Sounds like a four-person Hangout, doesn't it? But the Google Plus open video chat service is still confined to the desktop. Fring keeps pushing mobile video chat forward, and the giants are slow to react.

"Playground Video chat empowers users to video & voice their opinions about things that matter to them," says Avi Shechter, CEO and co-founder of fring. "We let users do more than simply 'follow' their interests. Now they can actively engage with others via video chat, instead of waiting for character-constrained updates." That quote takes a shot at just about everybody providing chat-like services on mobile platforms, including Twitter, which seems like a stretch as a fring competitor. But fring clearly believes in mobile video chat as the most human kind of digital interaction.

In June, fring became the world's first group video chat service on mobile devices, beating heavyweights like Skype to the punch. The startup has been around for a relatively long time, mostly making little moves by giving users and developers access to many major text, audio and video chat services at once.

Lately, the company has confronted competitors more directly, implementing cheap voice calling and capitalizing on Skype's constrained group video capabilities. Playgrounds' branding feels like an obvious swipe at Hangouts, but it's apt. Hanging out at your desk is one thing, but with fring on mobile devices, the world is your video chat playground.

Do you use your mobile device for video chat? Would you use it for meeting new people? Sound off in the comments.

The offering, when it ships, sounds like it will be more compelling than Apple's Facetime but less useful than independent mobile video chat apps like Tango that offer iPhone to Android video chat. A number of mobile video chat apps have been launched in just the past few weeks from Skype, Qik, Fring (now with group video calling on iPhone!) and others. But how long will we have to wait until Android users can video call iPhone owners without any more thought than voice calls require today?

Why all this video chat going live now? Tech blog VentureBeat ran a guest post earlier this month from Rebtel CEO Andreas Bernstrom about why now is the time for mobile video chat to take off. Bernstrom argues it's because of four factors: social networking, improved call quality, increasingly common cross-device compatibility thanks to software and the network effect of exploding sales of mobile devices with front-facing cameras.

From dreams of remote medicine to already deployed high-end hotel concierge consultations, video chat has a lot of potential in a lot of different circumstances.

That potential, though, is hobbled by the contemporary equivalent of an inability for customers of two different telephone companies to call each other by voice or different trains to make it across the whole country over different rail line company tracks.

Where's the Open Technology Standard?

When Apple launched Facetime a year ago June, Steve Jobs said it was going to become an open, universal technical standard. We haven't seen that happen though, or at least we haven't seen much development on top of it. Might Google try to accomplish that big picture goal to go post-silo in mobile video chat?

Will the Google Talk implementation be as well executed as Apple's is? Will it be available anytime soon for iPhone and thus be at least that close to cross-platform? Will we someday be able to video chat from one phone to another regardless of its maker or OS, as easily as we can do voice calls today? Presuming that's something people really want beyond the initial wow factor (and to be honest, I'm not sure it is) then those will be big questions to watch for answers to.

At present, the feature is only available on Nokia devices, but the company says iPhone and Android support is on the way "soon." As for the prices, calls start at only 1c/minute in many locations, making it often a low-cost alternative to Skype, whose SkypeOut rates start at 2.3c/minute, according to its "pay per minute" pricing page.

Like competitor Skype, the new FringOut option doesn't exist as a separate, downloadable application, but rather as a feature within the Fring app already available - it's only a matter of updating the application to the latest version, if you already have it installed. Once up-and-running, you can sign up for FringOut from within the app itself or from the regular website here.

To use the feature, you simply select your contact from Fring's buddy list and dial.

At present, only Nokia S60 (Symbian) devices are supported, but iPhone and Android support is in the works, although no exact dates have been announced.

Fring vs. The Rest

According to the company's CEO, Avi Shechter, Fring has "tens of millions" of users, which makes it a small-time competitor to Skype, which touts up to 23 million people online at peak times using its software, but has a total of 124 million registered users as of June 30, 2010.

Fring also competes with Google's Voice service, which was added as a new feature within Gmail just last month, with calls to the U.S. and Canada starting at 0.2c/minute.

