Andy Abramson reported a rumor yesterday that Yahoo, as part of its reorg, would kill the voice business, apparently to appease SBC.
If true, that’s a terrible idea. Presence and voice are now inextricably linked. A choice to kill the voice business at this stage would signal an abdication of Yahoo’s position in the next generation of communications. The future of communications is multi-modal. Customers will take calls on landlines, mobiles, and PCs, interchangeably, and presence will be the key to unlocking that market. The sooner old-line telco’s become accustomed to this, the better.
Yahoo’s presence cloud can be an enabler of that future. If it’s walled into an IM-only strategy, however, it becomes irrelevant.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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You gotta subscribe Alex, hehe http://blog.roam4free.ie/are-yahoo-leaving-voice
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