The service, which went into alpha last September, had been building for a while around a simple-yet-complex idea: talking with your friends while you all watch a premium video online. Then along came Google+, with its hangouts. And then came Airtime, with its idea of videochats around shared experiences.

Suddenly things looked a little trickier. Ahmed’s response?

Change direction and raise $500,000 from a syndicate of private investors to keep pushing the service into a new shape. The new, reinvigorated Lutebox — which goes into open beta on Wednesday — is no longer organizing itself around video, but instead wants to tap into another buzzy trend: social shopping.

“What we realized,” Ahmed told me, “Was that we didn’t have incredibly valuable content, and that we couldn’t afford to get it. We’re not Netflix, who can afford to pay millions to Warner Bros or Fox to get the latest movies.”

Instead he took cues from Pinterest and Fancy, developing a platform where you can talk to your friends about things you want to buy. You can see where he’s coming from: shopping in real-life is often a social experience, where you show your friends what you’re interested in and make collective decisions. What if that could apply online too?

To be honest, though, this is not actually as radical a change for Lutebox as it may seem: the core of the product is still a videochat service, where you can talk to up to six friends simultaneously about what’s on the page in front of you. The difference is what the subject of your chat can be. Now the site has added a shopping mall, where you can search for items from a range of different retailers (all U.K.-based at the moment) and discuss them with friends.

That means it’s got a better commercial model (Lutebox doesn’t have the same up-front costs as it did for video, and earns affiliate fees on every purchase made through its service) but it still faces some substantial obstacles.

The first is a broad one: is videochat really what people want to do? So many people have thrown themselves onto this bonfire, and yet — unsurprisingly — they’ve nearly all ended up being burned. While they may prove useful from time to time, videochats remain a niche pursuit. And videochats about specific topics narrow the field even more. Even Airtime, which had been hyped thanks to the involvement of Facebook investor Sean Parker and Napster creator Shawn Fanning, met with a muted response.

And then there’s the platform problem.

Lutebox is not a plugin that allows you to launch a chat on, say, an Amazon page. No, it requires you (and your friends) to be signed in to its service, and looking through its own catalog of stores. That means it has to become a destination, something which will require some serious and work to reduce the friction. The search needs a lot of work, the discovery requires some deep thinking, and the inventory needs to be carefully managed.

And if wants to follow in the footsteps of Pinterest and the like, I suspect that is going to need to appeal deeply to a specific user base, which means it is going to have to narrow itself even further to get more items in from specific, more popular stores. For example, I can see it having some use for fashion retail, but probably not for purchasing electrical equipment. Right now it’s a grab bag of items from across the board.

Still, it’s only just gone into beta — so there is clearly time and now money to work on improvements. If the site can overcome the natural inertia of videochat — perhaps by allowing people to talk not just with their friends, but also trusted guides (why not launch a chat with a fashion stylist, say, for advice on the dress you’re looking at?) it may be able to carve out a corner of the market.

And if it can partner with a retailer to produce a white label service, that may have some value too. (Ahmed says it’s a possibility, but he is not talking to retailers about it yet).

So, plenty of challenges. But I’ll give them time to take a breath: right now they’re still reeling from the decision to shift from video to shopping.

“The stress around the decision to pivot, it’s tough because you’ve invested so much time and energy and belief into something,” Ahmed told me. “We had 250 testers in alpha, who were using it a lot — but it was a realization, more than anything, that it wasn’t useful for users. It all boils down to that.”

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Let’s face it: SMS is a dinosaur. Except for the addition of basic multimedia through MMS, it’s hardly evolved in a decade. A rash of new mobile IP services have emerged to profit from SMS’s shortcomings: iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger, Google Chat and countless other IM and social networking apps. Not only do they offer more features and functions than SMS, they have the ultimate benefit of being free. Ovum estimated that, globally, operators missed out on $22.6 billion in SMS revenues in 2010 and 2011 as IP social messaging apps took over their traditional texting traffic.

The ironic thing is that operators could have lost much, much more. SMS traffic is still increasing despite the move to smartphones, and the reason is SMS has one ace in the hole: it works. I can send a text message to almost any mobile phone number in the world, and I’m virtually assured my intended recipient will receive it. Platforms like iMessage and Messenger require you to have an iOS or BlackBerry device. IM and social messaging services require you and your friends to have an account and their apps installed on your phones.

SMS has the added benefit of using the signaling channel of an operator’s network to transmit its payload, ensuring the message will go through no matter what network and what network conditions it traverses. IP services depend on having a decent data connection, which is hardly a given, no matter how far we’ve come with 3G and 4G.

