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Blabbelon Launches: Free Browser-Based Voice Service Attempts To Dethrone Ventrilo
As of this morning, a new solution to your online voice chatting needs is available. Blabbelon, a service from a startup company of the same name, aims to solve some of the problems that gamers face when it comes to chatting online.
Blabbelon integrates the same high-quality, low-bandwidth codec used by well-known voice over IP (VOIP) provider Skype into your web browser. There is no client download or system requirement to get onto Blabbelon, nor are there any fees to use it. The service is completely free, and won't even launch with any paid advertisements.
Most of the administrative tools used by guild and raid leaders to run their Ventrilo or TeamSpeak servers have analogues in Blabbelon. You can kick, ban, and mute users. You can create permanent rooms for your friends to hang out in. You can even give someone (i.e. your raid leader) override privileges, so that when they talk everyone else in the room is muted. Users connect to rooms via URL, so only those people you invite can join. Setting up shared chat for temporary events like pick-up raids is as easy as creating a throwaway room and sending the link over raid chat.
In the long term, Blabbelon wants to become a content provider along the lines of Apple's App Store. The company's technology allows it easy expandability into delivering content like casual games, videos, or photos through the same system. For instance, you could have everyone watching a boss fight video strategy guide while the raid leader explains tweaks that she wants to try. This sort of content might carry a small fee, or perhaps a guild would be able to buy a multiplayer puzzle game that people could play against each other from within the Blabbelon room. No plans have been finalized, but the company's ultimate goal is to make its money off of value-added content, rather than charging for subscription plans or selling advertisements. Blabbelon tells us that it has solved an engineering problem that lets it provide the basic voice service at very little cost, creating a strong foundation for remaining free.
We were unable to test usability concerns like volume matching and connection stability at this time, but on paper, the service is a great alternative to paying for Ventrilo despite lacking some of the more advanced options that renting a server grants access to.
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