Ten Ten has become one of the most popular apps less than a year after launch. The app French woman has gone viral due to her kind of walkie talkie which allows users to send voice messages to their close contacts even when the phone is locked.
The French app developed by Jule Colmar and Antoine Baché began to gain popularity at the end of May, when it experienced sudden success. This type of walkie-talkie on a smartphone has gained several million users in a few days, including many teenagers.
The situation even caused concern in the French government. For this reason, on June 5, the founders of the application were received at the Digital State Secretariat to present their approach and respond to their concerns, according to the newspaper. Le Monde.
The operation of this app is very basic. Ten Ten allows you to send live voice messages to your contacts. All you have to do is touch a contact’s profile photo, hold your finger down and speak: the interlocutor hears the voice in real time and can respond with the same spontaneity.
The user does not need to be active in the application or even have their phone unlocked for, suddenly, a friend’s voice to sound through the speaker of their smartphone.
To use the app it is necessary to download it from Google Play or Apple Store. The user will be asked to log in or register, either through an email address, a Google account, or a TikTok account.
These are some of the permissions that the application will request:
- Access to contact list
- Access to approximate location
- Camera access
- Microphone access
- Full network access
- Prevent the device from entering “standby”
If you decide to accept the complete list of permissions requested by the app, you will be able to operate its main functionality, which is to transform the cell phone into a walkie talkie.
Furthermore, with Ten Ten, it is possible record voice messages and send them to another contact. However, the most striking aspect is the fact that users can communicate live via audio messages with their contacts, even if the phone is locked.
Developers
Ten Ten was founded by two Frenchmen, Jule Colmar and Antoine Baché, general director and technical director respectively.
“In my group of close friends we talk every day in various media, but I had the impression that everyone had a kind of friction compared to the exchanges we had in real life,” Colmar tells Le Monde. “I wanted us to be able to communicate as if we were still under the same roof, as roommates: we talk to each other when we are in the kitchen or the living room, and if the roommates are in their room, we call when the door is closed and wait for the answer”, he adds.
This is how Ten Ten was born, whose name is “a nod to the Citizens Band short-range radio communications system.” Code 10-10 means “transmission completed, waiting.” The company was registered in France in 2021 and its current team consists of six people located in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon.
At the moment, although Ten Ten is gaining users, it does not have an economic model that allows it to generate income.
The team is now studying several avenues to develop its application, such as the creation, for example, of “restricted circles of close friends or family,” says the general director, a functionality that would allow voice messages to be sent to several people at the same time. (YO)