Bridging the IP and SMS worlds

What Mavenir proposes is to combine the universality of SMS with the IP messaging features that SMS technology can’t support: live chat, group messaging, multimedia sharing, and network storage for shared files. But rather than tie the service to a particular device ecosystem like Apple or a particular account like Google, Mavenir’s Mobile Cloud Messenging (MCM) is tied to a phone number, just like SMS.

Mavenir’s platform isn’t standards based, which would normally be a big problem. It depends on operators running Mavenir’s network equipment and pre-installing Mavenir’s client on all devices. If your operator isn’t a Mavenir customer, then those richer features won’t work for you. At first glance, it seems Mavenir is asking us to substitute Apple’s proprietary solution for its own. But the beauty of Mavenir’s implementation is that it simply defaults to SMS and MMS if it doesn’t find its client or server at the other end of the message.

“We have enabled this whole interoperability with MMS and SMS on the backend,” VP of marketing Shubh Agarwal said. “You’re not restricted to talking to other customers on the carrier’s networks or phones with the MCM client. … It will simply use the SMS channel rather than the IP channel.”

Of course, all of those extra features go away if the message is forced onto the SMS channel, but the point is that MCM acts as a bridge between today’s new richer IP services and old reliable text messaging. Except for SMS forwarding and other gimmicky approaches to the technology, the two camps have always been isolated. MCM probably won’t stop the flood of users to free IM platforms, but by offering more features, operators could at least try to justify the SMS rates they’re charging.

Ideally, a platform like MCM becomes part of a standard, not a proprietary and closed system, and Shubh claimed that Mavenir has the exact same aim. The problem is the standards process is slow and unwieldy. The GSMA and many of the operators have backed a technology called Rich Communications Suite, which promises all of the features of MCM plus video chat and instant file sharing. RCS, however, requires a lot of network ingredients that will take operators years to find: LTE, moving voice and SMS over to LTE (or VoLTE), an overhaul of their core service delivery architectures (know as IMS), and the replacement of billions of phones’ SMS clients with RCS clients.

Shubh said Mavenir plans to integrate MCM with RCS standards as they emerge, and is already working heavily within the VoLTE standards space. But operators need to start moving SMS forward while waiting for those standard to become commercially viable, Shubh said. Otherwise, they’ll watch all of their SMS traffic disappear into the IP ether.

Disclosure: Mavenir Systems is backed by Alloy Ventures, which also backs GigaOmni Media, the parent company of GigaOM. Alloy’s Ammar Hanafi is on the board of both companies.

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Google+ is offering its users the ability to have IM conversations through a Google Talk integration that’s very similar to the way the service is integrated within GMail. Part of that integration is regular contact with Google’s IM servers, which seems to be the core of this particular bug. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say Peter logs into GMail and Google+, then leaves both windows open on his computer. Peter’s Wi-Fi connection goes out for a minute, causing his Google Talk session within Google+ to lose sync and wait a few minutes to reconnect. Mary now borrows his computer, logs Peter out of GMail and logs into her own GMail account. The Google Talk session within Peter’s Google+ page finally decides it’s time to call home – and then automatically reconnects under Mary’s Google Talk account.

Mary logs out of her email, closes the browser window she used and hands the computer back to Peter. He’ll find now that he is still logged into Mary’s Google Talk account within his Google+ page. To make matters worse, any IM message Mary sends from a different device automatically gets relayed to Peter on his machine.

A Google spokesperson told me today that this looks like a rare bug that is currently being addressed. He also said that Google generally recommends to always log out of your Google account if you share a computer. However, this wouldn’t have helped Mary, since she dutifully logged out of GMail at the end of her session, unaware of the fact that her IM session persisted within Peter’s Google+ page. Correction: Turns out that logging out of your GMail account actually does force the Google Talk session to disconnect a few seconds later. However, Mary’s Google Talk session will persist if Mary simply closes her browser window and Peter uses another login screen instance to access his GMail account. In fact, Peter will be able to access both his and Mary’s Google Talk account simultaneously without still being logged into her GMail account.

To be fair, it’s unlikely that many people will run into this issue — even though it happened to me yesterday, resulting in some very confused IM exchanges between me and my wife’s work colleagues before we finally figured out what had happened. But a Google+ user has told us that the same has happened to him with his own multiple GMail accounts, suggesting that Google may have to find a way to unify multiple accounts under one Google+ identity.

Google+ users have already been vocal about the inability to access the service with enterprise Google accounts, forcing users to revert back to their personal emails for Google+ usage. Google has said that it will add enterprise support to Google+ in the future, but hasn’t given a timeline for doing so.

It might be a good idea for Google to take the roll-out of enterprise access one step further, allowing people to link their personal and professional accounts under one Google+ identity. This would not only allow users to share content with contacts across their multiple Google accounts, but also simplify the discovery of Google+ users within the network, many of which now show up with multiple but separate Google accounts.

