Today’s news out of Voxeo is potentially explosive. The company through Voxeo Labs has officially launched an API for its Tropo platform that supports real-time integration of Twitter into its cloud-based, self-service infrastructure, transforming tweets into the functional equivalent of voice response, SMS-based Text and instant messaging. For example, as described in this press release, a bank’s customer could make a balance inquiry through a Web site and the platform could deliver the requested information as a text message, IM or a Tweet. Competing platforms have only support Voice and SMS. With the new API, Voxeo encourages its developer partners to use the development tools of their choice, which they characterize as “any web programming language”, including Groovy, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, and .Net.

The prospective applications go far beyond remote banking. As Voxeo explains, the Tropo platform now enables Web application developers to add all the multiple channels mentioned above to their existing applications. For instance, Tropo will enable them to give self-service apps a Twitter name and customers can contact it simply by Tweeting.

In today’s announcement, Voxeo highlighted an expansion of its international footprint by making it possible to dial into the Tropo cloud using “local” numbers in 30 different countries. In terms of languages supported for spoken input and output, the platform covers US English, UK English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Mexican Spanish or Castilian Spanish.

Voxeo Labs continues to provide the Recombinant Communications community with free access to its development environment, by featuring direct-API and JSON-based development interfaces without a fee. Users pay only when applications are put into production.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Voxeo, Cloud Computing, Twitter, Recombinant Communications