A Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. Let your friends know you are talking. Invite them to join in. No numbers, no new profiles.
I usually try to refrain to write on technical topics, because I do not feel I have enough expertise, but after a little experiment with Stuart Henshall’s Phweet, I’m hooked.
Imagine that you could call anybody at any time, from any device, by clicking on his/her name: no phones, no telecom, no dialtone needed.
This is what Phweet promises to be though it is now configured for Twitter only. The idea is that any communication should be able to ‘frictionlessly’ escalate towards a voice conversation, if both parties want it of course, and if you broadcast the conversation to an affinity group, others could join, instantly.
The beauty of the project is that it builds on already existing infrastructure, it just reconfigures the rules to allow for universal p2p communication.
For more information:
- the blog
- the FAQ
Here are the technical details:
“Phweet works out of the box to connect Flash and SIP numbers for free. You can use any open SIP service with it. That also means it will work on many new Nokia phones with WiFi. It also connects Phweet calls to the PSTN and a few accounts are being tested now. Thus you can expect to route calls anywhere.
A substantial part of Phweet was years in the making. Phweet uses the TelEvolution platform. TelEvolution was architected by my Phweet co-founder David Beckelmeyer. It means we are using a VoIP service platform that can be controlled by web services APIs. So upfront, Phweet is engineered to make calls on another API and we’ve used one of the most open platforms in TelEvolution available. This cut our time to market down to days and kept our costs low while knowing which elements are already proven and robust.”
Question: should we worry that it is patent pending?
August 16th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Hi Michel,
Thank you for the opportunity to share. Aw you note we are effectively working to reconfigure communication in favor or you and me. It just happens that to make the telephone work originally they had to send the signal. Unfortunately it meant that the receiver has never had any control over acceptance other than ignoring it or more recently sending it to voice mail.
The Phweet model shifts that balance to a more realistic one in favor of the recipient who now has “choice” (when to take it and where), privacy (no sharing of numbers) and control (who should get access and even be presented).
In a simple way we are actually putting the “interconnect” decision in the users hands.
Cheers
Stuart
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 am
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