In the last few months since we launched support for Free SMS, Talk.to has seen astounding growth with over a million SMS messages being sent every month, across 80+ countries.

We are thankful to you for using Talk.to and helping us grow so quickly. However, with rapid growth also comes challenges: to provide reliable free SMS across countries, we must take into account varying SMS rates across countries and negotiate with vendors of each country to get the best possible rates and service quality.

To ensure that our free SMS support is the best around, we’ve decided to stagger support for countries that you can send free SMS to. To start with, you will be able to send Free SMS messages to the US, Canada and India only. More countries will be supported as we go.

How does this affect me?
Soon, you will only be able to send free SMS messages to your friends in the US, Canada and India. As before, your friends can reply to your SMS messages and you will see their replies as chat messages.

Does this impact my existing SMS credits?
No, your sms credits will remain the same and you can still use your credits to send Free SMS, but only to the US, Canada and India. We’ve also increased the number of free SMS credits given for every friend who joins Talk.to to 100.

How did we decide on the supported countries?
We picked these countries based on where most of our users are located. This means that a significant number of users should not be affected by this change.

When will this happen?
This change will be implemented starting 15th May 2013.

We understand that some of you may be affected by this change, but request you to hold on as we add support for more countries. Please do email us for any feedback at support@talk.to

Posted by the Talk.to product team

A few weeks ago, we launched Image Sharing to our Android users. Since then, we’ve been working hard and today we’re pleased to announce Image Sharing for our Windows Phone users.

With the latest update (0.0.5.7), you can now share all kinds of pictures with your friends using Talk.to.

Sharing options are easily accessible from the conversation view. To get started, tap ‘Share’ and follow the steps. 

To start sharing, head over to the Windows Phone Store to get Talk.to for Windows Phone.

Well, that’s it for now. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming weeks.

Posted by Aditya Pandya, Product Manager

Today we’re excited to announce one of the most awaited features on Android – Image Sharing. With the latest update of Talk.to for Android (1.1.9), you can now take photos and share them with your friends.

Sharing options are available in conversation view – you can either take a photo or choose an existing an existing one from your phone.

There’s more coming soon: Inline previews for your images, sharing different kinds of media and much more.

Well, that’s it for now. Visit the Google Play Store today to get the new Talk.to for Android and share away!

Posted by Aditya Pandya, Product Manager

Here’s some great news for all Windows 8 users: our new Windows 8 app is now available for download in the Windows store.

We want you and your friends to have a great chat experience, no matter what device you’re using, and our Windows 8 app brings us one step closer to that. With this release, Talk.to now runs on most smartphones (iOS, Android and Windows phone 8) and desktops/laptops (Windows, Mac and Chrome Extension.)

In addition to the core Talk.to experience, we’ve handcrafted this app to make the best of Windows 8:

All about your chats
Less UI clutter is one of Windows 8’s guiding principles, and something that we deeply care about. We’ve worked hard to ensure that your chats take center-stage without the UI getting in the way.

Light on the battery
The battery life of your Windows 8 tablet is to a large extent affected by the apps that you run on it. For this reason, Talk.to for Windows 8 has been built to be as light-weight as possible.

Live tiles and Notifications
We’ve baked in support for Live tiles and Notifications so that you don’t have to worry about missing your chats no matter what app you’re running.

And there’s more coming soon: A snapped view so that you can keep your chats open while using other apps, free SMS, and support for Groups.

The feedback we’ve received so far has been great, but we’d love to hear more. So, if you own a Windows 8 device, head over to the Windows 8 app store and give the app a whirl. And please do email us at win8-support@talk.to for any questions/suggestions.

Posted by Felix Jamestin, Product Manager

Following our recent release that included ability to send free SMS to your phonebook contacts, today we are pleased to launch a new update for Talk.to for Android.

