Vonage says in its release the card will have no connection fees, account maintenance fees, or minimum monthly charges. And you buy it online.

Vonage has seen success with its international calling business so far. During the company’s second quarter earnings call Marc Lefar, Vonage’s CEO noted that half of its customers subscribe to Vonage’s international plan and 35 percent of all of its customers are active international callers. So it makes sense for the VoIP provider to expand its international offering beyond subscribers to its landline VoIP service.

The card isn’t actually a card — it’s a web site where users can pre-purchase minutes on a “digital calling card” and get a number to call when they want to use the service. Much like it did in the landline business, Vonage is offering lower prices and using IP connectivity to cut into the high-profit international voice business.

For Vonage, the calling card strategy is similar to its strategy of using a Facebook app to get onto mobile phones. It shows that it is being far more careful about expanding its users than it was back in the mid-2000s when it flooded the airwaves with expensive TV commercials. Now it is leveraging other platforms as a way to expand its user base — perhaps recognizing that the market for cheap VoIP landlines is not only limited, but shrinking.

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The new application is clever on the part of Vonage, a voice over IP provider that has struggled to stay viable and has attempted to provide voice calling services to smartphones in the past. But instead of going with a standalone application, the company is smartly leveraging the more than 500 million registered Facebook users and building on Facebook’s platform. And Vonage’s efforts aren’t likely to stop here. In a press release issued this morning, Marc Lefar, CEO of Vonage Holdings Corp. stated, “This is just the start. In the future we will expand on this service to include a wide range of integrated voice and messaging services that change the way people communicate.” I wonder if Vonage might be better off hoping for adoption and then an acquisition by Facebook.

Atlhough I haven’t tried the application on my phone yet — support for the iPad is coming soon, says Vonage — I like the idea for a few reasons. Most of my Facebook friends are people that I’d actually talk to, so as a platform, Facebook provides a cloud-based directory of my contacts that I don’t have to manage. Instead, each of my friends manages their own profile information, which is then pushed down automatically to my handset. Even better is the concept of calling people with the Vonage app, not numbers. Most of my friends have multiple phone numbers between work, home and various handsets, so I often don’t know where to reach them. GigaOM guest columnist Daniel Berninger once wrote about the need to eliminate the tyranny of telephone numbers and instead call each other based on our real names and identities. (I covered this topic for GigaOM Pro, as well.) Other mobile VoIP providers should quickly imitate this feature.

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Jive Software today launched what it hopes will become a Facebook-style social networking platform for businesses, complete with an activity stream for internal communications, an open API and an open application store. The company also announced that it is licensing the Twitter “firehose” — an index of all 65 million tweets that are posted to the service daily — and will be offering Jive software through the Google Apps marketplace. Jive’s launch is the latest attempt to bring social networking to the enterprise, but this is a market that has so far balked at jumping on board the social bandwagon, and the odds of failure are high.

“Enterprise is the next big opportunity in social networking,” said Christopher Lochhead, the company’s chief strategy officer. “Until now, most of the innovation in that area has been coming on the consumer side. For the most part, the last 10 years or so has been the lost decade for the enterprise, and we want to change that.” According to Lochhead, Jive is “the largest and fastest-growing social business services company” with more than 3,000 customers and a total of over 15 million users of its software platform, which is now called Social Business Software (formerly Clearspace).

Lochhead and Jive Software co-founder Matt Tucker, who is also the company’s chief technology officer, said they want to bring the benefits of social networking — and open standards — to the corporate sector, while still giving companies the control they need to achieve the security and other criteria they require. Launching today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference is a single dashboard-style view of that pulls in whatever relevant information an employee needs to know, Tucker says, whether that comes from Twitter or email or a shared document on the intranet. The company calls this view “Jive What Matters.”

Tucker says the other big initiative is an application marketplace, which will allow developers to create small, lightweight apps that can integrate into Jive’s dashboard, in the same way Google apps can be embedded into a Google custom homepage. Apps could employ features that come from Jive, the co-founder says, but could also use functions from SAP’s software if a company uses that, or other systems that are common in corporate environments. And Jive is building in support for open standards such as OAuth and Google’s OpenSocial as well.

The rationale behind Jive’s new offering seems sounds — anyone who has seen a Facebook wall will recognize the “What Matters” view instantly, and if the company can manage to pull together the various streams of information from Twitter to email to internal document feeds, it might have a shot at actually making some companies more social and more efficient at the same time. But the odds are stacked against it.

