Happy New Year from all your friends at Talkster! With a fresh start and a brand new year ahead of us many of you will be making New Year’s resolutions. In our experience the best way to make sure you stick to your resolutions is to clearly state your intentions and share them with friends and family who can help encourage you and support you along the way. Encourage the people you share your resolutions with to keep you accountable!

Talkster offers you an easy way to save a buck when share your resolutions with friends and family around the world. In partnership with Rebtel, we are offering callers $5 in free credits to place ultra low cost long distance and international calls, so you can share about your resolutions, and make follow-up reminder and encouragement calls to your heart’s content!

If your New Year’s resolution was to stay more connected with friends and family around the world, Talkster has got you covered. With $5 in free calling credits, you can speak more than 2 hours to India, more than 4 hours to China and 5 hours to Mexico (based on calling rates from the US). With this promotion, you get access to 50 countries with the lowest calling rates in the industry and current Free World Dialing customers will enjoy access to new calling areas through this partnership, including Brazil, Japan, South Africa, and Pakistan.

Happy 2010 and the very best of luck with your New Year’s resolutions!

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

At the end of the week I had the opportunity to chat with Jeff over at Jeff On The Go a technology blog with a fresh “youthful” perspective on the industry. His perspective is particularly unique as he is a high school student himself. Clearly he’s not your typical high school student, but he can relate to what he sees around him and his insights are far beyond his years.

I found it interesting that from his perspective, the converged conversation that I brought up (talk, chat, surf, IM another friend) was the one that got him thinking most about the future, and it led to a nice discussion about where I see the mobile voice industry headed.

You can read Jeff’s full interview with me here: http://www.jeffonthego.com/?p=164.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out his other posts too. I especially liked this one on what teenagers look for in gadgets, “Teenagers Crave Gadgets.”

I also noticed on his “my gear” page that he doesn’t list a high-end smart phone. Will one of you handset manufactures desperate for some real feet on the street insights from the youth demographic please send this young man a solid review phone already!?!

Thanks Jeff, for reaching out and taking the time to chat. Talkster looks forward to keeping you abreast of the latest and greatest we have going on and we’ll put in a good word for you with our handset pals as well.

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

With all the news around operator support or non-support of voice over Wi-Fi, Talkster has had quite a few questions about what Voice over Wi-Fi means to our customers. Market research firm Gartner issued a prediction this month that by 2019 more than 50 percent of mobile voice traffic will travel over VoIP links from end-to-end. Does this prediction match the hype? 2019 is 10 years away!

Here is our take. Wi-Fi technologies are available today on a number of phones, most notably Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and the iPhone. Each of these device platforms has built-in technologies making VoIP calling possible. Depending on the availability of a suitable Wi-Fi network, they can be used to connect to a VoIP server to place calls to regular phone numbers, whether they be mobile or landline, VoIP or PSTN.

The Talkster solution, while using VoIP for backhaul – that part of the network that carries the signal from one destination to another (the same as most carriers do today, by the way) – uses the standard cellular voice channel to connect to our VoIP gateway as today we consider that VoIP functionality on the handset is subject to a number of serious limitations:

• Carrier restrictions: Most carriers restrict through policy or pricing the use of VoIP over their 3G networks. Some, like 3 for example, even though they talk about VoIP calling, are in fact using the same method that Talkster is, namely, using the standard voice channel for call routing.
• Ubiquity: Every phone has access to the voice channel, without exception. Talkster has a 3-tier solution to ensure that we can serve any customer. The Talkster solution offers dedicated local number dialing for international calls, a WAP application for calls and texts, plus the talki java application for full local address book integration along with real time messaging plus low cost calls and text messaging to anywhere.
• Battery life: Phones are optimized for using the standard codecs and voice channels of the GSM device. Using the data channel for voice is extremely draining on the battery and can cut the talk time down to 25% of the usual battery life used for standard calls.
• Complexity: The complexity of setting up a VoIP calling solution on the device and knowing when and when not to use it is too complicated for the average customer looking for cut-rate communications.

Talkster believes in Wi-Fi and broadband for calling, but we see the need for technology to catch-up before it becomes a mass market solution. Once it does, the foundation of Talkster and the talki solution are ready for it as the server side technologies are 100% compatible and don’t have to be changed in any way. Will it take 10-years? We don’t think so. But only time will tell.

