Students Given Priority Invitations to Google Voice
Google is giving college students priority invitations to Google Voice, a service that organizes the multiple phone numbers a user may have under one master number.
Google offered the priority invitations to students because they are most likely to appreciate its services like voice mail transcription, cheap international calling and free texting .
Students can request a Google Voice number by submitting a valid school email address , indicated by the .edu extension used by universities and colleges across the country.
According to Google’s initial announcement, students could expect to receive their numbers within 24 hours, but a recent update urges students to be patient: “The response to this has been higher than expected. It might take us a little longer to get you your invites — but sit tight, they'll come as soon as possible.”
Currently, Google Voice is only available by invite, though Google has offered the service to selected groups of users since its launch in May 2009. Last August, Google opened up Voice for active U.S. service members with a .mil email address. As of October 2009, Google Voice had 1.4 million users, but that number is expected to increase dramatically with the latest invitation to students.
Google offers two options for Google Voice. One is to use Google Voice for voicemail only, a service that will transcribe voice messages to text on the user’s designated cell phone . Alternately, users may choose the full Google Voice service and use one Google Voice number to organize multiple numbers like a cell phone, home phone and work phone.
In addition to transcribing voice messages to text, call screening, free text messaging with the ability to easily send one message to multiple people, and conference call set-up, users have the added benefit of never having to change their Google Voice number. Instead, numbers can be added and deleted as needed.
