Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Nikhyl Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow.

Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction?

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.”  Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise.

Who’s going to lead the charge?  Voice on Gmail and Skype are just the beginning.  What are Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft doing?  As AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google spent this summer hashing out plans for world domination, it seems that Facebook is best positioned to strike the fatal blow against our beloved carriers.  And it starts with those phone digits.

I’m certain my grandkids will never dial a phone number, or even have one. It’s time to say goodbye to ten digits along with the world’s oldest social network.  While we’re at it, let’s kill phone-tree mazes, do-not-call lists…everything associated with phone numbers.

Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. This isn’t the demise of phone calls.  Far from it.  People will still talk on their phones.  They just want the service to be simple and fun, which won’t entail punching digits into a device to start a conversation.

Why put phone numbers on deathwatch?  Consider a few facts:

1. No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls.
2. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you.
3. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.

Compare this to your social networks.  You have control over who accesses your information; you have one username and profile that you use at all times; and applications fill in the holes and extend the network’s capabilities to communicate, play games and meet people on your own terms.

On any Facebook page, I can “send a message”, even if we aren’t friends. And I can choose to receive messages from non-friends. The key thing is the network sets up a policy, and I as a user can change this. We don’t have this choice on the phone network today. Anyone can dial my number, and I can’t control it—but I do control my interaction on a social network.

Google, Skype, and others try to resolve telephony problems by stuffing the phone system into the web.  Personally, I’ve spent five years at SayNow trying to eke more out of the digit-based phone system too.  We’ve built dozens of applications that enable brands, celebrities and millions of users to use the phone in an entirely new way.  But we’ve all hit the limits of what we can accomplish.  Instead of replicating the antiquated phone network inside the web, let’s instead dramatically simplify telephony by adding voice on top of our social networks.

If given a choice between Ma Bell and Zuckerbell as our operator, we should choose Zuck.  Despite criticisms about Facebook’s privacy settings, the site gives us far more control over our interactions than we have on the telephone.  Since our contacts live in the network, we already belong to the world’s largest white pages.  And with more businesses moving to social networks, throw in the global yellow pages, too.  So say goodbye to lost phone numbers, moving contacts between devices and even 411.  More importantly, just as you determine who can see your bachelor party photos, you will soon have complete control over who has access to call you and who doesn’t. As I write this I already hear my wife saying, “Honey, why can’t my mom call us anymore?”

Also relevant here are the creative smartphone applications that developers churn out daily.  None of these leverage the primary reason these mobile devices exist: voice.  Once smartphone platforms allow developers to initiate conversations and voice messages, you can bet voice will finally become flexible and fun.

Speaking of which, I was at a Lady Gaga concert recently, and the good people at Virgin Mobile arranged for Gaga to “surprise” a fan with a phone call that upgraded her seats.  Great idea, but we all know the entire activity was scripted and carefully orchestrated.  But what if it wasn’t?  Lady Gaga should be able to open her iPhone, see her Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace fans, choose someone checked in at the venue, and…. (cue drumroll), call them.  Call one of them.  Some of them.  All of them.  And whether you have 5 million friends or just 5, phone calls should be just that easy.  So enjoy punching those digits while they are still around.

Snapvine makes a widget that lets you leave voice comments for friends and is one of the many competing online voicemail widgets. The service has also been used to connect celebrities and fans, similar to SayNow, which closed a $7.5 million series A at the end of August. There are many other voice messaging services out there that offer more utility, including Jangl and Jaxtr, which offer cheaper anonymous phone calls on top of voice messaging. Jangl has recently gotten access to millions of users as a widget on Tagged’s homepages and Jaxtr has over a million registered users. Snapvine reports that their application has been installed on five million user profiles across the various social networking sites.

SayNow connects celebrities using a web based interface and phone messages. The service works both ways: celebrities can leave messages for their fans, and fans are able to leave messages for their favorite stars.

The pitch is simple: SayNow believes that voice is the “truest form of communication a fan can have with a celebrity.”

In practice, it’s a little like audio blogging. Celebrity messages tend to focus on what the star is currently doing, be that touring, recording etc in an informal manner.

The company’s technology is already being put to use by a broad range of well known record labels, including Zomba Label Group, RCA Music Group, Sony BMG Nashville, Universal Music Group (Def Jam Recordings, Island Records), EMI (Capitol Music Group), Hollywood Records, and TVT Records. Artists using SayNow include the Foo Fighters, Mario, Hurricane Chris, MIMS, Tila Tequila, Huey, T-Pain, Bobby Valentino, Papa Roach, Plain White T’s, The Rocket Summer, Kenny Chesney, and Chris Young.

Of course this model could be applied to any one-to-many form of communication in a mobile enabled context where vocal intonation and ease of use are important. Though easy to use, SayNow is less simple than it might appear and is a possible acquisition target for a larger company interested in integrating voice recognition, SMS and a compelling consumer experience. I like the service as it stands though too and can imagine it being successful without being acquired. Good functionality, clear demand and viable business model.

The eight person team behind SayNow is based in Palo Alto and has gone through one undisclosed round of funding.

SayNow is billed as a more personal way to communicate with your fan base, voice being more personal than text, while still protecting privacy by mediating between two sides of a phone number exchange. Though the system is still in private beta, beta testers and my own initial exploration of the system make it clear that SayNow has been put together very professionally. For such a seemingly lightweight use, this is an application that’s had some time invested in its development.

Voice recognition and an ajax web interface that responds to your phone activity give the system a great feel. To see a SayNow MySpace widget in action, check out featured artist AM Kidd’s MySpace page. Among the featured artists using SayNow are several with tens of thousands of friends on their MySpace acount. I think this is service is going to be met with a definite demand in the social media market. It’s not a cool technology looking for a market.

The long term revenue model appears to be wrapping phone messages in advertising; something I expect will be quite viable if the service catches on. I don’t think that people will mind hearing a company name and one line of advertising before or after their message – in exchange for communicating with an admired musician.

Before I used SayNow to send a few messages, I wasn’t excited by the idea. After trying it out, taking a look at the team behind it and thinking about the business model, though – I’m convinced that this is a startup that could go somewhere.

Thanks to Noah Kagan for pointing us to this one.