A Real-Time, Multimedia Social Network You Might Not Know: Paltalk CEO Jason Katz (Part 5)

SM: Who do you consider your competitors based on where your business is today?

JK: Skype certainly is when it comes to video conferencing. They did a great job with the PC to phone service, although we had that offering before they did. I personally think Skype did a great job recognizing that international calling rates were very high. Most of us U.S.-based companies missed the idea of having PC to phone calling systems which could go international. I really think that is what made Skype so popular.

I don’t know any other company that powers group conversations, including video, the way we do. That sets us apart. We also allow group conversations with people you know as well as with people you do not know. Over 70% of the people on PalTalk are on chat groups that they either run or administer the user settings.

Facebook is also somewhat of a competitor, although they are more focused on people you know and are text based. You can use us as a platform for meeting new people. That is one of the problems with the Internet; everybody has a different piece of software. At some point it becomes software overload. How many browser and IM clients do you need?

SM: What do you think of services like WebEx and other B2B business web conferencing software?

JK: I think they are good. We have a service called HearMe.com, which was a competitor about a decade ago. At the end of 2001 they went out of business and we bought most of their assets, which consisted of a lot of domains and source code and patents. We relaunched it as a business facing application. That is a very busy space, as you have point out. It is difficult to compete there because budgets are so tremendous.

We are working on customizing our messenger for a small business. We want to allow small businesses to have customized buddy lists, where all employees automatically have the same shared buddy lists. The system administrator just needs to put in the names of all the employees and everyone is automatically listed. We think that will empower small business in a way that is different than WebEx and everyone else. We think those platforms will continue to be used for sales, and I want to see our platform used as a video teleconferencing platform for small business. That is a market that has been missed and we are going after it now.

SM: It sounds like you already have a crude solution for that with your consumer-facing group video chat capability.

JK: We have some of that capability, it would just take an administrator a bit of imagination right now to get there. We will repackage that and make it a small business app. The buddy list is a key component for us. With WebEx or DimDim your presence is not really conveyed.

SM: Pricing will need to be at an affordable level for that market as well.

JK: We have a lot of infrastructure in place that will let us have very favorable pricing in place on an annual basis. We will probably give our service free for just a few users, and then charge based on company size. We will also have a paid service to give groups within the company their own phone numbers. That will be a unique feature as well.

This segment is part 5 in the series : A Real-Time, Multimedia Social Network You Might Not Know: Paltalk CEO Jason Katz
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