You're not missing anything, but that doesn't mean this won't be successful. There were tons of ride ordering/sharing apps before Uber; Uber just had the right interface at the right moment. AIM long predated Whatsapp and Skype. These are just a few examples of not-so-original products that became hugely successful because of some very slight twists on relatively old concepts.

Not being original in concept is far from a disqualifier for success. In all but a tiny fraction of cases, "first mover advantage" is a myth. If your goal is rapid, widespread adoption of your product, it's generally better to iterate on something that has proven acceptance by the market.

In a world where "Yo" gets more than 1 user (and a $10M valuation), I don't discount any app until it's removed from the app store.

Is a setting that [unless turned off] tells people what form of transport I'm using really better at avoiding unwanted intrusions than a status update? Am I going to be more or much less likely to leave it on in the background in case any of my friends choose to come and socialise with me if everything is being recorded in the background?

I can certainly imagine edge cases where those capabilities would come in useful, but it sounds like they're more likely to generate negative hype and corporate bans than encourage adoption.

People should never expect an instant reply to any IM, text, or phone call. The receiver's status is totally irrelevant. Society is going to hell from this type of technology.

Why is synchronous, remote communication disallowed? You seem to have ruled out instant responses to any form of remote communication, which greatly impedes, well, communicating. If I have a chain of questions that rely upon previous answers, it's either going to be woefully inefficient to send as asynchronous communication (I have to enumerate all possible questions, which also means all possible answers to previous questions) with respect to either data (one massive email) or time (one question per email, wait for response).

>The receiver's status is totally irrelevant.

Not at all. If I need information that any one of 5 of my contacts have, I can narrow down who I need to ask based on status rather than sending out 5 questions and getting 5 responses. Alternatively, I could ask them one at a time and wait 5-10 minutes for a response before moving on, but that's a large time sink and doesn't scale well at all. A simple available/busy goes a long way.

"Why is synchronous, remote communication disallowed?"

No one said that... I am just saying it's the choice of the receiver of the message when to reply. To many people today seem to have the expectations if can send a message under a second they should receive a reply back in under a second. Ummmm No.

"Not at all. If I need information that any one of 5 of my contacts have, I can narrow down who I need to ask based on status rather than sending out 5 questions and getting 5 responses."

So your contacts status is needed for your convenience? What about theirs?

You sound young and really narcissistic. It's not all about you. To make it more clear for you... It's none of your business what I am doing and I will reply back when I f*cking feel like it.

That makes you the minority view.

Status's in IM apps were hugely popular, that you are unable to see the value to others indicates a lacking of either imagination or empathy on your part.

> People should never expect an instant reply to any IM, text, or phone call. The receiver's status is totally irrelevant.

If my SO is waiting for me to come home to turn on the oven, then being able to see that I am driving, versus calling me and having me not pick up (I typically do not answer the phone when driving), is a huge value add.

If I have one last thing I want my friend to pick up at the store, seeing "walking" versus "driving" lets me know if it is futile to call him.

These features are useful. Are they something that I'd always want to share with everyone? Of course not, but in the right situations they add value to communication.

So what? I was giving my opinion... You do realize the majority view has been often wrong though out history?

"Status's in IM apps were hugely popular, that you are unable to see the value to others indicates a lacking of either imagination or empathy on your part."

I didn't say it may not have value for others but once again it has no value for me. The last thing I want to do is update my status in my IM/chat program every time I logon.

Your scenarios are totally irrelevant... In either case why does it matter if the receiver is driving? They could send a text or leave a VM if don't pick up (which would then assume maybe driving or just busy). What do these scenarios have to do with my point the sender shouldn't expect an instant reply to every communication?

My remarks were about personal communications which this app does not seem to be about. I do feel sorry for people in jobs who do have to reply at all hours of the day. That's not for me...

so to be last mover here they probably need

>a product that is 10x better than a combo(or stand alone instance) of SMS/messaging apps/email/facetime/phone etc

>widespread user adoption

>trust/security

>a revenue stream

It seems cool, but it is a tough space to dominate.

To continue your analogy: How do you prevent yourself from losing your car keys again?

I recall Pogue's article on walkie-talkie apps (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/technology/personaltech/ze...), and how even the best apps had the most god-forsaken interface design.

Being incumbent in a space doesn't mean you do a great job at something. Whether this makes Talko interesting and useful remains to be seen (I'm reserving excitement personally), but I definitely think there's a lot of room for improvement that Talko is taking advantage of.

and the right branding and a huge amount of backing and a giant pair of balls.

You can (voluntarily) share this with the click of a button, at least on Android (paperclip->Location), which I think is the best solution.

But anyway, I agree. Sounds a lot like maybe a new feature or two to Hangouts (the long term rescind feature sounds nice, and Hangouts doesn't have an easy way to record an audio clip from within the app and attach it the way you would an photo, but I'm not convinced that is as important as Ray Ozzie thinks it is, and even if it is it would be trivial to implement on top of what already exists), not some grand new product market, especially when it doesn't even include video support yet while Hangouts does. If you buy into his theory of there being something "lost" with text, surely a lot is also lost when you lose body language with just voice.

- if you send a message to someone offline, and you log off, he will receive it only when both of you will be online and if you use the same device you used when you sent the message. If it was too long ago he might miss it. - if you use multiple devices with skype, you will have to read all everytime you change device

so even if you've heard of skype, I can get why there's so much hype for a well-crafted product like whatsapp, but for calls.

Skype and Hangouts are synonymous with video calling/conferencing, and that's it. They may have more features tucked away somewhere, but it's not what they are.

I had the same idea of Hangouts until switching to android.

On android Hangouts easily becomes the SMS app and instant messenging app as well. After a few days, I would go to Hangout and then think about how (voice ? IM ? SMS ? video call?) I'd like to contact the person. A bit in the same way Talko wants to be a hub for the different channels.

Now that I think about it -- I did one type of store-and-forward voice+ messaging that I did enjoy somewhat. When a friend of mine went to Japan as an exchange student two? years ahead of me in ... 1995? We exchanged cassette tapes via snail-mail. Each usually was kind of a mix-tape of voice diary/message and some music or other stuff and was accompanied by a letter, maybe with news clippings, pictures etc (I think, it's been a while). It's really the only exchange of voice messages I can remember enjoying.

Perhaps the clue is in the fact that the media has to be part of, or inform the message. Modern (phone) voicemail is usually not (in my experience) actually made as store and forward, but more of a fall-back because synchronous communication wasn't possible. Generally if someone wants to forward me an asynchronous message -- I much prefer text. Either sms or email (or a letter) -- to voicemail. That said, if someone mailed me a cd (or audiofile on a thumbdrive) I'd probably listen to it, and have a rather different experience. Not sure if someone emailed me an audio-file. I'm a bit of a die-hard plain-text email person. I'll stretch to image-attachments, though. But I still feel we got oversold on the idea of multimedia, and it remains a bit of a "fad". I do realize I might be an outlier, though :-)

So maybe an app like this can help inform the media choice, and by virtue of that make store-and-forward voice messaging not-suck. As long as people use them as "voice logs" (like videologs) or something, and not as a means to transmit information. Which is just awful, IMNHO.

And I'll probably still prefer my plain-text -- but thinking about it, I could see it being a useful form of communication after all.

Apologies for rambling, but I think there might be traces of an interesting thought in there.

Unless it works differently, somehow.

I think you are missing the part where he says that any participant can rescind at any time.

Imagine - you break up with your partner, and he/she deletes the other side of the conversation.

This may not be a problem in work settings, but it has the potential to cause a lot of pain in personal conversations.