By Trevor Baca, VP Software Engineering "Come here often?" ---First the coffeehouse. Next the bar. What makes a bar a bar? Well the drinking, certainly. But we can drink at home. But we don't. At least not in the same numbers. So what else makes a bar a bar? The answer depends to some extent on the bar we have in mind. The northeastern / midwestern Cheers archetype is an altogether different affair from the college hang-outs we find everywhere in the country. And both are different still from big city swank. So a bar for every demographic. We play an altogether different set of games in the bar than we do in the coffeeshop. There's "I need a couple of hours away after work on Friday." Then there's "I haven't seen the guys in a couple of weeks so it's time to catch up." And then there's "I wonder if I'll find someone real tonight ... finally." And many more besides. We ask the voice question again. To what extent does the voice constitute our experience of the bar? I think the answer is, again, that voice is a major determiner in the social context and our experience of the bar as a place. If we settle in to the coffeehouse to wrap ourselves in the conversation around us, we show up at the bar when we're looking for possibility. The possibility of someone new or a different type of connection. Our old friends at the bar are our launching pad for the new. But notice how different a function assigned to the voice. "Come here often?" Pick your platitude. Conversation is possible. But only so. And it's not hard to come up with reasons why. The thread of conversation may take a level of effort that we wanted to check at the door. Or maybe we wanna leave behind the social barrier that using lots of words can create. This is the voice as companion. We want just enough talk to renew old friendships and help spark some new ones. It's not reasons we look for but introductions. Sometimes, in some places we love, that's all we need.

By Trevor Baca, VP Software Engineering.

On a walk in Seattle:

"But, look, it's more than that. People genuinely like text. Text is powering social computing -- not voice -- not just because Web developers can't get at voice. Text is powering social computing because people like it. Yeah, voice usually costs something and all that Google Maps stuff is free. But think about it: a phone call is like an ambush. Like you have to answer right then and there no matter what you're doing, or else you have to make the conscious decision, do I wanna talk to this person right now and if I don't do I have to come up with some excuse for why I didn't answer, and all of that. Phone calls aren't enqueued ..."

... my friend is an engineer ...

"... and text is. AIM, SMS, messages on myspace and facebook and all that, all of that stuff's stuffed into a queue and waiting for me until I'm ready, not sprung on me when somebody's trying to hunt me down.

"And besides," my friend goes on, "you can get away with stuff online that you just get away with in person or on the phone. I mean, think about: if all those people you have myspace were standing there in a bar, there's no way you'd walk up to all the hot ones and say, hey, what's up? I mean that's what's really cool about text."

Well perhaps. So what we have is a type of social argument about where voice makes sense and where it doesn't. Maybe the 2.0 Web is largely mute because people like it that way? Text, whether instant message or text message or myspace message or even email, is somehow removed, somehow pleasantly immune to the realworld feelings of rejection or disappointment that can happen when you walk up to someone on the street, or at a show, or in a bar. And taking a look at the proliferation of dedicated, for-profit online dating sites -- to say nothing of the informal 2.0 social scene -- I'd have to say there's something to the argument: turns out there probably are plenty of different social contexts where a phone call is too much too soon. You and I are just getting to meet and I'd like to find out something about you. And then a little something more. And then maybe something more. But I definitely don't wanna be put on the spot to produce flowing, spoken conversation. At least not yet.

But is that all? "Text pushes out voice; end of story"?

Two days later, overheard in one of the younger, funner corners of our office:

"So he wants to add me on myspace and I click over and check out his page and he's actually really cute. So I'm like, yeah, OK, I add him. Then he myspace messages me and so we're talking. And I'm thinking, this isn't bad. And so we're messaging more and then he's like, hey, do you have AIM? And I'm like, yeah, OK, he's being pretty cool. So now we're IMing and he's pretty funny. So we keep talking and finally he's like, hey, I know we just started talking and everything but you wanna get on the phone? And I really wanna hear his voice so we do the number thing. And yeah, I'm like not really wanting to hand out my number, but we've been chatting for hours, right? Anyway it turned out fine and we talked for the better part of an hour. And now we're grabbing dinner on Thursday, so cool."

So an extension to the getting-to-know-you interaction pattern we talked about in Seattle. From myspace to instant messaging to voice. Users are savvy and, it would appear, willing to hop media, as it suits their needs. That particular episode maps out a practiced transition from the slow pace and relatively protected shelter of myspace, to a quicker and more direct conversation via instant messaging, to voice, which is faster (and more intimate) still. Users exploiting different media to broker their own intimacy.

And note, by the way, that that particular episode ends where? On the phone.

Later I ask the question, "So when you were talking about meeting that guy online the other night, the one from myspace, and then you guys went and talked ... can I ask a technical question?"

Amusement. "Sure. What?"

I go on, "Well, did you guys consider Skyping?"

Horror. "That's like the least hottest thing ever!"

So there it is. Well into your twenties, even for the youngest generation, there's still something about curling up in bed to talk on the phone.

And now there's a place for Voice 2.0 technologists to insert ourselves: how can we facilitate that getting-to-know-you pattern of social interaction? We already know that that particular episode wound up on the phone. So could we help it get there faster, or slower, or at the ideal time, or in an ideal way? Would, for example, either party have been more comfortable with a local but disposable number routed to their wireless, just that one time? That technology exists today, to be certain, and could help further the getting-to-know-you social interaction without possibly giving out your number to a creep. But it's still surprisingly little used. Why?

Maybe that extra bit of privacy that number protection could add isn't integrated early enough in the interaction chain. What if instant messaging clients instead of implementing the possibility of computer-to-computer VoIP calling -- already clearly ruled out by my informant -- implemented some type of number protected routing to your cell? For that matter, what if myspace implemented the same thing directly?

There seems to be something of a workflow to certain of social interactions. Maybe part of the work of Voice 2.0 is figuring out where in that workflow we really fit.