Castings Galore!

Hey all. We wanted to let you know that we partnered up with a new source that now supplies us with tons of casting calls!


We have over 16 pages of castings that are organized nationally and by zip code so give it a spin and be sure to apply to castings you like! If you are a casting director/industry professional and want to post your casting calls, you can sign up for a free account and start posting right away!

Be sure to let us know about your success with our casting calls, we always like to hear back from our users!

Taltopia.com Passes 100,000 Users, Proves Artists Value "Free" In This Economy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Taltopia.com Passes 100,000 Users, Proves Artists Value "Free" In This Economy

Los Angeles, CA

Taltopia.com, a platform that connects aspiring talent with fans and entertainment industry professionals, announced today that their membership had just passed 100,000 registered users. “We couldn’t be happier,” said co-founder Anthony Zanontian, referring to the site’s membership, ”it’s great too see how users are responding. We really do everything for them.”

Taltopia differs from most talent-themed websites by allowing its members to upload an unlimited amount of media, apply to casting calls, and enter sponsored contests where they can win prizes – all for free. Taltopia also offers a number of free articles to its members, thereby helping aspiring artists on their path to success. It’s no wonder the site’s membership continues to grow rapidly in a slumping economy.

Another competitive advantage for Taltopia.com can be found in their new “Offers Section,” an area of the site which allows members to complete incentivized offers from advertisers in return for Famebucks, the pseudo-currency used on the popular website. Members can then redeem these Famebucks at Taltopia's Store to purchase gift cards and merchandise from retailers such as Amazon, Apple’s iTunes, and Guitar Center.

Most of these offers simply require members to enter an email address or answer survey questions, resulting in free Famebucks to the user and income to Taltopia from the advertiser. “Our new Famebucks Offers Section is one way we have had to adjust our revenue model to accommodate the economic downturn” said co-founder Allen Vartazarian. “It’s been great to see these free features gain traction with our members,” he added.


About Taltopia.com:
Taltopia.com is a platform that connects aspiring talent with fans and entertainment industry professionals. Members can create free profiles, upload media, join fan clubs, enter contests, and submit to casting calls. Categories include music, art, acting, dance, comedy, and modeling. Taltopia.com received $800,000 in angel funding in March of 2008 and is based in Los Angeles, California.

Contacts:
Allen Vartazarian, allen@taltopia.com
Anthony Zanontian, anthony@taltopia.com
(818) 763-1065
http://www.taltopia.com

Premium Membership

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Now that we got that out of the way, lets move on to some more important Taltopia-related news...Premium Membership!

As a Premium Member, you will gain access to many new features that are not available with a basic membership. Here is a breakdown of what you get:

Premium Contests: Only Premium members will be able to enter premium contests which offer bigger and better prize packages.

Featured in Searches: When anyone does a search on Taltopia, Premium members will be featured at the top, resulting in much more exposure.

Apply to Castings First: Premium members will be able to apply to casting calls within the first 24 hours of posting!

FREE Famebucks: We will deposit 5 free Famebucks into your account for each month of Premium Membership. If you prepay for 6 months or 1 year, you will get even more Famebucks up-front! You can use these Famebucks to promote yourself or buy stuff from our new and improved Famebucks Store.

Directory Access: As a Premium member, you will have exclusive access to our new directory section with over 2,000 valuable listings of Talent Agencies, Modeling Agencies, Record Labels, Dance Studios, and Acting Schools.

Profile Badge: Premium members will have an exclusive badge on their public profiles which let's others know just how cool you are! Check out my profile here to see what I mean.

No Ads: As a kind gesture to Premium members, we will block all ads from showing up when you are logged in.

You are probably thinking to yourself, "Wow, these are some really great features...I wonder how much this costs?" Log-in and find out here: http://www.taltopia.com/members/premium/join.aspx

Have a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!

Press Release: Casting Calls

Now that we have had a few weeks to fill up our casting call section, we thought it was the right time to announce it to the world. So, we made a press release:

Taltopia.com Launches Casting Call Section

Taltopia.com, a platform that connects aspiring talent with fans and entertainment industry professionals, announced today the launch of a new casting calls section on their talent website. The addition of this feature has brought Taltopia.com one step closer to becoming a true utopia for talent.