Vodafone announced this week its “Passport Summer Roaming Promotion” which will run from June 1st through the end of August. With this promotion, Vodafone callers can take their home price plan on holiday with them to 35 European countries – plus Australia and New Zealand. While there’s normally a 75p connection charge to make and receive calls when roaming, with this promotion that fee has been eliminated and the calls will be charged at the same rate as local calls back home. If callers have inclusive minutes, the cost of the call is taken from these.

This is great news for UK Talkster callers planning to gallivant around Europe this summer on holiday. We’ve never billed ourselves as a roaming product, however with this plan Talkster callers can use their Talkster numbers as they usually would when calling from home.

So for example, if you go to Spain on holiday and want to call you brother in Germany you will be able to use your Talkster numbers just as you would normally do from home. Combining Talkster with Vodafone Passport transforms a very expensive calling scenario – an international call made whilst roaming – into a call that costs only what a local call would when you’re at home! You can call anywhere in the world using your Talkster numbers in the same way as you do while you are at home. talki users can also dial their local gateway number, to make calls anywhere in the world using their talki prepaid account.

There has been some speculation across the industry that this Vodafone promotion will pressure competitors to do away with roaming surcharges as well and could even usher in new EU legislation limiting the charges that Euro mobile operators could bill customers for utilizing one another’s networks. We shall see!

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

Skype just announced that they would be pre-installing their mobile application onto some Nokia devices, beginning with the N97, some time in Q3 2009 to be followed by other (high end) devices from the N Series. TechCrunch has more details here.

I think that Skype has already broken ground with their lite version that runs on J2ME but the difference here is the pre-installation. If it’s in there and running then it’s going to be easier to start using it and will take some share by default when compared to 3rd party applications. The question for me is whether the voice calling is going to be over IP using the 3G or wi-fi connections or using the same access number system as the lite version. If they intend to use the 3G connection then don’t they run into the same carrier by carrier policy problems that have been implemented by the likes of T-Mobile to purposely block out calling methods that circumvent their network? If 3G is blocked, then that leaves wi-fi. Assuming (and it’s a leap of faith here) that you have always available access to a wi-fi connection on the move (oh, and if you are in the office, why would you use your mobile phone to make the call?) then how convenient is that going to be? From my experience, using wi-fi for anything on the Nokia phones kills the battery in a very short space of time and if I use it for voice calling makes being tethered to the outlet on the wall a must.

I do see more merit in the IM/presence angle of this as noted in the TechCrunch article. Having this alternative pre-installed will be of value to the very large base of Skype users. Of course, I have a vested interest in the space. At Talkster, we are delivering mobile solutions but have taken another view on the use of IM from a mobile device. I find that most communications on a mobile device are to other phones, and typically to mobile phones. For this is use SMS and not IM. I don’t have a great need for an IM aggregation application on my mobile device. The way we approach this at Talkster with our talki application is not to create a parallel text communication channel like IM. We create a channel where you can communicate within the network with others who are running the application or, without having to take any extra steps, to any person on any phone using SMS. It’s not limited to just text either. You can push images through SMS and even initiate voice calls. The voice calls are not using 3G or wi-fi, but the regular voice channel that is available on any device and is not restricted by the carriers. We started out calling it the “evolution of SMS” but let’s be bolder. It’s the “REVOLUTION of SMS”!

I am positive on this move by Skype and Nokia. I think that it raises awareness of the possibilities within mobile communications aside from the standard offerings being served up by the mobile carriers. I don’t expect them to embrace it, rather that they will try to stifle it. It’s very difficult to stop change though when it has this kind of building momentum.

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

I continue to be surprised by the number of companies that emerge offering “free” calls. Most of these, including one that I saw today — “FreeBuzzer” — initiate calls from a web browser. Basically, enter your number and the number that you want to call and they initiate 2 outbound calls and connect them (sound like JaJah?). The math doesn’t work and never will. So how can it be free? The cost here involves 2 outbound calls. If you are calling USA to USA then at 2 x 1 cent a minute for call termination, it’s quite cheap. I have had numerous conversations with others in the industry about where the pain point is for the consumer telephony market. The general consensus is 5 cents a minute. Up to 5 cents a minute nobody cares. Over that, people increasingly do care. What this means is that nobody cares about services like this unless they offer free calls to mobile phone where the cost typically is 15 or more cents a minute. In this scenario this “free” calling method makes no economic sense, and advertising revenues can NEVER cover a cost of 15 cents a minute. The only way to make this free or close to free is to eliminate the termination costs.

For an example of this, take a look at a service Talkster recently partnered on http://freeringer.biz where you can initiate a call from your PC (eliminate one termination charge) and have your friend connect to you by calling a number for you that is in his local calling area (eliminate the second termination charge). Now that’s an ad supported model that works and which makes sense for the consumer (and Talkster has connected millions of calls in this fashion to prove my point).

