Voxer is a

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

-based mobile app development company best known for its free Voxer Walkie Talkie app for smartphones. Founded by Tom Katis and Matt Ranney, Voxer Walkie Talkie is both a live " push-to-talk" system and a voice messaging system. Messages on Voxer are delivered live as they're being recorded and then delivered as a voice message as well. The app works on Android,

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

operating systems. In April 2012, the company raised $30 million in venture financing from Institutional Venture Partners (IVP),

Intel Capital Intel Capital Corporation started off as the investment arm of Intel Corporation in 1991 and in January 2025, it spun off as a standalone investment fund. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies off ...

and other

angel investors An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt ...

Development

Tom Katis co-founded Voxer (originally RebelVox) in 2007 after a tour of duty in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

as a

Special Forces Special forces or special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...

communications sergeant. In an interview with

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

, Katis stated that during an ambush in Afghanistan, he attempted to coordinate reinforcements and rescue from a medical team in the middle of a firefight. He sought a way to talk to all parties at the same time, but the government-issued walkie-talkies did not have the functionality.

Voxer Walkie Talkie

In May 2011, the company launched Voxer Walkie-Talkie on

IOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. By the end of the year, the app had reached #6 on the iTunes App Store for

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

apps in the United States. The free app utilizes a number of

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

around its live voice service. The app has been described "as being similar to the

Nextel Nextel Communications, Inc. was an American wireless service operator that merged with and ceased to exist as a subsidiary of Sprint Corporation, which would later be bought by T-Mobile US and folded into that company. Nextel in Brazil, and form ...

walkie-talkie phones, except it lets users listen to recorded messages and talk one-to-one with other users." The app also allows users to send text messages and photos and has a location feature that allows users to see the location of other users on a map. In an interview with TechCrunch, Gustaf Alstromer, the company's head of growth, explained that users in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

adopted the technology first, followed by users in other cities in the

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. The company attributes its viral success to

word of mouth Word of mouth is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a ...

and "a variety of best practices going for tracking clickthroughs, conversions, and overall usage, using third parties like Mixpanel as well as its in-house systems." As of April 2012, monthly, unique users numbered in the double-digit millions. In a video interview with the

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and

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, Katis also claimed Voxer's widespread adoption was in part due to the company's cross platform roll out on iOS and Android. This cross platform functionality allows users on different

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

to communicate using the app which created a viral loop. At some point the company had users across the world with an especially high user base in the

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, Brazil and Asia. Voxer Walkie-Talkie was among the top 25 social networking apps in more than 60 markets, according to the app tracking website App Annie. The service works over WiFi, 3G, 4G, and EDGE. As of April 2012, the company had 35 employees and was headquartered in

. Katis said that the next steps for Voxer are to continue to improve the app, roll out functionality on other platforms and to create an enterprise-level product with additional features and administrative rights that can be used for governments,

hospitals A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency ...

corporations A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...

and other large organizations. In 2020, Voxer accused Meta of infringing on its patents and incorporating its technology into Facebook Live and Instagram Live. The lawsuit stated that during 2012 representatives of Voxer disclosed its patented technology to

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...

during discussions of a collaboration. Voxer stated that

stopped the collaboration in 2013 and in 2015-2016 during the launch of Facebook live and Instagram live, misused their technology. A jury in a Texas federal court found that Meta infringed on two of Voxers patents, and ordered Meta to pay Voxer more than $174.5 million in royalty damages.

Technology

Voxer was built using Node.js, Riak and

Redis Redis (; Remote Dictionary Server) is an in-memory key–value database, used as a distributed cache and message broker, with optional durability. Because it holds all data in memory and because of its design, Redis offers low- latency reads ...

. Matt Ranney, co-founder and chief technology officer of Voxer, said in an interview with

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

that his team first coded Voxer in C++ and then Python but each proved too rigid or slow for a

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

app. Later the team switched to Node.js because Voxer Walkie Talkie requires low latency with a large number of open connections. "If you want to make something where the user gets a real-time update stream of some kind, you need to keep open a bunch of connections to the server. That's very expensive in, say, a PHP architecture. But in Node, it's nearly free. You can keep the connections open for a very long time, and the incremental cost per connection is very low."

Venture Financing

Voxer raised its first external capital round in April 2012. Led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP),

, and angel investors including SV Angel, CrunchFund, Chris Dixon, Roger McNamee and other friends of Katis', Voxer raised over $30 million in financing. Katis said Voxer would use the new funding to continue to build out its engineering team.

Popular culture

Hip-hop artist

Soulja Boy DeAndre Cortez Way (born July 28, 1990), known professionally as Soulja Boy (formerly Soulja Boy Tell 'Em), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to prominence with his self-released 2007 debut single, "Crank That ...

and basketball player

Kevin Durant Kevin Wayne Durant (born September 29, 1988), also known by his initials KD, is an American professional basketball player for the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Durant has won two List of NBA champions, NBA champ ...

talked about using the Voxer Walkie Talkie app. Additionally, singer

Harry Styles Harry Edward Styles (born 1 February 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His showmanship, artistry, and flamboyant fashion have had a Cultural impact of Harry Styles, significant impact on popular culture. Styles's musical ca ...

has tweeted about the app. In a 2012

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

article, columnist and TV host

David Pogue David Welch Pogue (born March 9, 1963) is an American technology and science writer and TV presenter, and correspondent for ''CBS News Sunday Morning''. He has hosted 18 ''Nova'' specials on PBS, including '' Nova ScienceNow'', the ''Making Stu ...

noted that Voxer is "an ingenious crossbreed of text messages and phone calls".

References

{{reflist

External links

Voxer website
Walkie-talkies Software companies of the United States