The interesting thing about Fring's "how low can you go" rates for its new FringOut service is the timing of its launch. Only weeks ago, Skype announced it had filed for its first Initial Public Offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, to compete with Fring, Skype may be forced to lower its rates in return, which could quickly cut into what is, for now, its main revenue stream. Skype, however, is aware that SkypeOut can't be its only source of income going forward. In its IPO filing, the company noted that it would develop new monetization models, including advertising, gaming and virtual gifts.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fring_launches_fringout_takes_on_skype_with_cheap_calls.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fring_launches_fringout_takes_on_skype_with_cheap_calls.php Mobile Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:30:51 -0800 Sarah Perez Future, we are here. With today's launch of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, the hotly anticipated smartphone running Google's Android OS, video chatting moves off the desktop and into the palm of your hand.

Using the popular Qik mobile application, EVO owners will be able to chat with other EVO owners and, eventually, with any smartphone user whose phone sports a forward-facing camera.

Are we on the precipice of a whole new form of communication? Or is mobile video chat going to be just for fun?

Qik is not the first company to launch video chat, neither here in the U.S. nor overseas, where similar services have been available for some time. On Windows Mobile, for example, niche solutions like iVisit and camfrog are available now, but don't kick yourself for not knowing they existed. In the U.S. at least, no large video chat brand has ever attempted to do what Qik is doing now - launch a consumer-friendly video chat service on this scale.

Oh, and it's free, too.

Pre-launch, there was some confusion as to whether Qik would be yet another nickel-and-dimed upgrade from Sprint, when leaked news seemed to point to a $5/month upgrade for its use, but now that the service has officially arrived, we at last have full details on what's free and what's not.

The $5/month upgrade plan brings EVO users additional, premium features, but most can get by with the basic, free service without any issues.

A comparison chart on Qik's website highlights all the differences between the two plans, but the most notable valued-added features include video conferencing at higher video resolutions, unlimited video archiving, specialized video access permissions and "priority" support. In other words, this package is aimed squarely at business users whose needs will be greater than the everyday consumer.

The premium features will be offered to all new users until July 15th, at which point the upcharge will kick in if you want to keep the premium service.

Another interesting feature available in the new Qik for EVO application is its "video mail" capabilities. If you want to send a video to a non-Qik user, you can send it out as an SMS message. This isn't just a useful feature for unshackling video communications from being limited just to EVO handsets, but it also has the benefit of raising awareness about mobile video chatting services in general. Every SMS video message sent is like an ad for Qik...or maybe for EVO itself.

Beyond Qik: Skype, Fring, More?

Video chatting won't be limited to Qik/EVO pairings, though. If the stolen iPhone prototype is any indication, the upcoming iPhone 4G will include a front-facing camera as well and likely a mobile version of Apple's iChat to take advantage of the feature.

Fring is another up-and-coming company which began offering mobile video calls late last year on various Nokia devices. They're now doing the same on all capable Android phones - in fact, they even beat Qik to the punch by a matter of days.

And of course, there's Skype, the grand-daddy of video chat solutions, who is launching an Android app later this year. Although Skype won't officially say whether a mobile video calling feature will be included, an accidental blurb released from Skype PR seemed to confirm the company's plans in that area. ("We intend to set the bar on mobile video calling, and it's something we're going to do this year," a spokesperson had said before they took it back.)

Are we on the verge of a mobile video chat revolution? It appears so. How useful will these types of service be? Time will tell, but our guess is: very. Video chatting is already popular on the desktop and laptop, both for business and personal use. Remote workers, virtual teams, work-from-home staff, helpdesk professionals and others take advantage of video chat capabilities while at work and individuals use it to connect with families and friends when far from home, too.

Now with mobile video chat, the opportunity to reach another segment of the market - those whose primary "computer" is their mobile phone - is ripe. Not everyone slaves away behind a keyboard where traditional video chat programs reside. Now they don't have to - mobile video chat brings this new avenue of communications to all owners of modern-day phones.

