging and business model for the same technique as Rebtel, Jaxtr and Jajah.

As with the others, EQO gives you the opportunity to call friends abroad via a local number. You call EQO's number, they use voip-based calling for the country-to-country part, and uses a local number in the foreign country. That way they can keep rates lower than traditional operators, since traditional operators are well known to overcharge for international calls (just as they did with long distance calls until competing smaller firms offered low price long distance calls. After a while the traditional operators lowered the rates on long distance calls. Some of the competing smaller firms had by then become large enough to remain a competitor, some was bought by the larger companies, and some went out of business. It's market economy, guys ;-) ).

Anyway, EQO offers that service, and it does so through a java applet that you install on your cellphone. Once installed, the application will download your regular contact list from your phone to EQO, and you then make regular calls to your contacts. If the contact is in your country, the java applet will make a regular call to the contacts regular number. In that case, nothing else will happen than that you send and receive some data to the EQO service. If the contact is abroad, the applet will create a call to a local number that you get from EQO, and you are just charged for the local area phone call by your normal carrier, and for the international call by EQO. As in my case, when my local calls are free of charge, I will only be charged by EQO. That's pretty nice.

If your contact is also a registered EQO user and has the app started, the call will be free of charge! Nice one, EQO.
Some other nice features of EQO is that you can send text messages and go online to online messaging services as MSN, and that your contact list is stored at EQO.

The biggest advantage with EQO is that you don't need to learn any new numbers and that you don't need a computer to use their service.

So what's the downside? I'd say that the main disadvantage is that you need to download and run a special app in order to use the service, and that your friends has to do the same as well as having an EQO compatible phone, if you want to place totally free international calls.

I'd say that EQO is worth a try if you like mobile applications, but Rebtel, Jaxtr and Jajah is just as good choices.

Come back to this blog in a week or so, then I will have tried these different services and then I can say which service I prefer.

EQO.com

Jaxtr - Voip with a twist

After my previous post on Rebtel and Jajah Megan commented telling me to check Jaxtr out. So I did that today.
Jaxtr is pretty cool and they do most of the things that Rebtel and Jajah does.
Jaxtr functionality as far as I've understood:
* People can call you for free or at local call rates from all over the world (or at least from 51 countries)
* Your friends get a local number to call you that they can dial on any ordinary phone.
* Some free minutes each month to be called by anyone (in my case, with a swedish cellphone, 6 minutes)
* Friends on some social networks as Facebook and MySpace can call you from the site directly, and still use their regular phone.
* Visitors on your blog can call you using a similar widget, and you never need to show your phone number to the world.

So far it all sounds great, but the service has some downsides as well:
* You "pay" with Jaxtr credits when you receive calls to a regular phone or mobile phone.
* You get Jaxtr credits from recruiting friends to the service, or by simply buying them. Right now the buying process isn't fullt functional and I couldn't find any rates specified anywhere.

The people over at Jaxtr has done a really good job to make widget integration on your social networks easy, and it is also very easy to invite friends from different sources (as gmail and hotmail). I'm a bit impressed of that functionality, if I ever started a voip company, I would definitely try to make inviting and social network integration as easy.

I also like the thought of being able to be reached by readers or visitors without having to give away my own phonenumber. Right now I couldn't find a timefilter for that service, which might be a problem if you have readers in another country, I don't think I'd be fun to talk to in the middle of the night. On their infopage they wrote about the timefilter, so I guess they'll implement that function soon.

What I don't like about Jaxtr is the payment plan. I don't want to be charged for receiving calls, since I can't really control how much I am called (ok, I can filter people and point my Jaxtr account to a voicemail, but I can't control how high demand it will be for calling me).
I also don't like it that the service only works for a limited amount of time each month, if I don't recruit new members or pay cash. If I put a widget up on my facebook or on my blog, I want to be certain that anyone can call through the whole month.

It's a cool service worth checking out, obviously I have. Rebtel and Jajah fit my needs better than Jaxtr, but Jaxtr's focus on their widgets makes it an interesting service to follow.

Or what about a merger between Rebtel and Jaxtr? That would be really interesting as well.

Jajah vs Rebtel

I just found Jajah and just as Rebtel you can make cheap international phonecalls on using your regular phone, by using their Jajah's and Rebtel's websites.

With Rebtel, you save your contacts on their website, and you get a local number for each contact. Hence you only place local calls by using Rebtel. You can call for local rates, if your contact, after receiving your call, calls back to the local number Rebtel displays to him. I'd say the best thing with Rebtel is that you get a unique phone number for each contact that you can save on your cell for later use, and once you've done that you don't need the Internet in order to make a call, and you don't need any hard to remember long passwords either.
The main disadvantage with Rebtel is that your contact has to call you back, and you have to get them to learn that behaviour to get local rates when calling them.

With Jajah on the other hand, you always place your call via Jajah's website. When you've placed the call, your regular phone will call and when you answer your contact will be called as well. If both phones are landlines (not mobiles) the call will be really cheap, and if your contact is also a Jajah user the call will be for free!
The main advantage with Jajah is that you don't need to teach your contacts anything, their phone will call as usual. If you want the free of charge call you'll need to get them to register, and if your contact is over 40 that might be a pretty hard task.
The biggest disadvantage with Jajah is of course that you must place your call on their website. They have a good mobile version of their site, so that you can use it "on the fly" with your mobile phone, but I still think it's a pretty big disadvantage.

So who's the winner? Both services are good and I think it depends on why you make international calls. In my case, I only need to call a few people, so I will probably be able to make them register with Jajah. I'll then get free international calls, so Jajah will be the winner for me.
However, if I had a larger list of international contacts, I'd say Rebtel was the better one, since Rebtel gives me unique numbers for them.

So what is my conclusion? Rebtel and Jajah should both copy each other and compete with their Rates only. Then they should cooperate with soocial.com and make my life even easier!

(I hope it's not the same company, cause that would be embarrassing)

www.rebtel.com
www.jajah.com