Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: toksta
20-word Description: toksta brings IM and chat (text, voice, video) to social networks and websites. 100% free, hosting included + worldwide revenue share.
Mashable’s Take: There are many ways to add communication tools to your site these days such as instant messaging with a Meebo widget or an audio/video message forum via UserPlane. toksta is offering a fully customizable real-time text, audio and video chat system for your website. You can add your own logo, change colors, fonts and the background image.
The toksta IM runs directly in the Web browser and users can chat via their own profile no matter what other IM service or social networking site they are connected to at the time. Best of all, no installations or additional logins are necessary which is a big plus for your website visitors.
What's the catch? toksta can offer all this for free because it is financed by advertising, but the ads are not as huge or as pervasive as with other ad-supported services. As a matter of fact, the ads are only displayed during what they call waiting time as things load on the screen. toksta also offers a Revenue Sharing program that will allow site owners to share some of the earnings. They do offer a white label service that will allow you to remove all ads or even add your own advertisements.
From all first impressions, toksta seems to be worth a look if you're considering adding a live communications platform to your site and don't mind intermittent advertisements. It's easy to install and the price is right.