Update (08/11/2011): A Google spokesperson told me that the bug in question has since been fixed.

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You don’t necessarily have to choose one above the others, but here’s a comparison of their function and features in case you were curious about how they stack up (click to enlarge).

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I tested the new Skype client with my new 2011 27-inch iMac, which is equipped with an HD camera. The person I called reported that video quality definitely looked much better post-update, even though my home DSL internet connection probably doesn’t quite meet the 1.5 Mbps upload/download specification recommended by Skype for HD calls. We talked for approximately five minutes, and he noticed no real change in the quality of the picture.

Skype also says on its blog that the update brings “a number of fixes and improvements to the user interface.” I didn’t notice any major ones, besides changes to the way the contact list appears, including quick access to adding individuals to favorites. For me, the Skype interface still isn’t nearly as clean or well-designed as in versions preceding the 5.0 update.

Skype remains probably the strongest video chat client on the Mac, something backed up by our readers. One of its biggest strengths when compared to Apple’s own FaceTime solution is how consistently it has released small updates that pack new features, whereas FaceTime has remained relatively static since launch in terms of what you can do with it. The HD calling seems to work well, at least based on my limited trial. If you do install the update, please let us know how HD calling and the interface tweaks are working for you.

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Harmon.ie provides an interface for Microsoft SharePoint directly within Outlook. It simplifies collaboration and document version control by letting users send live links to SharePoint documents, rather than emailing individual docs that are hard to manage. Users can edit, rate, or tag documents, and see and manage previous versions, all directly inside Outlook. According to the developers, enterprises that have large investments in SharePoint have found that using Harmon.ie has increased end-user SharePoint adoption from 30 percent to as high as 80 percent..

Harmon.ie 3.0, being released Tuesday in beta, adds social features that recognize that collaboration is about people as much as documents. The new “people” tab in the Harmon.ie sidebar lets users see colleagues’ profiles and availability. Presence notifications are geared toward work environments, since they can be used to show what project or document an individual is working on. The people tab also displays a multi-threaded activity stream, and lets workers call, chat or video conference using Microsoft Lync/OCS, Lotus Sametime or Cisco UC.

Harmon.ie 3.0 also simplifies the creation of ad-hoc groups centered around a specific task. The “suggested colleagues” feature recommends possible group members based on the frequency of interaction (by email, chat or voice) and by whether they have co-authored or co-edited documents in the past.

Since Simon wrote about Harmon.ie a few months ago, several other apps have added some similar features to the email interface, for the simple reason that many workers in the enterprise spend a lot of their time there. Xobni, for example, offers “gadgets” for such enterprise collaboration tools as SharePoint, and several services, notably Rapportive and Gist, provide social connections directly from the email interface. And for organizations that don’t use SharePoint, Egnyte recently announced tools for file-sharing within Outlook.

Harmon.ie 3.0 is currently available in beta. The free version includes the SharePoint interface, but does not include the social features. The enterprise version of the software, which includes the social components, is priced at $125 per user, or on a subscription basis for $50 per user per year. In addition to the SharePoint version, the developer also offers a version for Lotus Notes, and another for Google Docs, although the latter does not currently include social features.

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1. Overcoming “hidden” conflicts. An obvious and undeniable challenge with managing an entirely virtual team is a lack of visual cues and body language when communicating that can trigger misunderstandings. But less obviously, frequent misinterpretations can chip away at someone’s confidence or comfort level, creating tensions that are hard to name and even harder to address. In one virtual work situation I’ve experienced, all the team members were only privy to what they read in emails or heard on the phone for nearly a year before the company brought everyone to the same location for a retreat. Just sharing moments in a physical space melted away much of the negative energy that was damaging the remote interactions. At this gathering, one person even said to me that just seeing my eyes showed them more kindness than my terse email messages conveyed. Ouch! What an important lesson to learn about e-communications and the human touch.
2. Building stronger bonds. Nothing can strengthen the bonds between team members in the same way as physical presence. I will never deny the incredible power of online communications and online community, but the bottom line is that we are social creatures. We crave belonging, being near others, not being alone. Virtual work can thrust even the heartiest of us into isolation, and the only real way to solve that isolation with lasting effects is a face-to-face meeting. It may not be feasible to bring an entire company to a single place due to the number of people involved or budget constraints. But maybe it is realistic to arrange gatherings of smaller teams or to put together a schedule of in-person meetings over the course of a year — even a series of one-on-one meetings. Another possible solution is to have team members meet up at industry events, several at a time, for both bonding and learning.
3. Delivering really bad news. If your company is in crisis, it is not the time to send out a short email that can be misconstrued or a long email that is confusing and triggers panic. Find a way to get everyone together in one place to drop the bomb. If getting everyone in a single physical space isn’t doable, you should have smaller groups meeting physically or management meeting team members individually. And if those options aren’t possible either, use the best virtual workplace solution you can find, be it a virtual world or virtual meeting space with video. An audio conference call? Barely a step above an email. Be a more solid presence to cushion the blow.
4. Delivering really good news. If you’ve got something big to report, do it when everyone is together on that big client pitch or the company retreat. Small wins can be shared well in email or on weekly calls, but the huge wins deserve more presence to infuse the team with the power of the accomplishment. When you’re managing a team of remote workers, the wins somehow seem a lot smaller than the losses, and over time that dynamic can drain morale and affect productivity. Surround good news with as much “physical” fanfare as possible. People often need something tangible to hold onto. Provide mementos of the big wins that they can take back to their remote workplaces to remind them of being a part of something real and positive.

