Talkatone business model

[deltaforce]

AFAIK, GrooveIP and Talkatone are two apps you can use with Google voice and enjoy free calling and texting over data or wi-fi.

GrooveIP is pretty simple, pay using the advertisements or buy a premium version that is ad-free. So its clear how the company makes money. I don't understand Talkatone. I could not find their paid app. There seem to be no advertisements (from the screenshots), so how do they make money? What is the catch of this free app?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jhawkkw]

If I recall correctly, talkatone does in fact have ads in the app and there is no premium version to remove them. However I wouldn't know from first hand experience because my ad blocker would have done away with them. One other noticeable difference between the GrooveIP versions is that the free is only for wifi calling while premium enables calling over mobile data (3g,4g). I believe talkatone allows both right away.

 

[tcat007]

I used Talkatone for a week, decided I like GrooveIP better (I have the paid version). I saw no ads on Talkatone, but you do get a compression option with their premium if I recall. I thought quality was OK with free version, but didn't like UI and had "some" connection issues.

 

[electricpete]

I can vouch for the fact that there most certainly ARE ads in Talkatone (the free version at least).

They are slightly more annoying than typical ads in the following sense: They are not at a fixed place at the bottom where you can easily ignore them. They are more in the center of the screen and occasionally move (if I'm not mistaken)... just so it's tougher to quickly mentally filter it out based on location within the screen. And sometimes the ads display" messages that might possibly be mistaken for something related to the phone program function ["tap to call", "click for message", "important account information" etc. I haven't saved snapshots to illustrate all this, just saved the last three ads that popped up on mine (attached).

 

[electricpete]

Oh, and here's an interesting one. The add is several enveloping-looking icons including one with an exclamation point as if to suggest you have an unheard/unread message waiting.

What are they trying to advertise? I have no idea because there are no words. I think they are trying to make someone absent-mindedly click because it looks like a message-tracking app that has messages waiting.

I don't begrudge developers the opportunity to attempt to some financial gain from their product, but it's pretty lame imo to try to trick people into clicking on ads. Whether it's a lame developer or just lame advertiser I'll reserve judgement, as long as I don't see the ad move to a diferent place in the screen (I could have sworn they used to move around).