Ribbit does not hop alone.

As a veteran of voice services and someone who pays close attention to Voice 2.0, I am very encouraged to see Ribbit so successfully get visibility across the technology noise machine. It’s great for Voice as a whole. And from what I can tell, their focus to aggressively bring voice to the developer world, like other technologies have done before them, is well intended - and should pay off in some fashion.

It is my opinion, though, that next generation voice services will need to succeed in the B-B space to create meaningful results for investors. In order to do this - whether through developer or other channels - applications have to be easy to deploy and must generate repeatable results for business.

The enterprise equation for voice is clearer as, in some format, we have been delivering value adding applications to this group for some time. Small business is less obvious and as we know, a more difficult and disaggregated group to market to. But this is where I believe the opportunity is greatest as this is the market that - short of basic telephony - has been under served. With the now more obvious intersection between voice and the web in front of us, there is so much small business can benefit from.

There are a number of exciting, newer companies in this space - something us voice veterans could not claim a few short years ago. One company I suggest having a look at - a little quieter perhaps that Ribbit (in the frozen tundra of Chicago) but very advanced in their product and distribution - is Ifbyphone.