Now if we could just get it on our wristwatch, we'd be all set.

While the iPhone App Store will open some day soon, will be available around the world and will be usable on more affordable handsets than is the case today - Fring may still be more globally accessible than iPhone apps will be.

What would you like to see tied into Fring? I'd love to see some FriendFeed integration, perhaps Qik and I imagine interesting things could be done with VOIP and Yelp and Fring presence and Fireeagle location tracking. How about a notification when I'm near a contact's physical location and they are available online for IM contact? That would be great.

The company is well funded, has an app for the jailbroken iPhone and reports that it's seeing more than 100k new downloads every month around the world. Here at RWW many of us are happy Fring users and we're excited to see what the developer community can add to our IM, VOIP and file transferring mobile experience. Presence data, knowing when contacts are online and off, adds a particular exciting dimension to any application - mobile apps leveraging presence could prove wildly useful.

While Microsoft’s revenues are dispersed into many areas such as home software, enterprise software, entertainment, and Internet advertising, Google’s revenues currently depend solely on online advertising. While this may sound like a weakness, Google is currently well ahead of the competition and the barriers to entry in online ads are pretty high. Microsoft knows that, otherwise they wouldn’t be so ambitious about acquiring Yahoo!

But what Microsoft can do here is to change the rules of the online advertising game by making it more open in general and less profitable for Google. There have been many companies who have claimed to make advertising more open; OpenAds and RightMedia (which is now owned by Yahoo!) are just a couple of them. But what these companies actually did was make the advertising process more transparent. Advertising is still under the control of networks which manage literally everything; publishers, advertisers, parameters, matching algorithms, etc.

However if one can split up this "network atom" and divide it into more efficient parts, things will be very different. See the graph below:

In an open advertising model, the inventory silo, placement silo, and parameter silo are controlled by many different organizations, which can interact with each other and create advertising mashups. Today Google provides these silos under the following services:

• Inventory Silo: AdWords
• Placement Silo: AdSense
• Parameter Silo: PageRank, Google Analytics, Gmail, FeedBurner etc

The most crucial part of the advertising network is the inventory silo. Therefore, in order to make the open advertising model a reality, a company (presumably Microsoft) would have to jumpstart things by opening up its inventory silo - so that others could use that inventory to create new applications for placement, parameters, etc. What would happen is:

1. Companies would give away parameters that can be used with the open inventory. In return, they generate revenue when their parameters are used to place ads.
2. Publishers would no longer be stuck with "contextually relevant" ads, but could instead use any of these parameters or mash them up for optimal results on their pages.
3. New 3^rd party companies would emerge and they would make the whole process easier and more efficient for everyone involved.

The graph below summarizes the ecosystem I’ve just described:

With this model, a web page that consists solely of a Flash game is not stuck with Google’s "contextually relevant" option. It can mash up a bunch of parameters, or get help from 3^rd parties and choose the best option for itself.

As shown above, this creates a whole new economy for parameter providers. It also opens new doors for 3^rd parties for matching inventory with providers, mashing them up, analyzing and finding the best solutions for advertisers and publishers. It would also enable advertisers to make bids by filling out some XML files and allow the best ad to be displayed on particular page in the best way for a particular visitor.

Gain for Everyone

This model would not only eliminate the dominance of a single network and create a whole new economy for a lot of players, but also it could prevent a possible bust in the Internet industry.

Today’s online advertising is far too linear. Whoever clicks gives the same amount of money to the publisher and the network. That is, under the current model, the click of a person with limited purchase power is worth the same as a click from Bill Gates.

But this unfair model is not sustainable. Because what it does is to shift money from real production to vaporware. The economy can only get better if clicks on ads produce real results. And that can only be established in an open model in which everyone participates, and all parameters are run in a fully competitive and flexible environment.

