As I mentioned in a previous post, Zingdom has been working on a platform to enable any web site to offer real-time voice and instant messaging communication. We've built a set of web services that deal with typical communication scenarios, including those where one or both parties may not be ready to share all the intimate details of their contact information and schedules. The idea is to offer a set of SOAP methods and AJAX user interface components that allow a web application to make phone calls, sent instant messages, and connect people together. We provide these to partners who can quite easily integrate these capabilities into their own web site.
In parallel to signing up partners, we have started building a few applications of our own. The first, which we tried out on the general public for the first time today, is a Facebook application, One Minute Friend.
The concept is very simple: you add this application to your Facebook account, give it your phone number (just US and Canada for now), provide some selection criteria, and wait for your phone to ring. You’ll be connected, for free, to another person on Facebook who made matching selections. You talk for a minute and it disconnects. You see their first name and their photo, but no other information, such as your phone number or profile, is revealed. At the end of the call, if both of you so agree, the application will re-connect you for a more extended conversation. Otherwise you can move on to the next person.
Facebook provides a lot of the infrastructure. They have a community of over 25 million users and an API that provides access to a rich set of demographic information, making it possible for a person using One Minute Friend to specify whether they want to be connected to other college students, members of a geographic network, members of a group, and the all important selection of Male, Female, or None of the Above. There is also a directory of close to 3,000 applications, together with a highly viral mechanism that allows people to invite their friends to try out their favorite app.
Since One Minute Friend needs a critical mass to get things moving, we are staging a number of events to attract people to show up and certain times. We did one this afternoon and it was fun to catch up with some old friends, and to let them meet each other. You can try it yourself by going signing into your Facebook account (membership in Facebook and in One Minute Friend are free) and going to the following URL: www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4255800247. You supply a phone number where you can be reached, let the system make a test call to verify your number, and your ready to talk.
There's also a Facebook group where you can correspond with other members and leave comments for the developers. Enjoy!
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