September 22, 2006
Let The Embedding (of VoIP) Begin
There's a lot of buzz the past few days about Adobe working on some VoIP project, possibly to embed VoIP from within a flash video player. Om Malik is credited with breaking the story. Bruce Stewart, Tom Keating, Ken Camp, Phil Wolff, and no doubt others have weighed in on the news.
Maybe it's Friday, when I tend to be jaded and play devil's advocate, but I don't see this as particularly surprising or big news. Isn't this really kind of an extension of click-to-call VoIP? At the least, it's embedded VoIP which, while a hot subniche, is already working from web browsers, Microsoft Outlook, and other programs.
But at least with those programs, there's some semblance of relevance for having VoIP-calling, as a phone number will be part of the information. Even if a Flash video has an extra tag for a phone number, how ubiquitous is Flash anyway? (Despite what the other VoIP bloggers are saying.)
Every web design site I've read in the past year cautions people to go easy on Flash-driven content because it's not indexable in the search engines. And it takes time to load, which drives away visitors on slower connections (not everyone has broadband yet).
Nevertheless, while I may not like that Adobe bought out Macromedia, it's an interesting idea and I wish them luck with the Flash-VoIP features. It could certainly be useful for live help sites that want to add VoIPability. [Note: After I wrote this low-key diatribe, I read Tom's piece, which says the Flash player has already had VoIP capability since early 2002. That's a surprise to me, but I still maintain my jaded opinion.] On the other hand, click-to-call types of embedded VoIP applications just might make soft VoIP clients obsolete.
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