air chat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”
An earlier version of Airchat was twitter.com/naval/status/1660405285943668736″>released last year, but the 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. Currently invite-only, Airchat already ranks 27th for social media in the Apple App Store.
Visually, Airchat should feel quite familiar and intuitive, with the ability to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, then reply, like, and share those posts. The difference is that posts and responses are audio recordings, which the app then transcribes.
When you open Airchat, messages start playing automatically and you can quickly scroll through them by swiping up and down. If you wish, you can pause the audio and simply read the text; Users can also share photos and videos. But audio seems to be what everyone is focused on and what Ravikant describes as a transformation of dynamics compared to 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 meant to get along with other humans, you just need a natural voice,” Ravikant said. “Text-only online media has given us the illusion that people can't get along, when in reality everyone can get along.”
This isn't the first time tech startups are betting on voice as the next big thing in social media. But Airchat's asynchronous, threaded posts create a quite different experience than the live chat rooms that briefly flourished on Clubhouse and twitter Spaces. Norgard argued that this approach removes the stage fright barrier to participation, because “here you can make as many passes as you want to compose a message, and no one knows.”
In fact, he said that in conversations with early adopters, the team discovered that “most people who use AirChat today are very introverted and shy.”
Personally, I still haven't convinced myself to publish anything. I was more interested in seeing how others used the app; Plus, I have a love-hate relationship with the sound of my voice.
Still, there is something to be said in listening to Ravikant and Norgard explain their vision, rather than simply reading the transcripts, which can miss nuances of enthusiasm, intonation, etc. And I'm especially curious to see how the deadpan jokes and shitty posts translate (or translate). don't do it) in audio.
I also struggle a bit with speed. The app defaults to 2x audio playback, which I thought sounded unnatural, especially if the idea is to foster human connection. You can reset the speed by holding down the pause button, but at 1x, I noticed it would start skimming when listening to longer posts, then usually skip before hearing the full audio. But maybe that's okay.
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-2691347 size-medium" src="https://technicalterrence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713050552_294_Naval-Ravikant39s-Airchat-is-a-social-app-based-on-conversations.jpg" alt="Screenshot of Naval Ravikant's comment saying Airchat is not an x competitor” width=”300″ height=”300″/>
Meanwhile, Ravikant's belief in the power of voice to reduce acrimony doesn't necessarily eliminate the need for content moderation features. He said the feed relies on “some complex rules to hide spam, trolls, and people you or they don't want to know anything about,” but at the time of publication he had not responded to a follow-up question from a user about moderation. of content. .
When asked about monetization, i.e. when we might start seeing ads, audio or otherwise, Ravikant said there is “no monetization pressure on the company at all.” (He described himself as “not the only investor,” but “a big investor” in the company.)
“I don’t give a damn about monetization,” he said. “We will do this on a shoestring if necessary.”
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