Taltopia’s new casting calls section is designed to accommodate various types of talent-seeking professionals including casting directors, photographers, filmmakers, choreographers, talent agents, and music producers. The painstaking task of finding models for a photo shoot, recruiting actors for a film, discovering unsigned bands, and other casting needs have all been simplified by this new feature. Unlike other casting and audition websites, Taltopia.com does not charge industry professionals a fee to post their casting calls and projects. Taltopia’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to post projects, define specific roles, and conveniently manage the selection process from start to finish.

Another valuable tool only available to industry professionals is the advanced search engine which allows professionals to tap into Taltopia’s vast database of unsigned artists to find talent that meet their specific criteria. Searchable characteristics include gender, hair color, eye color, height, weight, age, ethnicity, and geographic location.

Casting agents for popular television networks such as MTV and VH1 have started flocking to the site to take advantage of the huge pool of undiscovered talent. “Our new casting calls section has helped Taltopia’s members find relevant opportunities in the entertainment industry while providing industry professionals with the tools they need to discover the talent they seek,” said co-founder Anthony Zanontian. “We are really excited to see our casting call section taking off,” he added.

Due to a lack of suitable alternatives, most talent seekers have been forced to use unfocused website’s to satisfy their needs. “Our new casting calls feature has liberated people from using general classified site’s like Craigslist.com to discover talent,” said co-founder Allen Vartazarian. “Our focus is talent. This is what we do best.”

About Taltopia.com: Taltopia.com is a platform that connects aspiring talent with fans and entertainment industry professionals. Members can create free profiles, upload media, join fan clubs, enter contest, and submit to casting calls. Categories include music, art, acting, dance, comedy, and modeling. Taltopia.com received $800,000 in angel funding in March of 2008 and is based in Los Angeles, California.

http://www.taltopia.com

Now Casting! (Taltopia Launches Casting Calls)

Question: What is a casting call?

Answer: In the performing arts, casting (or casting call) is a vital pre-production process for selecting a cast of actors, dancers, singers, models and other talent for a live or recorded performance.

Now that you are aware of the formal definition of "casting call," we would like to introduce you to the new Casting Call section of Taltopia.com, where industry professionals can post their current projects and recruit talent for FREE. (click here to sign up for your free industry professional account)

Casting directors, Photographers, Talent Agents, Music Producers, Filmmakers, and Choreographers can use this new feature to access our database of over 50,000 artists.

Casting call categories include Acting, Crew, Dance, Modeling, and Music. You can even search for casting calls within a certain mile radius of your zip code!

When you come across a casting that you are interested in, simply click on the blue "apply" button to submit yourself directly.


Click on the following link to check out our (growing) casting section:
http://www.taltopia.com/castings/casting-calls.aspx

Enjoy.

Taltopia News and Updates

There has been a lot of stuff cooking here at Taltopia.com headquarters that we wanted to keep you updated about.

Wall of Fame: First and foremost, we would like to inform all of you about a minor change we are making to our Wall of Fame section. Currently, when you bid for a spot on the Wall of Fame, your entry stays up until it is outbid or 21 days, whichever comes first. Since the site has grown significantly since we created the Wall of Fame, we are going to be lowering the time period to 10 days. This will help to ensure that the Wall of Fame is not being abused, and will open up spots for other deserving talent looking to get more exposure.

Higher Quality Audio: After some super heavy-duty fine-tuning, we have improved the quality of audio playback in our media player to CD quality! We are pretty proud of this, especially since there aren't too many other sites out there that offer this sort of committment to preserving quality.

Best Week Ever: Last week Taltopia had its best week ever in terms of traffic to the site. Our Alexa ranking (for those of you who know what that is) jumped about 25,000 spots, while our traffic tripled! This spike in traffic can be attributed to a number of factors, including TV ads airing nationally, people getting others to vote for them in 3 contests ending at the same time, as well as a very successful press release.

In The Works: We are in the process of developing a casting call section where members can browse and submit to a plethora of available casting opportunities in cities around the country. This casting section is also going to be an amazing resource for casting directors to recruit the talent they seek. Along with this, we are developing a number of value-added features exclusively for premium members...more details about this later.