Talking Tom and Friends (known as Talking Friends until late 2014) is a media franchise created and owned by Outfit7 Limited. The franchise focused on various mobile apps involving animal characters that acted like humans repeating things said by the user. Later , there were more types of apps involving animal characters. The first app, "Talking Tom Cat", was launched in July 2010. As of March 2020, the apps have achieved more than 12 billion downloads. The franchise also includes various web series, which are mostly posted on YouTube.