Talk O'Clock: The Social Platform Based on Phone Calls from Strangers

Shawn Pickard needs a wake-up call at 6:15 A.M. in order to get his day started “hunting for another job.” Jonathan Lee has an early morning meeting at 6 A.M., Azerbaijan time, and “would love a short wake-up call.”

The catch: the wake-up will likely come from complete strangers.

Lee and Pickard are two of more than 10,000 users of Talk O’Clock, billed as “the social alarm clock.” Talk O’Clock functions on the idea that a wake-up call from a random stranger can lead to possibilities for new friendships, amusing conversations and, at the very least, would probably get you out of bed. Talk O’Clock users do not know who will be on the other end when they receive a call because the company connects the call and all phone numbers are withheld by the company. Users can choose the gender of the caller, but if no users are available to make the call, a “CallOBot” or automated caller will deliver the requested phone call.

“Voice is a real transmitter of emotion,” said Alexey Kistenev, founder and CEO of Talk O’Clock, which also sees activity by its users for birthday wishes and other special occasions. “We provide a voice channel to communicate and get in touch with people all over the world but also engage people with a service on a daily basis.”

In September, Forbes called Talk O’Clock “the craziest company at TechCrunch Disrupt,” adding that it is a “company so bad that, well, it may even be good.” How “good” the service that Talk O’Clock provides is debatable but Kistenev said the company is growing. Last month, Talk O’Clock grew at a rate of 100 percent and the company connects over 2000 calls a day with a user base spanning 125 different countries, according to Kistenev.

The “social” start-up sector is full of quirky ideas. Typically, such ideas create confusion as to how they can work, but they also fascinate, creating many new users in the process. Talk O’Clock wants to eliminate the intimidation and awkwardness of making new friends on the Internet. People are starting to pay attention, or at least give the social service a try. At TechCrunch Disrupt in September, Kistenev said feedback was “mostly positive.”

“People (at TechCrunch Disrupt) were surprised by this type of service,” said Kistenev. “We expanded our markets and features based on feedback from the event.”

Probably the most interesting aspect about Talk O’Clock’s growth is that it is worldwide. “We got requests from users in other countries after some coverage in major blogs,” said Kistenev. “It is exciting because we have to manage phone call connections between a lot of different countries and can explain to our users that our service is not just between different cities but all over the world.”

But comparisons to other controversial social services such as Omegle, the online chat website and Chatroulette, the notorious webcam-based online chat website, inevitably come with Talk O’Clock’s growth. If Talk O’Clock can differentiate itself as a social-based start-up that provides useful functionality, it may avoid its grouping as another Chatroulette.

“The main differentiator is that we are for just for fun,” Kistenev said. “We want to provide a community of open-minded people who are read to communicate and build new relationships.”