In our everyday work, far from our team members, face-to-face and in-person may simply not be affordable. Invest in a quality virtual meeting space or conference tool, whether it’s iMeet, Google Talk, Skype, Second Life or any of the myriad solutions out there. Let your team test several of those solutions with you, and get their feedback before making a final purchase and rolling out the technology. Let your workers be just as invested in being present as you are.

What other situations warrant face-to-face and what do you do when you can’t be there?

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user irum

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Facebook Messenger ($2.99), created by Crisp App, works between iPhone and iPod touch devices, and between your iOS device and the web. Aside from providing a mighty tempting target for accusations of trademark infringement, the app lets users VoIP call online Facebook users on both mobile and web-based clients. On an iPhone or iPod touch, they receive an incoming call screen with the option to accept or deny, or a push notification if the app isn’t open. On the web, your chat target will receive a link asking them to accept your call, which will transfer them to a web page for handling the call. The recipient can take part in the call so long as they have a computer with a microphone and speakers.

I tried out the app calling between iPhones and to the desktop. Both had roughly the same voice quality, which was quite good. The only issue was that both the other caller and I experienced significant delay between when we spoke, and when the other caller heard what we said. There was also an echo effect, so you could hear what you’d just said repeated faintly after you said it. Also, in both cases, the time between initiating a call and the call showing up on the other user’s device or machine was considerable. If you aren’t patient, you might think someone isn’t answering, when in fact they haven’t yet been notified of your call.

Why then, should Skype be concerned about Facebook Messenger? Because despite early hiccups, the concept behind the app is killer. Facebook is already probably the de facto way a lot of people communicate, with a much broader reach than Twitter, and it’s becoming even more of a communication hub thanks to its recent messaging system upgrade. If Facebook Messenger can beef up its architecture to provide a smoother, quicker VoIP experience, it could leverage Facebook’s network to leapfrog to the front of the competition, especially if it can somehow integrate video in future iterations. Unless, that is, Facebook decides this is too good an idea and decides to bake the feature into its site and app itself.

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Since I last wrote about VoxOx, it has improved considerably. The basic functionality works well. Incoming calls work fine; outgoing calls are available at competitive rates.

It’s been rebranded, and its screens are no longer the hideous and hard-to-see colors that they were in the last version. Managing one’s contacts has improved, and the service has some cool new features, like:

• A free iNum, which is a special toll-free number that can be called globally.
• The ability to share files of up to 100MB via chat, SMS or email.
• A “universal translator” for translating instant messages on the fly.

Unfortunately, with an app that does this much, I suppose it’s inevitable that there will be shortcomings.

• There is still no integration with my existing contact lists from Google, social networks, or the Mac Address Book. In fact, there is still no way to import or export contact information.
• VoxOx doesn’t yet let you port your existing phone number to its service.
• While VoxOx supports Skype messaging, you must have the Skype software open for this to work. That’s a limitation of Skype, and not really VoxOx’s fault.
• While the interface is definitely more readable than it used to be, the Mac version doesn’t use native font rendering, so screen text is poorly displayed.
• VoxOx doesn’t use oAuth or equivalent systems, so you must give the program your login information for the IM and social network accounts you add.
• VoxOx is pushy. The software registers itself to start automatically on boot, and although you can turn this setting off, it should ask before adding itself to autostart. And whenever you add an account to the program, the option marked “Invite my contacts to VoxOx” is checked by default. I unchecked it, only to find that it was checked again the next time I entered that preference screen.
• Surprisingly, there are no mobile apps for Android or iOS, and there isn’t even a mobile-friendly version of the VoxOx website. Apps are said to be in development.

I could live with many of these issues, but the inability to import and sync contacts is a deal-breaker for me. There’s no way that I can enter 1,600+ contacts!

VoxOx has promise, but I don’t think that it’s quite ready for professional use yet. Maybe by version 3 I’ll be able to use it regularly.

Have you used VoxOx? How do you manage your communications?

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