By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster
Today we are proud to announce that here at Talkster we have taken the next step in our quest to offer the best in ad-supported communications. Introducing talki, our new mobile application! Since the launch of Free World Dialing we have had hundreds of thousands of requests for new services, and many of have asked the same question: “When will you be able to help me cut the cost of international SMS?” Well, we listened and took that request one step farther and also included picture messaging. Sometimes you just want to say it with a picture when words can’t quite capture the essence of the moment!
Text messaging continues to grow in use, rather than be replaced by other methods of communication. We are aware that out in the market, there are various IM aggregation plays where you can get your desktop IM buddies onto your mobile phone. However, what we believe is needed — and what Talkster begins delivering today — is an evolution of SMS, the most successful mass market mobile communications tool ever.
People started to use SMS long ago not because it was convenient but because it was a lot cheaper than calling. Over time it has become accepted as the way people communicate and become part of the way people want to communicate. It hasn’t changed much with the exception of being able to string multiple messages together to make a single long message, but that’s really not revolutionary, at least not from a network perspective. MMS came along and I have it from reliable sources in the content provider arena that it’s use isn’t growing but in fact declining. Why? Because it doesn’t work? No. Sure, there are some interoperability problems, especially internationally, but the main reason is because it’s too expensive! IM too has become more prevalent on mobile devices but interoperability is an issue there too, as well as a reliance on the need to interconnect with the MSNs and Yahoo!s of the world. Also, it doesn’t interact with your SMS so it’s just another parallel communication channel.
So, what is talki? Talki is a service that you can use through a small piece of software that you install on your phone (currently for phones that run java — the largest segment of the global market — and Blackberry; Windows Mobile to come). Talki uses your phone number (not some IM alias) to identify you and can be used for many things:
- Send text messages, of any length, from your phone to your friend’s phone if they are using talki. There are some valuable, practical features in there backed up by a world class messaging server. Unlike SMS which can get clogged up in the carrier networks for hours or in extreme cases days, talki offers guaranteed delivery with an easy visual view of whether your message is waiting to be delivered or has landed on your friends handset.
- Send picture messages. On most phones you can take a picture in real time or attach a picture that you took previously. The protocol that we developed is highly efficient and can transport image files rapidly from point to point.
- Make Free World Dialing calls. This part of the service continues to grow at a rapid pace. Using talki to make the calls is much more covenient. If you get a call from your friend, the application rings on your handset and connects you to your local Talkster number to complete the call. This is for friend to friend or friend to group calls.
- Send SMS text messages. We realized that not all your friends will get talki straight away. If you want to send messages to any phone as a standard SMS, you can do that from within talki.
- Wiki searches, literally putting Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia with 10 million entries, in your pocket! This is only the beginning. We can include the query or search of any open source of information. This can be pulled or pushed, in real time, based on a set of criteria.
- Address book integration. talki integrates with your local address book so that you can conveniently add contacts to the application and invite friends who you would like to use the application.
- Message backup. If you have ever lost your phone or it has just died, that list of text messages you had is probably lost. Not with talki. If you re-install the application on the same or a new phone, all your messages will be restored, along with your contacts as if you had never moved!
Depending on handset, the application runs in the background and is always on to accept messages and calls. It uses a very small amount of data and with the continuing decline of data costs, is very cost effective to use.
Well, that’s all great you might say, but what about the ad supported business model? This is where we have some very interesting annoucements coming along but I can share with you some details already. The talki messaging platfrom is built from the ground up to include the option for advertising. Not just banner ads on the top of the screen as you see on many mobile sites, but ads which are carried as part of the messaging protocol. Ads are generated with each message send (no, we are not reading your messages!) and can be placed in the messaging window in a very non intrusive but effective manner. For both the consumer and the advertiser, we have included several “call to action” links. Ads can contain images, in addition to web, SMS and click to call links. All of the ads are generated and tracked through the talki advertiser portal. The open standards used in the API enable us to connect to ad content aggregators to deliver content in addition to that generated on our own advertiser interface.
We also have created this as a white label opportunity. With very little effort the talki mobile client can be modified for look and language for service delivery in support of brands, service providers and aggregators. The whole platform and client components are a fast and easy way for service providers such as MVNOs to quickly enhance their offerings without having to rely on the underlying network provider’s infrastructure. From now on, service enhancements can be entirely sofware enabled! The talki service links into MVNOs existing messaging and works as an ehancement for which they can charge and offer high marging services and has the option to include ad support. We have seen some great mobile players such as Virgin step into the ad-supported arena and most recently seen mainstream operators such as T-Mobile break from the pack and offer ad-supported games. Let’s be clear here though, “ad-supported service” doesn’t mean “paid for entirely by advertising.” In some cases it can, but it will be used wisely as a means to maintain margin and stay price competitive while offering better end user services. It’s a win-win-win, or as they say here in Canada, a hat trick!
Check it out at www.talki.me and give it a try (except those of you still living in mobile internet walled gardens! We will get over the wall to help you soon, we promise).