Despite the explosion in popularity of social networking tools and services over the past few years, so far no one has really extended this kind of social revolution to the enterprise successfully. The big software companies and enterprise vendors have tried in a variety of ways — including Microsoft with its SharePoint platform, which has wiki-style pages and built-in messaging, and Salesforce.com with a Twitter-style service called Chatter — but so far social networking and the corporate environment seem to be a little like oil and water, never quite blending.

In part, that could be because of corporate standards governing firewalls and security and the need for robust software that can be licensed, installed and maintained by large IT departments — as opposed to the web world of beta software, open standards and an anything-goes kind of approach to social networks and information sharing. Whether Jive’s blend of open APIs, an open app marketplace and installed software can successfully bring these two worlds together remains to be seen.

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The official line is that AT&T is responding to customer expectation and demand considering the introduction of VOIP-capable devices like the iPhone, but in reality, with the FCC investigation into wireless industry competition hanging over its head, AT&T is probably trying to fend off government-mandated penalties in advance.

According to the Associated Press;

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, one of three Democrats on the commission, wants to impose net neutrality rules to ensure that broadband providers don’t abuse their power over Internet access to favor their own services or harm competitors. His plan has alarmed wireless carriers because it would apply these rules across different types of broadband networks, including wireless networks.

AT&T’s move is a calculated one, designed to show that the industry can successfully self-regulate without government interference. It’s kind of equivalent to the kid who wouldn’t share at recess readily giving up a toy once another kid actually leaves to tell the teacher.

Whatever the reason behind the decision to relax its rules for network use, the real winners here are iPhone users. If Skype, Google Voice, and other internet telephony apps make their way into the App Store, iPhone users will be able to avoid artificially high rates for long distance and contract minute overages by taking advantage of their existing data plans. It’s one more step towards flat data rates for all cell features, which is what should be in place anyway.

Of course, it’s still up to Apple to approve any VOIP apps before iPhone users can take advantage of the new rules. I’m willing to bet that Cupertino had a significant hand in convincing AT&T that this was a wise move, considering the negative press the computer company was receiving over the Google Voice debacle. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris had this to say about the announcement:

“We are very happy that AT&T is now supporting VOIP applications. We will be amending our developer agreements to get VOIP apps on the App Store and in customers’ hands as soon as possible.”

The introduction of 3G VOIP will no doubt have an impact on AT&T’s network, which has seen numerous problems in the past due to the increased demand placed upon it by iPhone users. The wireless provider seems to have made improvements, as evidenced by the relatively smooth introduction of MMS earlier this month, but it remains to be seen if they can also cope with this new load.

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A lot of the focus this morning has been on Vonage Mobile’s ability to use AT&T’s cellular network to make phone calls when out of range of Wi-Fi. The New York Times and the Associated Press have pointed out that Apple approved Vonage while it has put the Google Voice app on the back burner.

That’s likely because the Vonage line of apps doesn’t take over the iPhone user experience by trying to replace the voice mail functionality the way Google Voice does. (I haven’t seen the Google Voice for iPhone app, but on Android it completely takes over the calling experience, as I pointed out in my post, Meet Google, Your Phone Company.) Regardless, this focus on Google Voice is short-sighted. The bigger issue is that Vonage face a steep uphill climb in the mobile world. For rather than adjusting its business to include the mobile market at the same time as the rest of the world, it just sat there, married to its old, fixed-broadband calling model. Meanwhile, upstarts such as Truphone and Nimbuzz were founded for the express purpose of tapping into such an opportunity.

“Our new mobile app is an important step in establishing Vonage as a software technology company that enables high-quality voice and messaging across any device in any location, providing great value over any broadband network,” said Marc Lefar, CEO of Vonage, in a press release. Despite Lefar’s brave words, however, Vonage is far from being a software technology company.

Rather it’s nothing more than a seller of cheap minutes, no different than a supplier of calling cards to the local bodega. It received a delisting notice in October 2008 after its shares fell to under a $1 each (they’ve since climbed back above that threshold). In its latest fiscal period, it reported $334 million in assets and $442 million in liabilities and net income of $1 million. It’s losing subscribers by the month — 89,000 lines in the most recent quarter.

When I see Vonage, I see the telecom equivalent of a talented minor league baseball prospect with a drinking problem. Or a quarterback with a bum knee, trying to see if he can win that one last game. Unfortunately, that stuff happens only in the movies, and as we all know, life isn’t a movie.