Invite your friends and get free SMS
With today’s launch of the new Talk.to for Android, you can earn free SMS by inviting your friends. The updated app lets you invite your friends to Talk.to with one quick tap during the course of the conversation.

Additionally, you can also send an invitation anytime by using the option in the “more” menu in the conversation view.

For every friend that joins Talk.to, you will receive additional free SMS.

The new app also includes ability to sync phonebook contacts manually as well as fixes issues with signing into Facebook and importing phonebook contacts. You can get the latest version of Talk.to on Google Play.

Posted by Aditya Pandya, Product Manager

Following hot on the heels of the recent launch of free SMS on Talk.to for iOS and Windows Phone, we are pleased to announce that from today our Android users can also send free SMS to their phonebook contacts across the world.

You will be credited 200 free SMS to begin with once you start using the new Talk.to. In case you run low while chatting, we will restore your balance to 5 free SMS every week — so you can earn up to 20 free SMS every month.

We are currently working on ways to make earning additional free SMS easy, which should be available in a future release shortly. Meanwhile, you can invite your friends to try Talk.to so you can send them unlimited messages without using up your free SMS.

Some of the other features in this update include: Windows Live/MSN Messenger support, widgets, rich expandable notifications (for devices running Android 4.1 and above), ability to add chat contacts (on Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger) and notification settings.

Visit the Google Play Store today to download the new Talk.to. We believe this delightful new experience is a great starting point — and we will continue to improve Talk.to for you, every day. 

Posted by Aditya Pandya, Product Manager

Here’s some important information about changes coming soon to Free SMS in Talk.to – Don’t worry Free SMS isn’t going away.

Note: Android users will not see any change, but will soon be able to enjoy free SMS

Starting 25th February 2013, we will limit the number of free SMS in Talk.to. While we’ve ensured that most of you won’t be affected by this change, we’ll very soon introduce simple ways to earn additional free SMS from within the app.

What to expect post February 25th 2013?

1. Your account will be initially credited with 200 free SMS.
2. In addition, every week, we’ll restore your balance back to 5 if it dips below this number. That means you get upto 20 free SMS every month.

How can you get more free SMS?
Very soon we will offer ways to earn additional free SMS. You will get free SMS for every friend you invite to Talk.to. You will also get free SMS for promoting Talk.to.

How to make the most of your free SMS?
Invite your friends to download Talk.to. If your friends have Talk.to you can send unlimited messages for free, without using any free SMS. 

Why are we doing this?
Talk.to is the only free app that currently provides free global SMS to your entire phonebook. Our goal is keep it that way. This requires us to establish some fair usage limits to ensure efficient utilization of our resources. 

We arrived at the limits after analyzing our usage stats. If we have our calculations right, 97% of the users should not feel any impact at all.

If you have any suggestions / questions / concerns regarding this change, or any other feedback, please do write to us – we’d love to hear from you. 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/talkdotto

Twitter - http://twitter.com/talkdotto

Posted by Vishal Sukheja, Product Marketing Manager

Welcome to the Talk.to blog.

After over a year of sleepless nights, multiple rounds of brainstorming, and some brilliant programming, we present to you - Talk.to!

One app for all your Chats & SMS

First things first. What is Talk.to, you ask? 

Talk.to is an awesome instant messaging app that helps brings all your chats (across networks) and SMS (to any contact in your Phonebook) together.

With all your contacts and conversations synced across all your devices, Talk.to aims to provide an awesome chat experience, across all your networks.

And we also have among the most beautiful UI among our peers. (We don’t say that - our users do!)

What you see today is however only the initial phase. We are very excited about the stuff that the team is currently working on. 

That is for another day, another blog post. :-)

See any feature that you really love? Or have feedback to us for including a new functionality? Or just want to say Hello?

We would love to hear from you:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/talkdotto

Twitter: http://twitter.com/talkdotto

Careers: http://talk.to/careers.html

So who will you Talk.to today?

Posted by Vishal Sukheja, Product Marketing Manager