VoIP for Facebook!

This is massive number, especially when compared to Skype, which claims approximately 150 million active users and Google Voice, with 200 million. For context, the top three telecom providers in the world have 589 million subscribers (China Mobile), 343 million subscribers (UK’s Vodaphone) and 382 million subscribers (Singapore’s Singtel), respectively. The subscribers of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint combined equal 273 million. With integrated voice capabilities, Facebook could legitimately become one of the largest voice platforms in the world.

For those who have used VoIP or online voice services before, social networks are the number one place they’d want to see voice integrated, by more than 300 percent.

Other web destinations people would like to use voice within include online shopping sites (21 percent), social games (20 percent), video sharing sites (18 percent), banking sites (18 percent), and online education sites (17 percent). 75 percent of regular social networkers also said they would use integrated voice chat on other the websites they frequent. While there is a clear use case for voice within social networks, many other online locations could eventually feature speech-based functionality.

Four times more Facebook users would prefer to call their Facebook friends from the site than any other way on their PC.

And it’s 30 percent more popular with single respondents, women and teens. This indicates that Facebook voice capabilities could significantly impact the usage of existing VoIP services.

Facebook is close to replacing email as our preferred way to communicate with friends online.

Respondents listed the following digital communication channels as their ‘favorite’: Phone (voice or text): 59 percent; Email: 21 percent; Facebook: 17 percent; Instant messaging: 4.7 percent. The increasingly important role of Facebook as a communications tool makes a compelling case for the integration of voice within the site.

Nearly all social networkers would want to call their friends’ or family members’ phones and/or mobile devices from Facebook (93 percent), and men are more interested in this than women.

Current technology could make this a reality in the very near future. As we’re not always glued to our PCs, the ability to call our friends’ cell phones from Facebook could be a game-changing new communication option.

70 percent of the over-65 crowd would use Facebook voice chat to communicate with family, vs. only 25 percent of those 39 and under.

Generation Y respondents say they would use it twice as much as Baby Boomers. While it comes as no surprise, the younger generation is much more interested in voice chat within social sites, and family members are the primary targets. 

Women are about 25 percent more interested in Facebook voice chat than men.

Women are not only more active social networkers, a finding supported by numerous other surveys, they’re also more interested in talking to their Facebook friends within the site.

People are seven times more likely to call their Facebook friends from Facebook itself than call their Gchat contacts from Gmail, and for those 24 and under, it’s 20 times more likely.

This reinforces the point that people would rather call their friends from a social network than other locations that currently offer voice capabilities, such as Gmail and its web-based calling service.

Original press release available here -> http://www.vivox.com/voiceeverywhere-survey.html