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

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).

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.