A number of people had fun piling on to the announcement from Pudding Media that they are providing ad-supported phone calls.
Want to know what’s more stupid: this ad-supported experiment called The Pudding…one of the more inane ideas out there… over here calls are cheap enough that most of us don’t really want to put up with the extra steps to save a few pennies. [more…]
Ouch! My local news outlet captured it very succinctly… Free Internet Phone Service, But With A Creepy Twist. More from TechCrunch, Saunders, Keating and Blodget.
I’m not sure why Pudding has merited more scorn than other recent announcements of ad-supported calling such as VoodooVox (which raised $8m earlier this month). Experiments in this direction have been going on for a while. And of course, even the big G is rumored to be going down this path. (Garrett Smith did the math using current ad rates and claims ad-supported calling doesn’t add up.)
But I think people are missing the big picture here. Routing your call “through the cloud” brings access to massive processing power and the terabytes of online information.
Today, we see the advertising as simply an intrusion — a way to pay the piper. But what if Pudding could really deliver useful information to us during a phone call? Their screen shot gives a useful example. If their system hears you say “Let’s go downtown tonight for Italian food.” presumably you get something like this screen shot that appear in the NYTimes article…
If the cloud knows that by “downtown” you mean Toronto, it can do the appropriate search and show you relevant options. (It would be even better if both parties could see the info.)
Once you have speech recognition “on the call” lots of options open up. What if you could explicitly direct the cloud during your call?
“Cloud, show us Italian restaurants downtown.”
“… what’s the weather for tonight.”
“… call me a taxi.”
What if you could define your own voice commands (like a vocal YubNub?).
Once we become comfortable that the cloud is a 3rd party on our call, a world of possibilities opens up.
Think about this in a business context…
“Cloud, what appointments do I have next Tuesday?”
“… conference in Bob from accounting.”
“… how many units of the XL45 do we have in the warehouse?”
Consider the parallels to other aspects of our life that have moved to the cloud. Gmail exposes me to ads in exchange for free email service. But, I don’t use Gmail to save money. In fact, I have email options available to me that are zero-cost and ad-free. I use Gmail because I like having all of my email in the cloud, available from any computer and searchable.
Cloud-routing of phone calls is ultimately going to improve the calling experience.
If it’s done right you will want to make your calls through the cloud and it won’t be about saving money at all.
That’s what we’re working on at FōnCloud.
[CORRECTION: J Scott Hamilton from VoodooVox wrote to me saying “We’re about ad-supported content, not serving ads.” They revealed more about what they’re doing in an announcement that came out a week after this post: VoodooVox: Building a Voice 2.0 Ad Network.]
Sure, the big G reads your mail as well to deliver targeted ads. But we all expect our email & web site reading to be monitored at some point.
But most people are repulsed by then notion that their calls will be monitored, even if it’s just “the Cloud” listening in order to deliver ads. Ask anyone- instant revulsion.
Initially I found it creepy- then I imagined how much fun it would be to talk to someone calling me through that service and say keywords to deliver ads at them. “Shai, did you get your cheap meds from Canada yet?”, “Do you prefer Viagra or Cialis?” etc. Then, the real power of that concept sets in- being able to trigger actions from the third party on the call (”the Cloud”) - be it ad delivery, memo taking or inventory tracking.
Cool stuff indeed.
Some good points there. The big difference between these guys and GPhone or VoodooVox is that they are only a desktop solution, not mobile. Mobile rates are still high enough for people to look for cheaper options. Too many options already for free calling from the desktop.
Well put, but I still don’t think Pudding has a chance. People keep comparing to Google. If Google were doing this, it might work. People trust them and they already have tremendous traffic. For an unknown start-up to do this… don’t see it.
Shai is right on, though it may take a few years…