How I might use WebRTC

By Camille Mendler

As an analyst exploring new digital services, I try to practice what I preach.

I designed Informa’s Telecom Cloud Monitor with Caspio. I use Evernote for project and information management. My interactions are logged on Salesforce.com. I like Skype, and I’m warming to Lync (my 9,000-employee firm just switched to Microsoft Office 365 – hooray!).

And yes, I’m using Twitter,  LinkedIn and experimenting with a bunch of other tools.

But it’s the sheer flatulence of email that I find particularly irksome. Voicemail comes a close second. You’ll know that, if you know me. Find me via Twitter DM.

One Tweet to rule them all

So, what if I could kill several ‘birds’ with one stone? What really got me thinking was @Twelephone, dubbed a ‘next-generation social telephone’ (check this demo), using HMTL5 WebRTC. Point, click and voilà – you’ve initiated an encrypted P2P video or voice call via Twitter.

Now I’m not a lawyer, but I do track my time. And clients get first dibs. So I could:

O tempora, o mores

Of course, I don’t want to be available, immediately, all the time. They don’t pay me that much.

And I don’t always have my makeup on to take that video call (je suis une femme d’un certain age). But companies now flying the WebRTC flag like @Twelephone, Plivo, TokBox et al are going to change things. And I do hope it’s fast.

Not least, let’s not kid ourselves that email is a fit tool for collaboration, particularly in business. It’s really a weapon for indiscriminate broadcast (check your spam settings), or a cover-my-butt tool for corporate compliance.

Let’s hope WebRTC achieves one thing: To remind us what ‘interaction’ really means in the digital economy.