I was encouraged by some colleagues today to briefly blog about this experience. We needed to chat with someone in the Middle East on a project. Since that country is blocking Skype it was suggested we use Google Talk for chatting. So we did. We had only three people in the chat but were quite annoyed by the fact that Google Talk does not support multiple chatters. Only two people can chat with each other at a time. If you have three people only you can still manage of course - even if it is annoying - but more people would be impossible to do without unreasonable effort. In addition, the user interface was otherwise very poor and at times irritating. As one of my colleagues said: "yes that tool is really crap." Only excuse they have is that it is in "beta" still...

I have escaped last week from the record heat here in Europe into the Swiss mountains. Now some hot news also has shown up. The following is a selected list:

• The Skype founders are at it again as Business Week Online reports. This time TV peer-to-peer in a venture dubbed "Venice Project".
• In the US a wireless services auction is a place for showing off with downpayments (the money is given back if a bidder fails to get among the winners).
• Social networking site MySpace from the US and the South Korean market leader Cyworld will be competing head on with Cyworld entering the US and soon also the German market in a partnership with Deutsche Telecom. This will be interesting to follow and watch who can better adapt its site to foreign cultures. In the US I doubt they will have a chance against MySpace but in Europe and Asia it will be an entirely different game.
• GoogleTalk is catching up with e.g. Skype with features such as voicemail, file transfer, among others.
• VC firm Worldview Partners fails to raise a new fund. This is not news by itself since unsuccessful VC funds should have a hard time getting even more money. The news is that they talk about it now openly in blogs such as in SiliconBeat. Of course the VC firm's partners were not available for comments...
• Motorola announces a great new phone - MOTOFONE - that appears to be another winner and possibly then be able to step out of the shadow of Motorola's hugely successful RAZR phone series.

Nokia has announced a new beta for its Linux OS Maemo 2.0 running on the Nokia 770 which now includes some new functions, among the most prominent being GoogleTalk for VoIP and IM (Jabber compatible). Also Opera managed to get pre-installed as the standard browser.

Now imagine that they were able to do the things that would make it a true killer application, such as:

• increase the battery runtime (currently only 3h WLAN surfing possible)
• add a GSM phone (only WLAN and BT is included)
• include a keyboard (writing with the touchscreen is very unnatural)
• reduce the weight (230g seems heavy in my pocket) and make it thinner (coolness effect)

BusinessWeek Online is raising this question, based on some interviews with market experts from Europe. Ovum's John Delaney believes, e.g.: "IM will gradually take over from SMS in the next five years in Europe."

Of course operators have their own ideas and face a delicate decision since "SMS is the most profitable product in history of telecoms" as one other person pointed out. So once more they are sitting in front of a holy cow and don't know what to do next. Initiative has therefore once again to come from others, in this case the phone suppliers (e.g. the Nokia 770 with GoogleTalk) and the big IM service providers such as MSN, Yahoo, AOL or Google. Community networks, such as MySpace, could be yet another driver.