Orange, which is owned by France Telecom, has announced “Party Call.” It’s an IP-based service that allows for calling groups of people without having to know phone numbers. Also known as “social calling,” the service is a partnership with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB). It’s expected to launch in the summer of 2013 and will be available on smartphones and the desktop.
Orange has lots of experience working with Facebook: The mobile operator put the social networking service on feature phones in Africa. There’s even buzz that Orange is working on a Facebook phone. But, of course, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has denied the the rumors.
Yet it does look like he wants to make phones more social, and Facebook is likely to be at the forefront of the trend.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPOPlaybook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders” and “How to Create the Next Facebook.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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