So, while the “free” calls offers may keep on coming out of the woodwork, they are usually loss leaders to pay VoIP services (just as FreeBuzzer turned out to be). As my grandfather said, “If it looks too good to be true, it usually is too good to be true” Translation: It’s not true!

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

There are some MVNOs based in the Isle of Man who are in the market in the UK offering their numbers as an alternative to standard premium rate numbers. So for example, if someone calls the number, they will share revenue with you. Now, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with premium rate numbers and I have personally been in the business of offering services via premium rate numbers in the UK and around the world for more than 15 years. The problem I have with this is when the appearance of the numbers is used deceptively. You see, all UK mobile numbers appear as +447XXX XXX XXX and to that end, your average consumer caller doesn’t know the difference between a Vodafone mobile number +447880 XXX XXX and an Isle of Man mobile number +447624 XXX XXX

Why does it matter what kind of number it is, as long as it starts with +447? Well, it could mean the difference between a free call included in your calling plan and a very costly one. You have to look carefully at the call rates for your mobile operator to catch this or wait until your first bill and then drop off your chair wondering why these “in plan UK mobile calls” cost you up to 50p a minute and you have to sell your car to pay the bill!

As always happens in the UK, this will fly under the radar for a period of time until the regulators or consumer protection bodies catch up and then a stop will be put to it or the mobile operators will block the calls to these number ranges.

It’s a bit hard in this case because there are also real mobile numbers dialing Isle of Man subscribers’ mobile phones. My guess is that the UK mainland carriers will block access. Manx Telecom will negotiate and either the interconnect rates will drop or Manx will prohibit their use as an alternate premium rate number. In either case, it will mean the end of their use for premium rate calling because when the interconnect fees are lowered, there won’t be any revenue left to share.

To illustrate the difference in cost to call these numbers, here is an extract from the Vodafone website about mobile call charges.

Premium rate services and numbers beginning, for example, 0845 or 09, are charged at a different rate to standard mobile and standard landline numbers. Not all numbers beginning 07 are standard mobile phone numbers – for example, international calling cards start with 07. Calls to these numbers are charged at higher rates than calls to standard mobile phone numbers. When dialing, please be aware of the charges associated with the following prefixes.

These numbers have been trouble before too. Twitter was using Isle of Man numbers for its SMS posts and it seems that a number of people in the UK got caught unawares with the cost of sending SMS to these numbers. So much so that Twitter posted some pricing advice on its site to warn its users.

http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=64

A word of caution for those using the international number: some carriers don’t charge an international fee to use Twitter’s international number. Others, even in the UK, consider it an international number and charge from .15 to .25 per message. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that even in the UK, standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply.

So to answer my original question, “are all numbers created equal?” No. They are not. Buyer beware.

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

A lot is being written on the implications for advertising and marketing within the context of social media. I read an article written by Joe Marchese of socialvibe. We both share the view that social media can be leveraged for targeted advertising, but there is a difference between knowing something about you, the owner of the profile, and the people who visit your profile. I would say that this distinction goes further. The knowledge of you and what marketers should target to you is not only a function of your profile but of your entire social graph which includes your relationship to your friends.

In this example, knowing that Joe and his girlfriend are getting married, visitors to her profile should get wedding gift ads. This can be further refined based if something is known about the visitor to the page.

In short, this highlights not only how to use information in the individual but the combination of knowledge about two individuals and their relative positions in each others’ social graphs. Take it a step further. Knowing that other friends on the same proximity on the social graph had already clicked through on certain gift related ads, this could also be relevant to visitors to her profile.

The most complex part of the equation for marketers is how to use this information judiciously. If you know just enough, then the ads become relevant and of interest. If you know too much then they become “scarily relevant” and will turn your targeted consumer against you as they perceive that you are invading their privacy. A whole new industry will evolve around marketers looking to strategically use this wealth of information that previously they could only have dreamed about. Done right, it will positively change the face of marketing forever. Let’s hope that a few don’t abuse the privilege of accessing the information and negatively skew public perception.

By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster

There is a paradigm shift happening in communications. The silos of old are crumbling and the way we communicate is forever going to be changed. The changes in communication that are coming is nothing short of revolutionary.

It was roughly a decade ago that people started using email, but now email has become ubiquitous and, for a great many, the primary form of communication. But since mass adoption of email began in the 1990s, a large number of new and different communications technology and habits has emerged. Today we email, text message, Facebook, tweet and still make phone calls but increasingly on VoIP phones running over Wi-Fi networks.

