Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”
Previous versions of Airchat released last yearBut a team led by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product executive Brian Norgard rebuilt the app and relaunched it on iOS and Android yesterday. Airchat, which is currently invite-only, is already ranked 27th in social networking on Apple's App Store.
Visually, Airchat feels very familiar and intuitive, allowing you to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, and reply to, like, and share posts. It has functions. The difference is that posts and replies are audio recordings, and the app transcribes them.
When you open Airchat, your messages automatically start playing, and you can quickly switch between messages by swiping up or down. If you feel like it, you can actually pause the audio and just read the text. Users can also share photos and videos. But audio seems to be the focus everyone is on, Ravikanth said, changing the dynamics compared to his text-based social apps.
After joining Airchat this morning, most of the posts I saw were about the app itself, with Ravikant and Norgard answering questions and asking for feedback.
“All humans are wired to get along with other humans, and all we need is a natural voice,” Ravikant said. “Online, text-only media gives us the illusion that people can't get along, but the reality is that everyone can get along.”
This isn't the first time a tech startup has bet on voice as the next big social media. But Airchat's asynchronous threaded posts offer a much different experience than the live chat rooms that briefly flourished on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Norgaard argued that this approach removes the stage fright barrier to participation. Because, “When you compose a message here, you can run as many passes as you like and no one will know.”
In fact, he said that in conversations with early users, the team realized that “most people using AirChat today are very introverted and shy.”
Personally, I don't feel confident posting anything yet. I was more interested in seeing how other people use the app. Also, I have a love/hate relationship with the sound of my voice.
Still, there's something to be said for hearing Ravikant and Norgaard explain their vision, rather than just reading a transcription, where nuances like enthusiasm and intonation can be missed. I'm especially interested in seeing how deadpan jokes and silly posts translate (or don't) to audio.
I also have a little trouble with speed. The app defaults to play audio twice as fast as she does, which I thought sounded unnatural, especially when the goal is to foster human connection. You can reset the speed by holding down the pause button, but I noticed that at 1x speed, when listening to long posts, it would start skimming and usually skip ahead before hearing the full audio. But maybe that's okay.
On the other hand, Ravikant's belief in the power of voice to reduce vitriol does not necessarily preclude the need for content moderation capabilities. He said the feed was driven by “some complex rules about spam and trolling and hiding people you or they might not want to hear from,” but at the time of publication, content moderation It said it did not respond to follow-up questions from users about it. .
Asked about monetization, or when it would start showing ads, audio, etc., Ravikanth said, “There is no pressure on the company to monetize at all.” (He described himself as a “major investor” rather than the company's “sole investor.”)
“We didn’t have to worry as much about monetization,” he said. “We will do this within a limited budget if necessary.”