A recent blog entitled All aboard the bandwagon! greeted the news about Yahoo Messenger’s new voice features with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “Skype is getting some company,” began the post on Ars Technica. “I mean, some more company; Vonage has been around for a while. Come to think of it, MSN Messenger has had voice capabilities since v7.0. Oh, and there’s AOL TotalTalk, and Sony IVE, and GoogleTalk, and… Sorry, I see you’re yawning already.”
To many people, Voice over IP is an extension of the familiar, either as a cool instant-messaging feature or as a cheap way to make phone calls. But there’s a lot more to VoIP just beneath the surface–especially the potential for a host of amazing new services that weren’t possible five years ago. It’s like finding a harmless snake protruding from the rocks, only to discover that the snake is actually the tip of the tail of something massive buried in the hillside.