A few years ago many companies and developers stuck their toe in the water with Facebook developing calling applications. About a year ago Vonage developed a Facebook app that made it easy to contact friends who are using the social network.
Now a new service is trying to do talk plus and the jingle, jangl (pun intended for those who know the history of anonymous calling) to help the Facebook society hook up with one another.
Called KipCall the service in't VoIP. It uses the PSTN and bridges calls using the click to call approach, pulling your phone number from FaceBook (if it's listed) and connecting the desirous party.
To me, the reason people use FaceBook is not for calling. It's for adding a layer between themselves and their phone, the same way eBay sellers chose not to use Skype in their business. While I like the idea of KipCall, especially that they can make use of the legacy phone systems, I also recognize that Facebook users will need to become more like customers of the phone company, where phone numbers can be public, published (to only friends) or totally private.
Privacy features of social networks are just really evolving, and with each new application, the bounds of what wasn't becomes what is. If you want to hook up using FaceBook, KipCall may be for you. Their blocking feature (ala GoogleVoice and others) makes it also easy to tell someone to "hang it up" but the best way to not have to say "googbye" is to simply not start with them in the first place. That said, I don't think KipCall, Vonage or whatever comes next will be the last to want to say "hello" to the hundreds of millions of FaceBook users...and in reality the service has merit, as it does provide a meaningful service to audience that is really all about growing up.
Now beyond the fun and games, one of KipCall's neat features is the benefit of knowing who of your friends are near you, up to 6/10th of a mile. That approach is what got COLOR, the new photo/social network, funded to the tune of $41 million this week. A second neat feature is the ability to send an email, right from the app..that means if you don't reach them, you can do more than leave a voice mail, and that's not as easy to do from the basic iPhone Facebook app.
I say...Give it a try.
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