Massachusetts-based VoIP service provider Vivox is promoting a Facebook application that will be the basis for “Voice Chat” through the popular social media site. back in May when the company announced that it was the VoIP carrier responsible for hooking up Second Life denizens for over 1 billion minutes each month. Yet Vivox’s specialty had been providing the voice channel through which multiplayer gamers can taunt or otherwise verbally interact with one another. This week it added EA Sports and its Command & Conquerâ„¢ 4 Tiberian Twilight to a roster of game providers and virtual world operators that already included Sony Online Entertainment, Linden Lab (creator of Second Life), CCP Games, Icarus Studios, NCsoft, Realtime Worlds and Wizards of the West Coast.

All told, the number of active accounts on Vivox’s network exceeds 11 million (and has been reported as high as 15 million). This pales versus the Skype’s pyramid of 500 million registered accounts (with something like 45-60 million “active” users); however, if anything it demonstrates the ease at which online communicators can toggle over to talking with one another.

Back in the glory days of the first-generation “pay-per-call” services, GAB Lines (for “group access bridges”) were among the biggest money makers for premium service providers – some customers routinely ran up $300 monthly phone bills (which may mean little to wireless customers with multiple family members including data plans, but back then it was real money). These were the true “party lines” where anyone could dial in and chat for hours. Real world experience showed that “GAB calls” led to “DAK calls” – a billing/marketing referring to the propensity for GAB customers to call customer service and “deny all knowledge” (DAK) of making any such call. So it was that one of the most popular (and for the most part non-pornographic) services on the pay-per-call roster, hastened its demise.

Voice Chat on Facebook is destined to have a much more successful future. Although the company provided very little detail in its , other than to call the service a “mashup” for Facebook, we believe it will be offered as a “free” feature enabling Facebook users to initiate voice-based chats with friends or selected groups. Vivox has already demonstrated its ability to scale its network in response to growing demand, and it will be interesting to see what revenue models emerge from offering the service, including the potential for businesses of all sizes to “chat” with their “fans” (meaning customers).

Other voice-based features are sure to follow and, in fact, already exist. These include the ability to update status by speaking over the phone, as well as transcription of stored (voicemail) messages. Opus Research’s forthcoming report on Mobile Speech applications will have assessment and commentary on the growing market opportunity and over two dozen firms – led by Nuance, Microsoft and Google – who are making it easier for both desk-bound and mobile Internet subscribers to use the spoken word to avail themselves of the multiple features and functions of popular sites like Facebook.

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Tags: Recombinant Telephony, mobile speech, Voice Services, Social Media, Facebook