Although it has been a while since the Lotus Notes creator stepped away from his post in Microsoft, Ray Ozzie hasn't completely retired from software scene just yet. Co-founding a startup, Ozzie and company have now released their app Talko which isn't as much a revolution as it is a going back to the roots of communication.
The premise behind Talko is that we have practically obsoleted phone calls. But while our substitutes, email (which is also getting deprecated) and instant messaging, lets us interact more often, we actually end up communicating and conveying less. How much emotion and meaning can you convey behind just a few sentences, much less a sometimes ambiguous emoji? Talko aims to bring back that heart of communication by getting users to, well, talk.
Talko can perhaps be best described as a voice-centric instant messaging service and app. While many messaging services do allow you to send short audio clips, they're still mostly text based and revolve around such. With Talko, it is really your mouth that does the talking, literally. Instead of leaving text messages, you leave voice messages, not in voicemail but in conversations. Like instant messaging, though, you can leave your Talko message for others to reply on their own time. Of course, Talko does more than that. For one, you can also take a photo even while you're talking so that others in the conversation can see what you are seeing right at that very moment. And Talko is also useful for teams and businesses as you can organize and tag calls and messages as you wish for later replay.
Unsurprisingly, Talko is first available on iOS with an Android and web app version promised in the coming months. But while Talko does have the backing of an industry luminary such as Ray Ozzie, its success will not depend on him. The idea of such a predominantly (since you can still tap out text if needed) voice-based system might feel alien or even uncomfortable for some, which, somewhat ironically, serves to proves the point.