The founders behind Taltopia.com are working with a great idea: A social networking community for actors, models, singers and other creative souls that provides a place to showcase their talent along with access to aggregated casting calls. A great idea can only go so far, however, which is why I’m disappointed to say that the new iPhone app is a dud.
Upon launching Taltopia, you’ll be able to browse all of the site’s casting calls or look just in a specific location. Currently, the iPhone app only offers city filters for Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, leaving quite a bit of the country out in the cold. (They make movies in the Midwest, too, you know.) There’s no search function, which means searching for opportunities in say, Chicago, is a matter of scrolling through “All castings” in its entirety. To top it off, because the site is populated with casting calls primarily through aggregation, many of the ads I viewed in Taltopia were already expired. Only 15 ads load at a time, and the iPhone app’s extremely basic navigation leaves something to be desired.
Although you can browse casting calls in-app with no registration, to apply for anything you will need to have a Taltopia.com account. Annoyingly, nothing in Taltopia launches in-line, so you’ll be redirected to Safari each time you want to apply for an ad—or even view Taltopia’s Twitter or Facebook. While a basic account at Taltopia is free, premium access, which includes more casting information, ranges from $4.95 to $14.95 a month.
Taltopia is still working with a good idea—and one that I haven’t seen on the iPhone before — but for the iPhone app to be a true must-have for creative types, the developers need to make Taltopia much more user friendly.
