Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”
The previous version of Airchat was 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, Airchat is invite-only and is ranked #27 social network on the Apple App Store.
Visually, Airchat should look fairly familiar and intuitive, with the ability to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, and then reply to, like, and share those posts. The difference is that posts and replies are audio recordings, which the app then transcribes.
When you open Airchat, messages automatically start playing, and you can quickly navigate through them by swiping up and down. If you're so inclined, you can pause the audio and just read the text; Users can also share photos and videos. But voice seems to be what everyone is focusing on, which Ravikant describes as a dynamic conversion 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 Nordard answering questions and asking for feedback.
“Humans are meant to get along with other humans, it just takes a natural voice,” Ravikant said. “Online text-only media has given us this illusion that people can't get along, but in reality everyone can get along.”
This isn't the first time tech startups have bet on voice as the next big thing in social media. But threaded, asynchronous Airchat posts provide a very different experience from the live chat rooms that briefly flourished in Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. This approach removes the stage-fright barrier to participation, because “you can make as many passes as you want at writing a message here, and no one knows,” Norgaard said.
In fact, he said that in conversations with early adopters, the team found that “most people using AirChat today are very introverted and shy.”
Personally, I haven't convinced myself to post anything yet. I was more interested in seeing how others used the app, plus I have a love-hate relationship with the sound of my voice.
However, there is still something to be said for hearing Ravikant and Norgaard explain their vision, rather than just reading the transcripts, which can miss the nuances of enthusiasm, intonation, and so on. I'm especially curious to know how deadpan jokes and nonsense posts translate (or don't) into audio.
I also struggle a little with pacing. The app defaults to playing the audio twice, which I thought seemed unnatural, especially if the whole idea is to enhance human connection. You can reset the speed by holding down the pause button, but at 1x, I noticed that I would start skimming when listening to longer posts, and then usually skip before listening to the full audio. But maybe that's good.
At the same time, Ravikant's belief in the power of voice to reduce tension does not necessarily eliminate the need for content moderation features. He said the feed is backed by “some complex rules around hiding spam, trolls, and people you or they might not want to hear from,” but as of publication date, he had not responded to a follow-up user question about content moderation. .
When asked about monetization — that is, when we might start seeing ads, audio, etc. — Ravikant said, “There is no monetization pressure on the company at all.” (He described himself as “not the only investor” but the “major investor” in the company.)
“I couldn't care less about monetization,” he said. “We'll run this thing on a shoestring budget if we have to.”
