Hey, Recall FriendCaller? It Just Launched 7-Way Mobile Movie Talk

FriendCaller, a Skype alternative which, let’s face it, we haven’t heard much from in years, is today launching fresh web and mobile apps that support up to 7-way group movie talks at once. The addition comes on the high-heeled slippers of FriendCaller’s earlier expansion this year into multi-point movie and voice conferencing, the company says.

In addition to the seven movie participants, the fresh apps also support twenty participants in a voice-only talk.

For those unacquainted with FriendCaller, it’s a service from C2Call, a company founded back in 2008. Like Skype, it offers free services for users calling other FriendCaller members, but charges for other things like making calls to outward phones, for example.

A duo of years ago, the company was touting a total of 1.Four million subscribers, and today, that number has more than quadrupled to 6.Five million. The application is available for Windows, Mac and Linux web browsers as well as on iOS and Android-based devices. (FriendCaller is available on over 1,000 different Android devices, in fact).

Today, FriendCaller is officially announcing the launch of its mobile talk apps, which feature text/SMS support, Caller ID, support for “real” phone numbers and support for calling over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G. The company says that it’s able to suggest this fresh service because its algorithms require “extremely low resources” on both the mobile client and cloud server side.

The fresh app emerges as a separate download than the original FriendCaller app in the iTunes App Store, but in the Android Market Google Play store, the fresh app is the only one listed. It’s also available here online for web users. All three apps support using Facebook to sign up and find friends, albeit you can also use an email address instead, if you choose.

FriendCaller’s earlier iOS app has a four-star rating, but a few reviews are negative, seemingly due to user confusion as to what’s free and what’s paid. To be clear, in-network calls are always free, but users have to pay for premium features like a “real” phone number, dialing out to outer lines, and soon, text messaging (it’s listed as free for a “limited time”).

For users who don’t want to pay for credits, FriendCaller also permits them to see movies or download apps to earn those credits, via its “offer wall” (a pay-per-download scheme). The app also runs a banner ad to assist in monetization efforts.

[Sorry, but I couldn’t line up seven friends to test the movie talk before this news broke. It should be interesting to see how it does.]

C2Call has angel funding from Michael Brehm (former executive director of StudiVZ , a European social networking site) and Tapesh Sinha (founder of Acctel Group of companies). In October 2009, High-Tech Gründerfonds became the lead investor for the company. It’s a leading start-up venture capital group backed by six of Germany’s largest industrial groups including BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Carl Zeiss. C2Call raised a $Two million Series A in two thousand ten from Draper Investment Company, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Mr. Klaus Wecken, co-founder of KHK Software AG.

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