A new app was released today that is bringing voice communication back to phones.
Ray Ozzie, former Microsoft chief architect, and his team members created an app called "Talko" that allows consumers to communicate with each other through a mix of live and asynchronous voice communications.
The app, geared toward business people, records a live verbal phone conversation and stores it in the cloud. The conversation will be accessible to others who, perhaps, need the information from the call, but were not available at the time to be on the line.
"Pre-Talko, there would just have been a lot of texts flying around," Digital Globe marketing director Ed Locher, told USA Today after using the app. "It was tough to break the typing habit, but we quickly found that we made good use of the app's voice feature. The difference in terms of how we communicated was fairly dramatic."
At this stage, the free app only keeps recorded calls for 10 days. The team wants to be able to save calls for longer periods of time in the future, but they will likely charge for this feature. The exact cost has not been released yet, but Tech Crunch says it will likely be about $10 a month.
Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Kapor Capital were among the funders for the application. It's unkown how much they donated, but an SEC filing towards the end of 2012 (not long after the development began) says the funding was already around $4 million.
Talko was released in the Apple iOS store today and has already accumulated 3 ½ stars. Ozzie and his team say they are still working on the Android version.
