Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Stuart Henshall surfaced a couple of links this morning showing that VoIP apps are failing on Facebook.  I'm not sure how iotum ended up on that list, since we're not actually a VoIP app, but you know Stuart's absolutely right and the outcome was predictable.  The vast majority of VoIP applications on Facebook are simple click-to-call minute stealers. The vast majority of Facebook users are in the US and Canada, where per minute calling costs are approaching an all-time low.  The majority of Facebook users are students — mobile phone users — as well.  In fact, 27% of Facebook users are users of Facebook mobile. So it's not really a surprise that minute stealers are having a tough time. In fact, I'll go further — anybody who believes that users will really fire up a PC and log into Facebook to make a call when you can just pick up the phone and call for pennies, is deluding themselves.

There are communications applications on Facebook, however, which are succeeding.  Value added applications, in particular, are carving out a niche.  These are the applications that the Voice 2.0 Manifesto predicted would be the successors to the minute stealers.  The conference calling and anonymous calling services, for instance.

Stuart's data was a little bit out of date, relying as it did on a month old post from The Latest Geek Stuff.  Here's an up to date list of current communications applications and usage on Facebook, from Appsoholic.

For what it's worth, our FREE Conference Calling application is hitting its stride as the viral effect kicks in.  We're currently adding over 2,500 new installations per day.  As of a few hours ago, we passed 20,000 installations.  And, we moved into the number three spot on this list today, passing SkypeMe.

I got a note in my mailbox about Voxalot's launch of their Voxcall service.  They now have a Facebook Voxcall application as well.

It's a dead simple service — combine a SIP URI with a click to call application, and now you can call anyone in the world.  I popped my Truphone SIP URI into the appplication, and was receiving calls in seconds on my mobile phone.

Voxalot's pitch is that VoxCall is self-organizing and enables anonymity. If your VoxCall friend changes his contact phone number, you don't have to be notified. VoxCall will use whatever number your friend has registered so you no longer need to remember his number, just his Facebook ID. In addition, VoxCall also offers both public and private chat rooms where VoxCall friends can congregate. 

While it works well, there's a lot of click-to-call competition out there.  Perhaps the biggest differentiator for Voxcall is simply that it hooks into a directory that a lot of people know and use.

Friends Mark Goldberg, Jon Arnold, and Mark Evans have all written about the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and their current promotion.  Basically, if you spend $399 on an OLPC for a child before the end of day November 26, they will ship you a laptop, a $200 tax receipt, AND they will send another to a child in a developing country.  It's a good cause.  If you can afford the $399, please consider doing it. 

I was really quite surprised two weeks ago at VON to find myself in a room full of Facebook skeptics.  These folks were no luddites either.  They were "la creme" of the technology industry.  The vast majority of them, however, expressed disbelief at the value of Facebook in a business setting, and concern over privacy.

Fast forward to today, where I've received email from John Reid, President of CataAlliance, the Canadian Technology Association.  In it John writes:

We have a team integrating “conversational networks” such as Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn, into the CATA B2B Platform as part of expanding our business networking and outreach capabilities. Some of the largest work networks on Facebook (www.facebook.com) now include: Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley, British Telecommunications, Sun Microsystems, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Shell Oil, Bank One, and National Health Service.

One of our selection criteria for choosing third party Networks is Privacy. Note that Facebook leads the industry in giving people tools to control the information they share and with whom they choose to share it. Facebook is TrustE certified.

He then goes on to encourage CATA members to join the CATAAlliance Facebook group.

What a dramatic difference from my experience in Boston a few weeks ago.  Why?

Just before VON I wrote about how Canadian Facebook penetration is dramatically higher than US.  Nearly one in four Canadians use Facebook, versus just 7.3% of folks south of the border.  The differences become even more dramatic, however, when you map penetration to specific age demographics, as the chart below shows.

In the core Facebook age demographic — 15 to 24 — over 80% of Canadians are Facebook users, versus just 39.7% of Americans.  More tellingly, however, that core group accounts for 76% of US Facebook users, but in Canada it's less than half.  More Canadians in more age categories use Facebook, proportionally, than in the US.  51.1% of young workers have a Facebook account in Canada, versus just 8.5% in the US.  19% of Canadians in the mid-career age bracket - 35 to 44 - are Facebook users versus 1.6% of Americans in the same age bracket.

Facebook is ubiquitous here, and has started to weave itself into the fabric of our society.  It hasn't yet reached the same level in the United States yet, which explains the reaction I experienced at VON.  Where Canadian business people are increasingly inclined to view Facebook as a valid part of their workplace toolkit, Americans aren't yet ready to do so. 

It's fascinating.  If I were the Facebook team, I'd be looking for as many ways as possible to understand what's going on in Canada.  It's likely a predictor for how US adoption will go.

Data compiled from Facebook Ad platform and cross referenced to standard US Census groupings.