After adding essential features like video chat and screensharing options to the application back in May, Tinychat has recently leveraged P2P technology to enhance the service (see p2p.tinychat.com) and added embed capabilities that basically enable anyone with a website to integrate a robust, 100% peer-to-peer enabled video chat system by simply embedding some code and fiddling with some of the variables. (Skype, you listening?)

Tinychat has just been given a new lick of paint, with new controls and a slicker design that’s much more inviting. Also, you can now enter chatrooms and start conversations with multiple people – whether using text, video, audio or a combination thereof – by connecting to your Facebook or Twitter account, eliminating the need to register.

I think this service is awesome, and I consider it to be closest to being the “Skype for the web” (which someday, Skype will introduce, let there be no doubt) than anything else I’ve tried in the past. You go to the Tinychat website, pick a name for your conversation room at hand and bang, you get an instantly shareable, dedicated web-based chat location where you can initiate video or audio chats with decent quality, share your desktop view with others and soon also a way to exchange files from computer to computer.

I’m seemingly not the only one who digs it either. Here’s a quick and dirty comparison based on Compete traffic estimates for TokBox, which developed a similar application with $14 million in VC funding behind them, and Tinychat.com. Alexa shows even more growth for the bootstrapped initiative.

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The rumors just won’t stop.

This time, however, it’s about the company’s product strategy rather than its general fate. A well-placed source tells me Skype management is actively shopping around for companies that provide web-based communication services such as browser-based calling and video chats.

To date, Skype has focused on desktop and mobile software to handle peer-to-peer based calling over the Internet. This is not surprising, because when Skype first started back in 2003 bandwidth costs were a an order of magnitude higher than they are today and desktop apps were the only way to go if they were ever going to make a decent profit from Internet-based telephony. But with bandwidth prices decreasing worldwide at a fast rate, it makes a lot of sense for Skype to at least consider moving into web applications and claim their ground. The fastest way to do that would be to pick up a startup with proven technology and early traction in that field, like TokBox, PalTalk or Tinychat.

Here’s another reason Skype might be looking at web-based communication service providers. What if eBay/Skype cannot develop a workaround that would allow them to continue the service without using the Joltid-owned source code powering its core peer-to-peer engine? It’s conceivable that might drive the company to consider purchasing companies with similar or related Web-based technology to speed up its move away from the litigation threat hanging over them.

Of course, companies talk to one another all the time and as far as we know there haven’t been any official acquisition offers from Skype at this point. But they’re definitely looking.

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Essentially, you start a call on TokBox and invite up to 20 friends or coworkers to the call. You then put in your URL for EtherPad in an existing URL pad.

After speaking with TokBox CEO Ian Small, TokBox wants to focus more on collaboration, and they have started a great relationship with EtherPad. Small also mentioned that EtherPad will be integrating TokBox into their service in the next couple of weeks. According to Small, EtherPad will be able to collaborate on documents with the addition of voice and video chatting powered by TokBox.

It’s still unclear what TokBox’s business model is, but they’re possibly positioned well because they are not limiting their service to an operating system, but just to the browser. TokBox also recently laid off 50% of their engineering team, and all the companies founders have left the company.

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TokBox offers a great product that allows for multi-user video chat from the browser, but it hasn’t really managed to take off, much to the chagrin of the company’s investors who include Sequoia and Bain Capital (TokBox has raised $14 million to date). That’s a lot of money for a video and chat startup, especially when there are a number of similar sites that have begun offering some of the same functionality.

So the company is beginning to make some major changes. TokBox recently got a new CEO — the third in the company’s brief history. Founder Serge Faguet was replaced by Nick Triantos last July, who in turn was replaced in May by former Mark Logic exec Ian Small.

TokBox VP Marketing Micky O’Brien says that this week’s firings were part of Small’s plans to restructure the company, and that as of this morning the vacant positions are being shown on the company’s Jobs page. She also says that TokBox’s last remaining co-founder, CTO Ron Hose, left the company on his own accord around four weeks ago.

Disclosure: TokBox is a sponsor for tomorrow’s Real-Time CrunchUp.

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Today, 1,500 people at Yahoo are losing their jobs, as layoffs across the tech landscape approaches 100,000. But for startups lucky enough to have cash to hire, 1,500 soon-to-be-unemployed Yahoos is a recruiting opportunity.

Video chat startup TokBox (which raised $10 million in August) will be parking a taco truck outside of Yahoo headquarters today, handing out free tacos and job applications. TokBox only has five jobs to fill, so maybe they can make room in the truck for other hiring startups.

Unless, of course, they are run off by Yahoo security first. My guess, though, is that there aren’t many security guys left. They should keep an eye out for the Sheriff of Yahoo, but that is pretty much it. He looks like this:

(Taco photo by Pheezy, Yang photo by me).

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TokBox, the impressive video chat startup that doesn’t require any kind of extra software, has launched a new AIR app that will bring the web service’s easy setup to the desktop. Thanks to Adobe’s AIR platform, the software will be cross-compatible and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

The client offers a very simple interface that should be familiar to anyone who has ever used Skype. Users can access all of TokBox’s standard features, which include Video Calls, Instant Messages, and Video Mail. Beyond the easy interface, the client also improves on the TokBox experience by giving users instant notification whenever a contact initiates a chat with them, and also allows them to set their availability status so that others know when they can be contacted. The app also generates a standard TokBox link, so that users can invite their friends to the chat even if they don’t have the client.

The new client should appeal to frequent users of the site, but it seems a little counterintuitive – TokBox is special because you don’t need to use a client, as you do with competitors like Skype or chat networks like AIM and MSN. The release of a desktop client pits TokBox even more directly against these massive networks, and makes it clear that the company isn’t satisfied with just solving a problem (easy browser-based video chat) – they’re looking to take on the big guns.

