Tuesday saw visionary Ray Ozzie and his team launch a redux of the the classic ‘phone call’, in an app called Talko.
Ray Ozzie is the founder of Lotus Notes and at one point had taken over as the chief software architect at Microsoft Corp. from founder Bill Gates. For the last two years, however, he has been working on a mobile app to allow interaction between groups through sharing of images, texts and of course voice calls, all simultaneously, and will lots of added perks.
Currently available for iPhone only, the app aims to gather groups of friends or workers into “calls,” which may be live conversations or a sequential series of interactions that in turn can include a combination of text, voice and images, reports Re/code. Features available include recording of interactions which may be saved on a chargeable database with the opportunity for users to add tags to specific comments.
“In early 2012 we got the band back together again, intending to revolutionize the call using the full capabilities of the smartphone and the full capabilities of the cloud,” writes Ozzie on the Talko blog. “Initially the Talko app is iPhone-only and it’ll remain that way for some months as we continue to learn and refine from a broader base of users. But being a social product, it will of course be available soon on both Android and the web.”
Headquartered in Boston with six employees, with three team members in Seattle and and two in San Francisco, Talko been in touch for funding from investors like Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corp., Greylock Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
While specifics are still unavailable, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from 2013, disclosed that Talko has raised at least $4 million, according to BetaBoston.
Read more here.
(Image credit: Talko)
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