Tropo have launched the Tropo Developer Network (TDN), it’s a community of technical and business experts collaborating to bring Tropo-powered apps to new customers and markets around the world.  If you have built a service focused on say the UK market, TDN can help you to take that service to other markets in say the US, Germany, and the world.  It connects Tropo developers with Telcos and partners who are building and deploying telecom applications built on Tropo’s platforms.  This demonstrates the power of the Tropo developer community, it is focused on using Tropo’s APIs to create and enhance a vast array of applications and services such as:

• Speak2Leads – Speak2Leads’ proposition is simple, respond almost immediately to a customer lead, with six in total carefully timed contact attempts.  A Kellogg study on Lead Response Management (LRM) revealed the odds of connecting with a lead increases by 100 times if attempted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead is generated. And the odds of converting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes increases by 21 times.  78% of all sales go to the first company to return a prospect’s call.  Using Speak2Leads can double and in some cases triple a company’s sales.
• ASK ZIGGY – ASK ZIGGY is a natural language understanding (NLU) service that allows businesses to quickly and easily add natural language as to their applications and services.  Say you’re a local pizza delivery service, you provide ASK ZIGGY with some example phrases your customers would use such as “I’d like a pizza” or “I’m hungry and want something spicy” and they will create the NLU dialogue for your service.
• GotoPal – GotoPal’s Smart Voicemail is modern, integrated and empowers both caller and callee to successfully communicate. One of the things GotoPal found in their research is how frustrating callers find the wait to leave voicemail. And the frustration people have given all the calendar, status and contextual information available that voicemail should be used to help people get in contact when appropriate. The options are endless in how a modern personal assistant can give us more time for our real-life and manage our digital-life, this is GotoPal’s vision.
• TimeForge – provides labor management tools which are particularly suited to industries with hourly workers, primarily restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, and retail.  Their services include a web application, mobile applications, text / phone add-ons, time-clock hardware for biometric integration, and more.

The above are just a few of the thousands of applications and services running on Tropo.  They are not special to any particular market, they are ubiquitous because of voice and messaging, and applicable to every market around the world.  This is the power to telecom application developer communities, they provide an amazing resource of applications and services that use the most ubiquitous form of communication, the human voice, and embed it into virtually all the businesses and processes of our daily lives.

Think of TDN as a global channel to market for those developers whose applications and services can work in multiple markets and who are actively seeking to expand.  Not all applications and services built on Tropo are built for a global market (e.g. captive systems), and timing is critical some will be focused on building out in one market not global expansion. Being part of TDN opens up a world of possibilities.  TDN is not trying to be yet another app store, it’s really focused on helping its community of developers, partners and telcos be more successful because of all the excellent applications and services built on Tropo.

This is a great example of how to create a vibrant and profitable telecom application developer ecosystem, an objective of the TADSummit, where Jose de Castro will be presenting the Tropo Developer Network.