The evolution in communications is clear, but where is this revolution you may ask? Adding more and more little bits of communication on top of old methods is hardly revolutionary.

The revolution I speak of was incited by social networking. When I say social networking, you probably think MySpace and Facebook. These sites with their huge member lists are just the beginning. While social networking habits are engrained in teenagers using MySpace, the lure of social networking is attracting members far younger. Children as young as three are connecting with friends they know and are meeting new friends on social network sites made just for them. Sites like Club Penguin, ToonTown, Webkinz and My Scene are experiencing explosive popularity. Children I know will rush home from school to invite their classmates into their Club Penguin igloo instead of playing with these same friends on the playground. Too young for email, text messages and even phones, social networking is becoming part of their everyday communications, a habit they will carry with them as they go through school and into the workplace.

Today, the majority of us over 30 have two primary contact points. Our email address and our (mobile) phone number. I am not talking about the tech savvy early adopters, who are constantly IM’ing, twittering or “pinging,” but rather the masses. If someone absolutely has to communicate with us, these are the two places that they will try first.

Increasingly thirty-somethings are becoming less and less reliant on email as a standalone silo of communication and more and more, they are choosing to center their primary communications on their Facebook account and their mobile phone. When they are at their PC, Facebook messaging is the way they exchange messages. It used to be IM. Remember that ever present MSN sound you would hear each time a new message arrived? I would go crazy as my kids would have 20 simultaneous conversations and I would hear that sound every five seconds for hours at a time each evening. That sound is fading into memory. Hotmail and Gmail open on the desktop? No. More than likely it’s the Facebook home page.

With the major social networking players, including not only Facebook and MySpace, but also LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Ning and others, each counting their members in the tens of millions, it’s surprising they haven’t caught on to their role as the central hub for all communications. The capabilities of the social network communications infrastructure remain rudimentary. There are many pieces of the puzzle that are still missing.

Realizing that instant access to information about one’s social network comes with desire for real time communication with the people in that network, some of these social networks are starting to roll out instant messaging. Some are doing a better job than others. Those I’ve seen follow a pattern of enabling communications as an application layered on top of the social network platform. I don’t think a standalone IM client like the MySpace/Skype messenger is the answer. Something that integrates with the core communications experience is.

This need is even more apparent when you extend social network communications to mobile devices. Until our university students and teenagers become the next league of desk jockeys, they still spend the majority of their time away from a PC. But they are never without their mobile phones. Despite the fact that more people are electing to use their mobile phone as their only phone service, the mobile landscape hasn’t changed that much. While some phones have the ability to surf the Net, IM and record video, the mobile phone experience is still centered on SMS and phone calls.

Most of these kids can’t afford to spend a lot, so they are economical with their mobile usage. Ad supported communications will change this reality as the mobile experience is subsidized with interactive advertising. This shift is the blue ocean for social networks and will be the focus of attention so that the core communications experience follows the user wherever they are. Social network-based communication needs to be usable wherever these kids are; getting an alert about a new communication and then having a limited ability to engage in the conversation is frustrating.

When you look at Facebook and the number of users with the mobile application installed (the application that allows Facebook users access via a browser page on their mobile devices) compared to the overall user base, mobile social networking is still in its infancy: only three million installs of the mobile application versus 70+ million users of Facebook overall (this number does not include BlackBerry users who had the application pushed out to their device automatically). There are no stats on how much either is actually used on a regular basis, but it is surely pretty small given the limited usability of these applications and, most importantly, the real time interaction that is missing. Real time is where it’s at.

Let’s take a leaf out of the RIM book of wisdom. Look at how addictive the real time push of email has become for business users. That instantaneous “call to action” that makes the BlackBerry addictive is the same as SMS. Facebook SMS alerts are simple and immediate. Instant messaging is similar but mobile IM, while popular, is still far away from the usage we see with SMS.

Once social networks can realize the value to their users of building consolidated, real time communications into their core platform, we will notice a sea change in communications on par with the invention of the telephone. Does that sound like hyperbole? Think about it for a moment. The phone was the first mass real time communications tool and its adoption was fast and widespread. Integrating real time text, voice and even video communications into a core social network platform will tear down the silos that are keeping each communications service separate and distinct. Once consolidated, the social network becomes the key to all our interpersonal communications, and we can access it as fully on the PC as we can on the mobile, making communications possible from any device we own.

