From Across the Pond: Yabb, A Seesmic for VOIPmails
Erick Schonfeld
12 comments »
[Update: The first 100 people to sign up here, will get into the beta]. A UK startup called Yabb launched today in closed private beta. It is a VOIP micro-blogging service that lets you publish voicemails on Skype. So instead of blogging you just speak your thoughts and your Skype contacts can subscribe. It is like Seesmic, without the video. TechCrunch UK has the details:
Users import their Skype contacts, then are asked to allow Yabb access to Skype. The idea is to find a conversation topic of interest to you on the Yabb site, pick someone with interesting thoughts who has joined that topic then send them a call request by asking them to Skype you. By integrating with Skype’s API, Yabb allows you to then call people over Skype. While you wait for a call, you can join other topics, add your thoughts and send more call requests. [Update: I hadn’t previously realised this, but Paul Sweeney points out that Yabb is less disruptive than one might think in that you can’t send voice messages to people who aren’t in your Skype contact list. This means nos ‘voice spam but also less ability for this to go viral maybe].Founder Paul Birch told me Yabb is going to be about re-inventing the ‘art’ of conversation. He is hoping there will be more potential adoption of Yabb than video-blogging systems like Seesmic since most people are happy to talk, but not everyone wants to appear on video. (Yabb is built on Ruby on Rails and is hosted by EngineYard).
Note to self: voicemails are not a mass medium. Does anyone enjoy listening to voicemails? They are something to avoid or get through as quickly as possible, even the funny ones. I should do a VOIPcast on this topic.
I thought the idea is that people ask a question about a specific topic such as “Best technology to build IM App?” and several people give answers eg: if someone answered a very knowledgeable answer you could put in a request to chat to them (live). Kind of networking.
Well I think that the only way to make this work would be to send the Voicemail to SimulScribe and have it transcribed. Without that I can not imagine this adding value… but then again I am the founder of SimulScribe and probably the biggest hater of Voicemail anywhere.
Nowt wrong with voicemail, in fact my entire business/career is wrapped around it. If it’s integrated into a multi-channel communication tool then can be useful. I just can’t see people bored enough to randomly choose people to talk to, unless of course this became yabb-date.com.
What is Seesmic btw?
As the founder of yabb I think I need to say that Erick has got a bit confused here and ‘D’ above is correct. We are not about publishing voice mail ! ! !
We are a voice centric social network that facilitates people having 1 to 1 voice Skype conversations on topics of mutual interest.
Orale, informacion interesante
Mr. Birch’s explanation is far more interesting than what was originally described.
Linear information access, other than entertainment, must be video (for richness of content) or text (for easy scanning), not audio.
I’d rather use http://www.snapvine.com/ that has a better one. You can create a voiceblog or a conversation using Skype or a normal telephone system.
You can also use widgets in your web site. I have one here: http://hombrelobo.com/foros/
And it has RSS feeds of your voice comments …
I’m still not sure I understand why it took them 2 years to build a message board with a Skype me button.
I am all for ‘talk more, type less’– I really hate being on the computer and phone all day sometimes. yabb weblink gives a great little description on what it is about but I wouldn’t feel comfortable describing it to someone else. The web blog is kind of boring and doesn’t excite me enough to keep researching about the product. Networking by video messages is a cool concept that ooVoo, my client, is currently doing too. Similar to Skype, one can have a 6-way video-to-video conversation between friends, family, and clients. It is so much easier to speak on video rather than quickly typing up an email or IM. Better on the fingers too! That being said, I hope yabb takes off because it is a great idea to ask a question and get plenty of video answers to listen to. It seems like it could elevate long search on the internet and allows you the privacy of a personalized community.