And while Vonage claims its service saves customers more than 50 percent on calls to some dozen countries vs. rates charged by phone carriers, Skype and others offer better deals. Vonage will have a hard time getting any traction, especially against the Skype juggernaut. Even on the BlackBerry platform, it will face a significant challenge from Google Voice, which I still think is the best non-carrier calling option.

Last month, when I was talking to Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype, he told me that more than 4 million copies of Skype had been downloaded on the iPhone and iPod touch devices, making Skype one of the most popular apps in the iPhone store. And like me, many of those 4 million people have already established a billing relationship with Skype by buying cheap minutes to make phone calls overseas. It’s too much work for me to switch to Vonage at this point.

I was burned by the bad quality on Vonage about two years ago and haven’t bothered with the service since. I’ve heard of many others that have had a similar experience. In comparison, Skype is a better-known brand. With 480 million subscribers, Skype has a much bigger pond in which to fish for mobile customers. Unless Skype’s co-founders kill their own creation, Vonage is climbing a glass wall to nowhere.

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If you watch TV, then you probably can’t erase the memory of Vonage commercials from your brain, no matter how hard you try. The voiceover IP (VOIP) provider has been in business for quite a while now, but it has been losing ground to cheap alternatives by various cable TV service providers. Enter the App Store.

Today, just by announcing that its iPhone app received official approval from Apple, and without releasing any details about what said app actually does, Vonage engineered a major stock surge for itself. Share prices are experiencing big gains based on the potential benefit an App Store presence could bring for the VOIP operator.

This phenomenon, which I like to call the App Store Bump (not to be confused with the Colbert Bump), is another indication that Apple’s mobile application marketplace is something more than just one among many. Think an App World or even an Android Marketplace announcement would have as much influence on investor confidence? Think again.

App Store presence has become a sign not just of astute trend-spotting, but one of continued relevance. It breathes new life into business models that were either questionably viable in the first place (I’m thinking satellite radio here), or have lost viability through the emergence of newer, better, shinier competitors (Vonage being the perfect example). It also offers a way for entertainment media like games to reach a new target audience, when they may have saturated their existing demographic. I’m looking squarely at you, upcoming GTA: Chinatown Wars port.

What can the App Store Bump save next? Pogs? Devil sticks? Your guess is as good as mine.

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The cost savings can be significant over traditional landline phone services, depending on the needs of your business and whether you make a lot of long-distance or international calls. Here’s a look at the top four ways to cut your web worker budget by using a VoIP service.

Get a business phone number at a fraction of a landline’s cost. Using VoIP can save money on a business line in both service and installation costs. Service for a landline into my home office from our phone company would cost around $30 per month for local service, with long-distance calls additional.

In contrast, VoIP provider Skype offers numbers for pay-as-you-go customers for only $60 per year, plus per-minute usage fees. For infrequent phone users, this is a much cheaper option than a landline. For heavier users, Vonage offers 1,500 minutes of outbound calls to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico (and unlimited incoming calls), a free dedicated fax line, call waiting, voicemail and caller ID for $39.99 per month.

Installation with VoIP can also save money over a landline if your office is not pre-wired for a phone line. New phone wiring can get extremely expensive, depending on the office location. But VoIP installation can be much cheaper, or even free, depending on your choice of equipment, provider and office Internet connection.

As an added bonus, if you have a lot of business contacts in another area code, you can request a VoIP phone number that will be local for those clients.

Make long-distance calls for free or cheap. Even if you don’t want a VoIP phone number, it can still save you money on long-distance phone calls. Computer-to-computer calls are free using most VoIP services, so if your frequent contacts use a service like Skype or GTalk, you can talk or even video conference with them for free anytime you are both at your computers.

Calling from your computer to a non-international phone number is also extremely affordable with services like Skype, which charges only $0.021 per minute to numbers in the U.S. It’s only slightly higher for Europe or other countries. If you have an iPhone or Windows Mobile phone and a Wi-Fi connection, Skype will also let you place calls from your cell phone. Vonage is also working on an app for smartphones.

Save cell phone minutes on the road. If you keep a minimal minute plan on your cell phone, the usage spike of occasional travel can consume your minutes fast. Using a VoIP service to make calls from the road can keep you under your plan’s limit and avoid cell overage fees being added to your travel budget. I use Skype for lengthy calls home from my hotel in the evenings.

An added bonus is that my autistic 6 year old won’t talk on a regular phone but will when she can see me via a video call.