Because communications are both multi-faceted and siloed, we are forced to maintain numerous accounts: email, phone, instant messaging, twitter, etc. Why should I have to maintain contacts in Outlook, my online email account and my mobile device? Why do my voicemails end up in three different places, my home, my office and my mobile phone? It’s all about the multiple contact points and not knowing how to consolidate these.

To be clear, I am not talking about “unified messaging” which is a top down approach (think of the bushy end of the tree). I am thinking about a single point of entry where everyone gets to reach me wherever I decide that they should reach me. I have friends and a whole lot of information about them. I don’t need a separate contact list also, or many separate contact lists. I have categories for my friends. Some of them are acquaintances on a “limited profile.” I want to use these same techniques to determine who reaches me where and when. When I want to call someone, let me click their picture and based on their preferences and our relationship, point me to the right place to reach them whether it be by voice or text (or even video).

Let’s not forget one other very important piece. With communications centralized through a social network, the social network can derive revenue streams from something as commonplace as a phone call. In fact, given the types of usage these networks see every day, the social networks are forsaking $millions in lost revenue every day because they haven’t integrating communications into their core platform and are not taking advantage of the revolution they themselves started!

It’s time to make change happen. The social networks are battling not just for market leadership, but to become the centre of our personal universes. It’s not a guarantee that the most popular networks today will be the winners of tomorrow. What could be more compelling than offering people a central hub through which all communications takes place? I predict that the first company that embeds the type of communication platform I’ve described above into their core offering will be a clear market winner.

By Maria Puccio
Marketing Manager at Talkster

It’s Valentine’s Day, a time when everyone’s thoughts turn to love, relationships, flowers and in my case – chocolate!

But here at Talkster, since communications are what we do, and most of our time is spent assuring that people can communicate easily and seamlessly, Valentine’s Day makes us reflect on our users (I like to call them “talksters”) and how they keep up with loved ones who are far away.

We’ve had lots of people write us to say that Talkster has helped them stay in touch with a long-distance loved one – be it a boyfriend, girlfriend, parent or sibling – by giving them the opportunity to call more often and feel closer to that person. We are always pleased to get those comments and notes because it shows us that people are using Talkster and liking it.

Patrick wrote to tell us that after having lived in Berlin for a over a year, he made lots of friends there, and now uses Talkster all the time to stay in touch now that he’s back in Australia.

But one of my favorite notes is from Catherine, who writes:

“I found this on Facebook, and honestly thought this was too good to be true… that there had to be some catch.

I looked into it as much as possible, read up on some reviews, and realized this might just be legit.

So someone extremely special to me lives in London, while I’m in the US. I haven’t heard his voice in over 3 months, and can’t see him for another 5. I prayed that this would work, because it would truly be a dream.

So I dialed, got the number to call….the phone is ringing…and he answers. My heart skipped a beat. We were able to talk for multiple hours.

I love this service, and thank you so much. You offer a truly amazing service that has given me the best Christmas present I could ever ask for. I got to hear the voice of the one I love again, thanks to Talkster.”

Since so many talksters are in long distance relationships, I was curious to know more about long distance relationships and communication. I did a bit of research to see what the experts say.

According to relationship expert Dr. Laura Berman, in her article, “Long-distance love: How to make it fly”, communication is essential.

Dr. Berman outlines how one of the problems long distance relationships face is not knowing where the person on the other end is, not being able to reach them and then worrying about what they’re up to. Dr. Berman’s solution to this is to always agree on a time when you are going to call each other.

“When your partner is miles away, it is easy to jump to conclusions when he doesn’t answer his phone….Even after you find out the truth (he was taking a nap and didn’t hear his phone), the stress and anxiety you created during those incommunicado hours have already taken their toll,” Berman says. “To avoid this problem in the future, agree on a time when you and your partner will call each other, no matter what comes up. Pick a time that is convenient for both of you, whether it is first thing in the morning or on your respective lunch breaks. Keep your phone date at all times, and if you must break it, be sure your partner knows ahead of time.”

Another problem Dr. Berman addresses that can arise in long distance relationships is loneliness. Dr. Berman’s solution is to “stay connected”. One way to do this is to find “a free online telephone service that lets you call land lines and cell phones all over the world”, Berman says.

And if you’re not in a relationship, Valentine’s Day is a great time to get in touch with friends or family and remind them that they’re important to you too. May from Toronto is planning a big Talkster conference call, where she can speak to family members in Vancouver, Hong Kong and mainland China all at once. Now that’s pretty sweet!

Wherever you are, and whomever you’re calling, Talkster wishes you a Happy Valentine’s Day! Stay in touch!