In an exhaustive profile by Steven Levy on Medium, the renowned journalist takes a look at a new app called Talko by former Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie. Talko is attempting to reinvent the phone call with an intuitive user interface and features that enable users to communicate based on a combination of voice, pictures, hashtags and more.

Talko essentially combines voice and text messages together and allows users to build a conversation by adding pictures, tags or other people to the chat, all while using your voice to get things done. While you are talking with someone, you can tap on the camera icon to share what you see and bring the conversation to life in real time.

Talko was built based on the premise that voice is the fastest and clearest way for people to communicate.

Ozzie reflected on what that means in Levy’s article:

“It’s not like voice is an unimportant data type,” says Ozzie. “We have mouths! We have ears!” What’s more, he adds, we carry around incredibly advanced tools equipped with fantastic microphones and advanced speakers. Yet many of us have abandoned the ancient practice of speaking to each other for email and text, where nuance is often lost and bullshit too easily rules. On a whiteboard, Ozzie has jotted down a long checklist of emotions easily conveyed by voice, but difficult to decipher in quickly thumbed-out bursts of text: concern, pain, urgency, empathy, clarity, seriousness, confidence, anxiety, trust, strength, accountability, anger, fear, stress, confusion, doubt.

To begin a conversation on Talko, you simply tap on the person or team’s faces, whether they are available to initiate a call now or in the near future. Talko can then use the built-in sensors on a recipient’s iPhone to tell you if that person is busy walking or driving, indicating that they might not be in a position to accept a call right now.

If the person on the other end is unavailable, you could begin by sending a text message or a voice clip by using the iPhone’s microphone. Talko appears to be a glorified version of apps like Phone, Messages, Skype and WhatsApp combined into one, providing an immersive calling experience that takes advantage of several smartphone features.

“What’s striking is the fluid nature of going from synchronous [real time, like a phone call] to asynchronous [discrete, like text or email],” says former Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, whose VC firm has invested in Talko. “Synchronous communication is great but there are times when you want to drop into voice, or text. Talko is a big step forward in finding that balance.”

I highly recommend giving the full in-depth look at Talko by Levy a read by heading to the source article.

Talko is free on the App Store for iPhone.

[via Medium