IDEA #12 - E-Cards with Your Voice (and bonus ideas)
By Steve Poland • February 8, 2007
E-Cards are over 10 years old and still in my opinion one of the most viral things on the web. When you receive an e-card, it’s instinct to send one back to that person — and likely to someone else that has been on your mind. But the old dogs limit the number of free e-cards they offer and charge for more glorified cards (bleh!).
What about an e-card you could send to someone with your actual voice greeting (e.g. “Happy Birthday Mom — sorry I can’t be there to help you ‘over the hill’, but I’ll be home to visit you in 2 weeks! Love you!”). This might be already done, but I haven’t heard of it yet.
This idea creates very personal e-cards to the recipients. I could see this application being used not only for special occasions, but just anything — maybe instead of jotting down an email to someone, the user would rather vocalize something (i.e. I could see myself doing this when I hear a new song or discover a new band online — I send out these ‘OMFG’ emails to my close music friends, but would much rather express my passion/enthusiasm in a voice recording).
Now there’s a couple ways this could be done — first, if the user has a microphone hooked up to their computer, we could present the user with a Flash recording widget that’s embedded in a webpage. The user simply hits record on the widget, and it begins recording through the user’s microphone. (Also, this could just as easily record video from the user — and thus give the recipient a video e-card with actual video greetings by the user).
The second method, and more practical method for users I believe, would be a VXML application. Simply, the user would go to the website, select an e-card template, pay a nominal fee ($0.50? $1?), then our system would automatically call the user’s phone number (that they input) and ask the user to record a greeting up to 3 (?) minutes long. (The user could listen to the greeting and rerecord if necessary). Once the user is satisfied with their voice greeting, they hit the ‘*’ key and their greeting is attached to the e-card. Maybe the webpage auto-updates to show the full e-card to the user now — and then the user can choose to have it sent to the recipient(s) now (or a designated date/time).
*BONUS IDEA ONE*: Going along with the personal video idea — Revver has an API that allows you to create a video easily via another application. You could create an application that integrates with Revver to allow users to easily create a personalized video e-card greeting to someone.
*BONUS IDEA TWO*: There aren’t many video e-card websites yet — you could create a website where you pre-select loving / seasonal (Valentine’s Day related; Xmas related; etc) / funny videos from YouTube/Revver/MetaCafe/etc and embed them all on your website … allowing a user to send any of them as an e-card to anyone they’d like. You could monetize this idea with advertising — as well as affiliate links to relevant products for sale via etailers. (Maybe you could do the same with Flickr photos?).
You could also create a bookmarklet or plugin that operates with YouTube/Revver/MetaCafe and thus when a user is on a YouTube video page, they click the bookmarklet and instantly create an e-card that uses that video in it, and send it to another user. [Users might find this more useful then YouTube’s own ‘email to a friend’ capabilities — and you’d drive more pageviews to your website].
*BONUS IDEA THREE*: Use #2 above with a new Evite type of system — so when you send out a quick invite to friends for a happy hour, the user can quickly include a pre-selected funny drunken video that exists on YouTube. Or for a birthday party — the user can quickly select a pre-selected funny birthday video. Etc.
*BONUS IDEA FOUR*: What about this bookmarklet / plugin that while you’re surfing YouTube, you could send a video to a friend, but rather than just sending a text comment about it — you could quickly record an audio or video comment that sends with the video (and plays prior to the video playing, or is a separate attachment in the email).
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6 Responses to “IDEA #12 - E-Cards with Your Voice (and bonus ideas)”
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check out this one. the content is uninteresting, but “kyte” apparently has a cool “chat” feature.
bw
This could probably be done very easily using Flixn.com website and API - if anyone wants to set it up, it shouldn;t take long, and I;d fund it as an Angel…:-)
cheers
mark venron, vtc.com
I would say combine with the song dedication feature, streaming. Then inside add a few words , Like ” I would love u to marry me tonight ” during valentine?
The Audio Email idea part has been done. (http://slawesome.com) Simple flash widget for record and playback. I worked on the flash part of this site.
Hi Mark,
My business partner and I have a similar product that is in the later stages of completion and we are looking for some angel investment. If you would be interested in discussing this further, please do not hesitate to contact me @ yoseph.west@gmail.com.
I just noticed this, but about a week or so ago we at Flixn threw something like this online for Mother’s Day. You can check it out at ...