The new client’s no-hassle setup and universal compatibility make it a strong addition to TokBox’s quickly expanding offerings, which include a recently launched Firefox extension that integrates with Facebook Chat, and integration with Meebo.

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Orgoo, the long-anticipated, all-in-one, browser-based communications suite that presented at TechCrunch40 last fall, is releasing a new video chat service to the public today. This comes ahead of a general release of its email, IM, and SMS tools, which remain in private beta.

Over the last seven months, Orgoo has been working on building a replacement to the Userplane video chat it has relied on. The new service is entirely browser-based and allows up to four people to chat via video together at a time (with an unlimited number of people who can join via text chat). For now, there will be a cap of 1,000 people who can broadcast simultaneously over Orgoo, although the company will increase that cap daily.

Orgoo is one of the first to provide this capability independently and all within the browser for private chat sessions. Yahoo Live, which we covered recently here, allows for five-person video chats but in a more public-broadcasting type of setting. ooVoo supports up to six people but requires a Windows-only download. Tokbox supports up to six people but only provides text chat when used with Meebo. And MeBeam supports up to 16 people but has a very primitive user interface. Paltalk has been at this the longest, and offers a 10-person video chat via PaltalkScene (a Windows-only download) and PaltalkExpress (a Web-based version in alpha for both Macs and Windows PCs).

When demoing Orgoo’s new service, there were some problems with audio echos and delays. However, I was assured that these issues would be worked out for today’s launch. If Orgoo’s video chat is able to function for several people as smoothly as Skype functions for two, then this will be quite an awesome service. Both businesses and casual users alike will find it very useful for connecting with people over long distances.

Orgoo video chats will soon be embeddable into other sites as well. The company is working with MySpace to provide its users with video chat capabilities while alleviating the obvious concerns about child predators.

Another cool feature is the ability to initiate one-on-one chats from within group chats. You can just select the person you want to chat directly with, and you’ll enter a dialogue only with them. Both group and one-on-one chats can be viewed fullscreen as well.

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Sequoia backed Tokbox (they are actually working from Sequoia’s offices, just a couple of doors down from where YouTube was incubated), a video chat service that does not require any software downloads, is now allowing up to six simultaneous participants. Skype video, by contrast, only allows two participants, and it requires that all users be using the Skype software.

For now TokBox is only launching this feature via their Meebo integration – this also means all participants can simultaneously text chat during the session as well. SnapYap, a sponsor of our recent Boston meetup, is a competitor to Tokbox (and by the way, see some video footage of the event here).

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After speculation from last week, Sequoia backed Meebo launches Meebo Platform this evening, allowing third party developers to create applications for the Meebo web chat service. They’re celebrating the launch with a big party in San Francisco with hundreds of the company’s closest friends.

Like Facebook Platform and the recently announced MySpace Platform it consists of a set of APIs to give developers access certain user features and information. Developers will be able to include Flash applets and Javascript snippets within the applications.

Unlike MySpace and Facebook, however, the platform is not open to all who choose to come. The company is announcing four partners this evening and opening up a sandbox area for developers to build potential applications. Those that Meebo thinks will make the user experience richer, will be permitted to launch.

Meebo Platform will allow developers to monetize their applications, but it’s not open. Meebo will sell ads into the applications directly and split revenue 50/50 with the application developers.

Four partners are being announced this evening along with the launch. All are communication based: Tokbox (video chat), Talkshoe (conference calls on the fly), Ustream (lifecasting) and Pudding Media (PC to PC VOIP calls).

Games and other types of applications will come next. Basically, any type of application that can benefit from having either instant access to friends who are online right then and/or the need to communicate with them via instant messaging, would do well on the platform. With the communications partners, they simply use the friends list and presence indicator to help start a voice or video communication on the third party platform. For gaming and other applications, it may simply embed a game within a chat environment, allowing players to communicate real time with each other.

Meebo will also be hosting an open-door developer day on November 22 in their Silicon Valley offices. Developers can show up, show off their applications, talk to Meebo about potential applications, etc.

We mentioned current Meebo user stats in a post about them last week.

The image below shows the Tokbox application in action.

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Not a lot of new information in the article, except for the fact that Sequoia Capital has apparently put $4 million into the venture. Rajeev Motwani and Tony Bates (a SVP at Cisco) are also listed as investors.

The article also notes that Roelof Botha from Sequoia is involved, the same person who backed YouTube. “TokBox will face more formidable technical challenges than YouTube,” Stone says, which is exactly right. They’re solving a lot of problems YouTube never dealt with by handling two way, synchronous video communication without any kind of software on the computer beyond Flash and the browser.

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It allows you to set up a video chat channel in seconds. It instantly and accurately detected the camera and microphone on my Mac laptop after registration. At that point, I was prompted to invite someone to the chat via email, or send them to my user page on the site. They click on the link and can participate even without registration. The controls are simple – set volume, mute or kill camera. If the person is not there, you can leave a video message. That’s all there is to it.

If you enable browser popups you can pull the video chat out of the browser and go to other websites or applications without disrupting the conversation. The chat box can also be embedded on another website.

TokBox is also a basic social network – you can add friends who’ve registered to call them more easily. You can also tag yourself, suggesting that the site will try to find people with similar interests and put them together. That also suggests the site may be used for online dating, which is a big venture capitalist-pleaser.

While there are plenty of video chat products out there on the market, including Skype, most of them require at least some software download to the computer. Something about the simplicity of TokBox, which is entirely a web application, suggests it might get very popular very fast.

Update:

Ryan Merket whipped up a Facebook application that integrates the TokBox chat player.

Update2: Check out competitor YouCams as well.

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