Talkplus preps for Palm & BB beta
By Vivek | August 21st, 2007 at 03:42 pm ET
Mobile startup Talkplus is looking to signup new customers for it Palm and Blackberry handset compatible app beta. Good news is that for the first 200 users to signup, they will get free second line for 30 days and $10 in free calling credits. Bad news is that for most part you don’t really need Talkplus. Why?
Well, Talkplus is an interesting offering but with a limited use-case. Once you are subscribed to the service, you get an additional number that can ring your mobile phone. So you friends and family can be calling you on either of those numbers. Since you can choose the Talkplus number to be an international number, you can make it easy for your fam+friends to make sort of local calls directly to your mobile phone. Besides that you can make international calls on cheaper rates via your Talkplus number.
So why the limited use-case tag? For one, the service is not free. If you get an international number, you have to pay a monthly charge for the number and also pay per minute according to county code of your number. Besides that you need a data plan to initiate the calls, which means more monthly bucks to shell out. Even after the calls get initiated, you would still be using your mobile minutes. And to add to that, Talkplus rates are competitive but not the minimum being offered out there. With all these limitations built in, I don’t see many users opting for the service.
on August 23rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Hi there,
Thanks for the feedback on our service.
I’m the Director of Marketing at TalkPlus, and I thought it fair to point out a few benefits of TalkPlus of which you might not be aware:
First, we have a lot more than our international numbers service. We have a wide variety of offerings, the most popular of which is our *US* numbers service. You can get up to 10 numbers from across the US added to your mobile phone. So if you want to have a “professional” mobile number, so that you can easily separate your work from your personal calls, you can do that.
If you have clients in multiple cities, you can have a number from each city, to make it look like you’re a local businessperson. Real estate agents love this. Or, for our dating-focused customers, you can make it look like you’re a local dater.
Second, our numbers not only receive calls, they can *make* calls. One of the reasons that TalkPlus is a well-liked service is because you can *pick* your Caller ID. You can decide if you want to look like you’re calling from Paris, San Francisco, LA, NY, etc.
You can even decide if you’re calling from your office landline or home number, using our Mirror Numbers. This is huge for lawyers, doctors, and other people whose landline number is more recognizable than their mobile, or for those who don’t want people to know what their mobile number is.
Third, if you’re calling long distance from a mobile phone, it’s *still* cheaper to use TalkPlus and your regular mobile minutes than to use your mobile carrier’s long distance plan. And it’s more convenient than using a calling card on that same mobile phone (which would also use your mobile minutes too, don’t forget).
And for those with big families in 2 countries, we see a lot of customers setting up a US number that rings a phone number somewhere else in the world, typically India. That means that all the family members in the US just have to call a US number to reach Mom and Dad or Grandma and Grandpa overseas, and get super cheap rates.
So there’s a lot more to TalkPlus than just getting an international number for your relatives or overseas customers to call you. The new Palm and BlackBerry betas are really slick and intuitive - you should check them out and see what the real power of the app is. It’s way beyond cheap calling!
– Barbara
on December 18th, 2007 at 3:43 am
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