In the U.S there are several companies/operators providing sms based mobile social networking (dodgeball, Peekamo, Twitter etc)where users meet and make new friends from their mobile phones. Voice enabled social networks seem to getitng good attention from Indian operators like Reliance communication and Bharti.

Bharti has recently launched a voice enabled social network that allows users to meet connect and interact with each other form their cell phone without the need for GPRS or sms based chatting.
Users are given a five digit identification number (it’s their contact no), they then leave a shot message describing themselves. Other users have to call up a 3 digit number and can hear their messages and when interested can contact them using the 5 digit (contact no) identification. Therefore there are no numbers exchanged thus maintaining confidentiality.

“We were really surprised by the uptake for the service, and it has beaten all our expectations,” said Saket Agarwal, COO, Cellebrum Pvt. Ltd, a solution provider of voice-based mobile social networking service in the country.

Reliance communication has the same service since the past 10 months. The cost of each call per minute is approx Rs3. Operators will have to lower this cost to get more users hooked on to the service. The best part of this service is that as it a voice chat, one can identify the person (male/female) and also may to some extent the age can also be determined. So there are no guys with split personality pretending to be girls having a steamy conversation with you over any IM (Instant messenger) 

With limited computers & low internet penetration in India along with a low literacy rate, Voice based chatting seems to be a good option as even the language barrier is also diminished.

Source - Live Mint

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