Yak Launches Free Video and Voice Service

Jamie Garson writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that Yak Communications has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree. From the article: "In a crowded and competitive VoIP marketplace, yakForFree is distinguished by its free video capabilities and ease-of-use. By downloading the free Virtual VideoPhone, which takes less than a minute, users can make free calls over the Internet using a high-speed connection."

Comments

Basically Teamspeak w/video (for me at least)

[geomon]

I remember getting Teamspeak to contact my family and friends. We would set up a server and contact each other via IM to set up a session. Now Teamspeak charges for their service. I'm sure that was their intention all along, but it was sad to see it go subscription only.

I wonder how long yakForFree will remain *free*? I suppose their free plan is a give away for getting people to sign up for the enhanced services. But I can envision a time in the near future when the free will giveway to *cheap*. I guess that if the price is right, that isn't a bad prospect either.

I guess I'd better use it while the free offer is still good!

Re:Basically Teamspeak w/video (for me at least)

[Red Flayer]

"I wonder how long yakForFree will remain *free*? I suppose their free plan is a give away for getting people to sign up for the enhanced services. But I can envision a time in the near future when the free will giveway to *cheap*."

If they grab enough marketshare, they can sell advertising to splash during usage. I can't see any other way of them making money off this without charging for it. Also, by stating that it's a videophone, they can limit people complaining about ad display on their monitors, like people did when it was attempted with VOIP... though I'm sure it will be in their EULA.

Possibly a tiered fee system, pay more for no ads.

Re:Basically Teamspeak w/video (for me at least)

[timeOday]

It's not clear to me why it wouldn't be free, or why we need a "provider" for this in the first place. You're already paying the ISP for bandwidth, do we really need a web page provider, ssh provider... another "provider" and another bill for every protocol over IP?

Vonage, for instances, bills themselves as a VOIP provider, which I don't see as being quite the case. For pure VOIP calls, you don't need a provider. What Vonage really sells is a VOIP-to-POTS bridge... a transition technology until such time as every telephone and blackberry have IP addresses.

Er...

[Mwongozi]

So, this is a poorly disguised advert, right? Because neither "free video capabilities" nor "ease-of-use" are at all distinguishing features these days. iChat AV probably does both of these things better, actually, and there's a ton of similar apps available. Even for Windows. ;)

Linking to the Yahoo news story is a bit odd, too. Here's "Yak's" actual site.

Until

[varmittang]

They are blocked by router filters that kill the connections.

Slightly reworded

[Anonymous Coward]

An employee of a company called Yak (jgarson@yak.ca) writes to tell us Yahoo is kindly storing a press release from same company. The press release has the usual glowing praise that offers no objectivity due to the obvious financial interests of the writer. The company has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree, but has no marketing team, nor money, to promote it, and has decided to try to get it in front of people through fooling slashdot editors into believing the press release is a news report. From the press release: "In a crowded and competitive VoIP marketplace, yakForFree is just another soon-to-be burned-out shell of a car along the side of the dot com highway. What truly distinguishes it from other offerings is that it offers both video and voice services, which have only been available in most free chat clients for half a decade now. By downloading the free Virtual VideoPhone, which takes less than a minute, users are locked into a proprietary system which is likely to riddle their machine with spyware."

Re:How is this different to MSN Messenger?

[badfish99]

It's different because it's incompatible. It's Yet Another incompatible talK service.

What the world needs is something that lets anyone talk to anyone else.

This is a mere press release!

[lancejjj]

Yahoo is reporting that Yak Communications has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree. From the article: [...]

This isn't an article written by a reporter. This is a corporate press release, evidently written by the owners of the product.

Advertising? Yep. News? No.

This is NOT yak's VOIP

[Valiss]

In the way you are thinking. If you are thinking that you can download this and call your buddy on his cell, you would be incorrect. You want that service, you gatta pay to use their yakToAnyone service.

This is an instant messenger-like application that does voice and video, a la [every other IM service here].