Video conferencing can reduce the need to travel. Sometimes it is helpful to do business face-to-face, or you need to share visuals during what could otherwise be a phone conference. VoIP services (like GTalk or Skype) can create a face-to-face meeting for free, and allow for the use of visual aids or even screen sharing. And since computer-to-computer calls are usually free, it definitely saves over the price of travel.

Do you use VoIP for business?

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Nevertheless, this is still a wise strategy for Vonage to expand its customer base, as the company will now be able to lure people who don’t want to give up their landline phones but want the ability to make international calls using VoIP on their mobile phones.

A Vonage spokesman also said the company is working on “integrating communication products so that consumers can easily link home phones, cell phones and computers.” All of which is a significant shift from Vonage’s traditional business model, which until now has been based on replacing landline phones by selling special devices that use broadband networks to carry voice calls.

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Amongst all the burning wrecks of the voice over IP startup scene, is it possible that a $40 device hawked on late-night TV may be emerging as one of the biggest VoIP success stories ever? If you believe founder Dan Borislow, that is what is happening with his idea called MagicJack, a simple USB-based VoIP device that Borislow claims will generate $100 million in revenue this year, a market momentum that may spark an initial public offering to help fund his ambitious expansion plans.

Before we get too far into IPO dreamland, a caveat — Borislow’s company, which we wrote about when it was getting off the ground a couple years ago — is still privately held, so there’s no proof behind any of MagicJack’s claims other than your trust in Borislow’s word. That said, Borislow and MagicJack seem to have largely delivered on their main promise of two years ago, to create an easy-to-use, dirt-cheap voice service based on a simple device that you can now buy at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

Following the suggestion of one of the ardent followers of our earlier post on MagicJack — which has turned into somewhat of an ad hoc user forum board — we decided to call Borislow for a MagicJack update. (Even though I have moved on to other blogging locales myself, I am honored to update the GigaOM MagicJack followers.) As usual, the always-interesting Mr. Borislow didn’t disappoint, talking up lots of innovative ideas while dissing Skype as a competitor because of its “inferior voice quality.”

In addition to hinting that an IPO was “something we have in our mind,” Borislow said that sometime in the next year, MagicJack will ship a femtocell device which (he says) will allow users to make MagicJack-based calls from any GSM cell phone — theoretically saving cell phone minutes while in your home. Perhaps more believable is Borislow’s claim that a “major PC manufacturer” will soon include a MagicJack softphone pre-installed, eliminating the need for the USB device now necessary to link the broadband-enabled PC to a standard phone. Borislow also said there is a new device planned that will eliminate the need for users to leave their PCs powered on while making MagicJack calls; unfortunately, no ship date was given.

On the subject of number porting — the ability to switch your current telephone number to a MagicJack account, something the company has promised but never delivered — Borislow said he’d rather weather the storm of user complaints instead of subjecting potential customers to the mercies of the incumbent telcos who might hold their numbers.

“We’ve built up a lot of love over the last year or so, and I don’t want to give that love away [by making people tussle with sometimes-uncooperative telcos],” Borislow said. While he is confident that new FCC rules will help ease the number-porting pain, Borislow didn’t seem too concerned about hitting the latest self-imposed number-porting deadline of late 2009.

He also hinted of some new applications — perhaps VoIP-based conferencing — but there is only so much time and space, so we’ll leave those ideas for a day when they are closer to reality. As far as a potential IPO goes, Borislow said he took his last big company public on his birthday in September — “why not keep that love?” he asked, about using the same date.

Could MagicJack be the next big tech IPO? In this economy, who knows what the rules are? What MagicJack has in its favor is a solid network core and patentable technology. In a public statement earlier this year, Borislow claimed the company had a big network footprint with lots of hardware and interconect sites, and had patents pending for femto equipment based on designs from a chip company MagicJack’s parent company bought up along the way.

Perhaps most important is how many people are actually using the MagicJack, which is still an unanswered question. While Borislow is quick to claim that MagicJack has “sold” almost 4 million of its devices, now at a rate of “10,000 per day,” he won’t own up to the exact number of active accounts, so nobody’s sure yet whether MagicJack has passed Vonage’s base of around 2.6 million in terms of VoIP users, or whether there are a lot of MagicJacks buried unused in desk drawers. Maybe that answer can wait for the MagicJack SEC filings, where we might see exactly what Borislow has up his sleeve.

(Paul Kapustka, former managing editor at GigaOM, is the editor and founder of Sidecut Reports.)

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