Naval Ravikant’s Airchat is a social app built around talk, not text
Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to ājust talk.ā
A previous version of Airchat was released last year, but the team ā led by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard ā rebuilt the app and relaunched it on iOS and Android yesterday. Currently invite-only, Airchat is already ranked #27 in social networking on Appleās App Store.
Visually, Airchat should feel pretty familiar and intuitive, with the ability to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, then reply to, like, and share those posts. The difference is that the posts and replies are audio recordings, which the app then transcribes.
When you open Airchat, messages automatically start playing, and you quickly cycle through them by swiping up and down. If youāre so inclined, you can actually pause the audio and just read text; users can also share photos and video. But audio seems to be what everyoneās focused on, and what Ravikant describes as transforming the dynamic 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 soliciting feedback.
āHumans are all meant to get along with other humans, it just requires the natural voice,ā Ravikant said. āOnline text-only media has given us this delusion that people canāt get along, but actually everybody can get along.ā
This isnāt the first time tech startups have bet on voice as the next big social media thing. But Airchatās asynchronous, threaded posts make for a pretty 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 participating, because āyou can take as many passes at composing a message on here as you like, and nobody knows.ā
In fact, he said that in conversations with early users, the team found that āmost of the people using AirChat today are very introverted and shy.ā
Personally, I havenāt convinced myself to post anything yet. I was more interested in seeing how others were using the app ā plus, I have a love-hate relationship with the sound of my voice.
Still, thereās something to be said for hearing Ravikant and Norgard explain their vision, rather than just reading the transcriptions, which can miss nuances of enthusiasm, intonation, etc. And Iām especially curious to see how deadpan jokes and shitposting translate (or donāt) into audio.
I also struggle a bit with the speed. The app defaults to 2x audio playback, which I thought sounded unnatural, particularly if the whole idea is fostering human connection. You can reset the speed by holding down the pause button, but at 1x, I noticed Iād start skimming when listening to longer posts, then Iād usually skip ahead before listening to the full audio. But maybe thatās fine.
Meanwhile, Ravikantās belief in the power of voice to cut down on acrimony doesnāt necessarily eliminate the need for content moderation features. He said the feed is powered by āsome complex rules around hiding spam and trolls and people that you or they may not want to hear from,ā but as of publication he hadnāt not responded to a follow-up user question about content moderation.
Asked about monetization ā i.e., when we might start seeing ads, audio or otherwise āĀ Ravikant said thereās āno monetization pressure on the company whatsoever.ā (He described himself as ānot the sole investorā but āa big investorā in the company.)
āI could care less about monetization,ā he said. āWeāll run this thing on a shoestring if we have to.ā