A couple of days ago, Plingm announced that it now allows Linkedin’s 151 million users to call each other for free and also supports chat/group chat. This was big news for the company. However, an even bigger announcement has been made – Plingm now also supports Facebook’s one billion users.
“You can actually combine all three now, Plingm, Facebook and Linkedin” says Pandelis Eliopoulos, the co-founder of Plingm. So you can basically have a group chat with your Plingm contact, a co-worker on Linkedin and a high-school girlfriend from Facebook – all at the same time! Naturally this extends to voice calling as well. Once you install the product, the calls are completely for free for those that have the app. In comparison to other applications such as Whatsapp, you now do not need to have the number of the contact as Facebook or a Linkedin connection is sufficient enough to make the call.
So does that mean that I no longer need to keep any contact phone numbers? “Yes, we try to decrease the need. We are really bringing the social connection into the communication, because right now we believe that communication is one thing and social is something else. By doing this, we actually put them together in the same basket.” says Eliopoulos.
The reason for numbers seems to be a technical limitation on the most part, and it only makes sense for somebody to try and get rid of them altogether. This is especially true because our Facebook and Linkedin connections are usually a number of times larger than our phone address books. “It is so much nicer to call a picture [and not a number]… This is the future.” – Eliopoulos.
Plingm has always remained Middle East-focused for so many years. Today, the Middle East remains an important market but according to Eliopoulos “[They] are growing in all other regions as well, especially Asia”. Still, the company is not reporting any user base figures and to my question I got a reassuring “It’s millions.” How do you see a future where all social networks are connected and there is no need for phone numbers anymore? Let us know in the comments.
