CloudTalk, a social communications platform that enables users to connect through voice as well as text, photo and video, this morning introduced its new apps for the iPhone and the Android OS, sporting a refreshed user interface and new rich multimedia capabilities.
Voice, perhaps surprisingly, remains decidedly core to the service, with the ability for users to send and receive asynchronous voice messages from their friends (voice mail 2.0?). When words just don’t cut it, users can also add photos and videos to messages.
The new apps – almost evidently – also feature group messaging capabilities, allowing people to message others one-on-one, in a group or to the entire CloudTalk community. All the latest messages in a certain conversation are stored in one place.
CloudTalk, which raised $5.2 million in funding earlier this year, recently launched its own App Platform and Partner Program at SXSW, essentially enabling mobile and Web app developers to integrate voice, text and rich media support into any application.
CloudTalk is based in San Francisco and was founded in April 2009 by CEO David Hayden, a serial entrepreneur who was co-founder of the Magellan Search Engine in 1993 (!), which was sold to Excite back in 1996.
Hayden was also founding chairman and CEO of Critical Path (which went public in 1999), created social networking company JetEye in 2004 and served on the boards of companies like E*Trade Financial, Riya, and eHatchery.
