ITGumbo: spicing IT up

The VON Israel telecommunications conference was held this past Sunday and Monday in Tel Aviv. Although I was unable to attend it, I have been following it in some blogs and have watched some of the speeches on PulverTV. In his keynote address, Jeff Pulver, the conference's founder, mentioned that VoIP is the future of communications on the Internet and now is the time for companies to find the right innovations and solutions for VoIP.

In the spirit of what he said, here are examples of how I think social media areas can integrate these technologies:

Facebook- Have a special application that will let friends voice chat or video chat with each other. This would also be good for the marketplace section, especially for job seekers and potential employers, and for sales, similar to eBay having the call buttons.

MySpace- Musicians can hold special "conference calls," or interviews, with their fans, similar to the idea of how companies have quarterly conference calls with their investors. Also, musicians can create their own TV networks and broadcast fan mail by embedding it on their MySpace page.

Flickr- While looking at pictures, you can chat with the friend or family who posted them using an application on Flickr.

For more on VON Israel, check out Jeff Pulver's blog and if you want to view some of the speakers from VON Israel, including Pulver's keynote, check out PulverTV. Also, if you have any ideas of your own on how social media can integrate VoIP technology, feel free to add a comment below.

UPDATE: Skype and MySpace have announced that they will integrate their chat services to add Internet voice chat to MySpace's instant messenger and allow Skype users to contact MySpace friends through its service.