Conclusion

Yahoo! is too risky for Microsoft because of the size of the deal and possible inefficiencies. So my advice to Microsoft is to let Yahoo! remain as the online media mogul. Let Google be the search giant. Instead, focus on shaking up the advertising industry by pushing it toward a democratized structure, make it work for everyone, and weaken Google's business model before it takes a bite from your Office and Windows revenues.

Then yesterday, Fried announced two more new Backpack features: messages and newsroom. Messages is just what it sounds like, a message board where users of the same Backpack project can talk to one another. While newsroom is an activity feed for the Backpack. For any 37Signals fan these features should sound familiar because they already exist in one of the company's other popular applications, Basecamp. Basecamp is a great groupware tool that we rely on daily to manage our activities here at ReadWriteWeb. Backpack is starting to feeling a lot like Basecamp in a different skin.

With the addition of messages and an activity feed, both apps now sport more or less the exact same feature set. Both have lists, messages, files, and writeboards. The main difference is in the way those things are displayed and how much control users have over them. While Basecamp breaks everything out into separate pieces, Backpack combines them all on a single page in any configuration you want. Both approaches have their merits, but is it necessary that they exist as separate apps?

The implications of the upcoming changes haven't been lost on users. "Cool. So Backpack is the new Basecamp with a better calendar," wrote user Jim on the 37Signals blog. "Does anyone else now feel like Backpack will have too much," chimed in Tim. "With the announcement of these new features (which are great), the difference b/w Basecamp & Backpack is starting to blur."

When others echoed the sentiment, Fried responded. "Basecamp is your project management tool, Backpack is your company intranet," he wrote. "Basecamp and Backpack are entirely different products for different purposes. We use both for very different things."

But while Basecamp and Backpack still have some major differences when it comes to things like permissions handling, which drastically effects the use cases for each, they do now share most of the same features. That brings me back to the question about whether 37Signals has lost focus with the app.

When I saw Jason Fried speak at the BIF-3 Collaborative Innovation Summit last fall, Fried was asked by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, how do you avoid feature creep? According to Fried, the key is the ability and willingness to say no. "You have to be a hard ass," he told Mossberg. So with Backpack going from a simple, single person organizational tool to what Fried now describes as a "company intranet," has 37Signals lost focus and succumbed to feature creep? Are they not eating their own dogfood, so to speak?

The answer is a firm maybe. When talking about feature selection in their popular book about their software development methods Getting Real, the company writes that when building a web application you should start with just the single core feature. Say "no" to all the others. But that doesn't mean to you always have to say no to new features. "Start off with a lean, smart app and let it gain traction," they write. "Then you can start to add to the solid foundation you've built."

That is more or less what they've done with Backpack. Started lean, let is get traction, then expanded it to where they thought it should go. But as an application Backpack has clearly evolved beyond a simple organizational tool to something that is starting to resemble their Basecamp application (which we, incidentally, already basically use as our intranet). Whether they've fallen prey to feature creep will really be measured by the response of their users. If people remain confused over the difference between Backpack and its cousin Basecamp, then the answer is yes, somewhere they stopped following their own advice and said "yes" to one too many feature that was better suited to one of their other applications. But if people embrace both apps as complimentary offerings, as Fried clearly hopes they will, then they've made the right decisions.

37Signals offers a range of applications, from simple, single-function apps like Ta-Da Lists (to-do lists), Writeboard (collaborative word processor), and Campfire (group chat) to more complicated apps like Basecamp (project management) and Highrise (group contact manager).

In the past, 37Signals has often integrated its simpler products into its more complicated offerings. Basecamp has Campfire chats, Writeboard shared writing spaces, and to-do lists clearly based on Ta-Da, for example. Along with their slow shift toward full OpenID support, this points to the potential for a modular, create-your-own app system from 37Signals, where users could pick and choose which of the company's applications to install. That's completely speculation on our part, but we really hope that's the direction 37Signals is headed.

What do you think? Has 37Signals lost focus with Backpack? Or do you still see differences distinct enough between Basecamp and Backpack that you could see yourself using both? Do you wish the functionality of both applications was merged into a single app? Let us know in the comments below.