Will GrandCentral be an integrated part of Android?
GrandCentral: The New Way To Use Your Phones
For those of you that may not have heard the news yet, Google announced a new open source software called Android earlier this week. They have been in talks with the major phone carriers trying to convince them to go with the solution on some of their phone models. I would bet there isn’t probably any negotiating going on. Google is going to offer to everyone but will play favorites to those that jump on board the fastest. This will include a form of incentives , exclusives etc.
Who is Grandcentral and what do they do? How do they fit into the equation?
Grandcentral is a company that Google snapped up earlier this year. They provide a virtual phone service that lets you tie multiple numbers into a single line. That line can be almost anywhere in the U.S. I was surprised to find out when I signed up months ago that they had local available numbers for the small rural town I live in. Right now I have my business number ringing into this number. I also have the Grandcentral number setup to ring all my phones so no matter where I am at I will get the call. In addition to that you can schedule different times for certain phones to be ring to. If I do not want a certain phone to ring when a certain number comes in, all I have to do is setup it.
You know what the best part is about it? FREE. Yep that four letter word that everyone likes to hear now and then. I have seen services like this cost anywhere from 20 bucks and .10 a minute a month to over a 100 month. I was using something similar years ago for another company I created.
There are a bunch of other features as well. For example they have a call me button that you can integrate into an html page. Remember an html page can be a number of things. It can be your website of course, it could be a pdf, a power point presentation or even an EMAIL. This is where things are going to start getting blurred and merged together.
Here is an example of the Grandcentral Webcall button:
Example. I am sending a new client an invitation to a Grandcentral account so that we can track orders coming in from his PPC campaigns. We will take this account, (phone number) and tie it specifically to a PPC campaign so that we can gauge the cost effectiveness of the campaign. Why don’t we just send them to a special web page and count that as a conversion? We could but his main goal is for the sales funnel to lead to the sales person at the end of the phone. You see the sales person is really great at what he does. He can convert the customer faster and more effectively than what a landing page can. Until a landing page is created that can take customer input and then give feedback and suggestions, then a real “GOOD” sales person will always close more sales.
So let’s review quickly. Google is to be able to serve ads effectively on who knows how many millions of phones. They are going to be driving force behind a majority of applications that will run on the phone. They already have a service (I predict) they are prepping to be integrated smoothly with Android.
Don’t forget as mobile broadband network efforts continue to expand so does the possibility of what you will be able to do with your phones. Tie that to an open source platform were hundreds of applications will be available you have got the recipe for another tremendous flow of information for use to consume.
I will demonstrate what happens when you use open source effectively. But first let’s imagine what we could do…what if an app was made that would tie you into your social network at all times. I mean not just letting you view and post to your myspace page but something that would do it dynamically. It could be a gps geo point of where you are located being displayed on your myspace page for your friends or family. What if you could view real time online game playing from anywhere? An app could be built so that you view games tournaments, virtual worlds from your cell. What if you wanted to video conference with a client in Australia via Skype?
I could go on and on imagining what can and WILL be done. It is not a maybe, it is a WHEN will it be done. Android will enable some simple functions starting out. Expect easier web browsing for sure but it will take another year for the feature rich stuff to start rolling out.
Here is that example of what happens when you open up your platform as open source. For those not aware it was Facebook.
