Truphone is a "Red Herring 100 Global" Award Winner

Congratulations to the folks at Truphone for being selected as a Red Herring 100 Global award winner at the big event here in Seattle. There are a number of smaller companies that have been doing some really interesting things innovating in the voice services space. I recently had the chance to speak with Tom Carter at Truphone. I have to say that I haven't been a big Truphone user myself as I just don't normally use the best toolset to leverage their solution. But they've got strong insights and are doing some interesting things to raise the value proposition of voice and mobile services.

Truphone will continue to be a company to watch in 2008.

Truphone is a "Red Herring 100 Global" Award Winner

Red Herring Magazine has announced that Truphone has won a Red Herring 100 Global 2007 award. Some 1800 companies - Red Herring 100 winners and finalists from North America, Europe and Asia in the last three years - were eligible for the awards, which celebrate the world's most promising private technology ventures.

James Tagg, Truphone's CEO, said: "Truphone is on a mission to create the mobile operator for the internet age. This award is a welcome acknowledgment of what we're doing and how we're going about it."

The Red Herring editorial team used a very competitive process to whittle down the pool of 1800 eligible promising companies to the 100 winners of this first-time award. Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The winning companies were announced and celebrated at the Red Herring Global event in Seattle, USA, between December 3-5.

About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company uniting the world's best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine; an online daily technology news service; technology research, and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider's access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. For more information, visit www.redherring.com .

In addition to the Red Herring award Truphone's been making a strong play in the social media and networking space. They recently release a Facebook application to build free phone calls into Facebook. Truphone implemented a unique softphone application built on Facebook Platform that enables Facebook users and their friends to call each other for free. Among the 'firsts' introduced by the Truphone 'Call Me' application is a moveable button that can be dropped anywhere on Facebook that accepts attachments, enabling users to:

Embed their 'Call Me' button within Facebook messages;
Post their 'Call Me' button onto their friends' walls;
Drop their 'Call Me' button onto Facebook group and discussion boards.

The Truphone 'Call Me' application is available to all Facebook users. Users do not need a Truphone account or a special phone in order to use the application.

Dean Elwood, well known industry thought leader and platform director, Truphone, said:
“A generation of people is emerging that doesn't use email. Instead, they use Facebook, messaging, and wall postings. Our view was that the Truphone Call Me application should remain true to the Facebook user experience, and to achieve that we've delivered an application with some truly progressive elements."

"The Truphone Call Me application is completely embedded within the existing Facebook user experience. We never make a user leave Facebook or have to pick up another device such as a phone; instead, we've embedded a softphone into Facebook."

"One particularly exciting thing is that anytime a new service that accepts attachments is introduced to Facebook, our application will work on it because the Truphone Call Me button can be dropped into any attachment. So people may use our application in ways that haven't been envisaged yet."
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