TMCnews Featured Article

Proving ‘Hello’ to be a top name in recently-released communications apps, Facebook (News - Alert) has made good on rumors that it would be developing a dialer app capable of pairing phone numbers with social media profiles.

According to the company announcement that dropped mid-last week, Facebook Hello, developed by Facebook Creative Labs, will connect directly with the world's biggest social network to match Facebook profiles to incoming numbers. This way, users of Hello can see not only the number of the person calling them but also personal information about that caller. It should make it easier for users to screen calls from both individuals and businesses.

Andrea Vaccari, the product manager at Facebook who wrote a recent company blog post, commented first about the general nature of the new app.

“Hello connects with Facebook so you can see who’s calling, block unwanted calls and search for people and places,” Vaccari began.

There are limitations to the service, however, as Vaccari also pointed out:

“When you get a call, Hello will show you info about who’s calling you, even if you don’t have that number saved in your phone. You will only see info that people have already shared with you on Facebook.”

This means that unknown numbers who are not paired with a user's friend list should not populate any information aside from the number. That should alleviate some concerns users might have about privacy; moreover, it does not eliminate usefulness of the app for call screening and blocking.

Although users will be able to block their own custom list of numbers, Vaccari mentions that there will also be a list of “commonly blocked numbers” that users can also choose to utilize. All blocked calls, custom or on the common list, will go straight to voicemail for later user review. The SiliconANGLE report on the app's release surmises that the list of common numbers could refer to marketing or sales calls or from individuals or groups that conduct political surveys or that represent collection agencies. The official Facebook blog post does not mention those groups outright.

The app could ultimately be useful for a number of use cases. Users who have large groups of Facebook friends may find calls easier to screen than they would without the social information present. More likely, though, is that a properly-formed list of common business numbers could reduce the hassle of dealing with unwanted calls throughout the day.

Facebook is proving here that consumers can benefit from some of the same technology used by businesses every day. Call centers make use of predictive dialers such as Spitfire to bring information from customer resource management programs into their calls. Calling screens can automatically populate to give callers information about their contacts. In the same way, Facebook users can now use that technology in reverse. They automatically populate their own handheld screens with necessary information in order to get enough information about a caller to decide whether or not to entertain their presence.