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It’s like walking into a cocktail party where the most interesting people are holding forth.
This is Airchat and it just might be on to something.
Airchat asks for the usual permissions, including access to contacts. Its post layout is self-explanatory. Your posts are in blue.
Audio in social media is nothing new.
We hadClubhouseand thenTwitter Spaces(now just Spaces on X).
But these are live audio spaces where people conduct panels, present, and do a lot of cross-talk.
Airchat asks for the usual permissions, including access to contacts. Its post layout is self-explanatory. Your posts are in blue.
Airchat is like Twitter (X) but voice-only.
Nope, you have to speak it and can do so as an audio-only post or video.
Whispering
Visually, Airchat’s feed looks like an extremely striped-down X or Threads.
You get a profile page that, like any self-respecting social media platform, shows your follower count. There’s built-in search and if you’re looking for an active poster, look no further than co-founder Brian Norgard.
Video posts playback in the space where your avatar appears next to the transcription of your post.
It’s so small that some people might miss it.
There are notifications and mentions, and conversations can be threaded.
It’s so well-hidden that it’s no wonder few are posting images.
Like most new social media platforms, there’s not a lot of activity on Airchat.
One defining feature of Airchats is that it’s on autoplay.
When you initiate the app it will start playing the first post in your feed.
I noticed, but cannot confirm, that everyone’s audio is sped up just a tad.
Quiet down
If there’s one flaw in the Airchat strategy it’s how you add posts.
Since you could’t punch in, you must speak your up-to-45-seconds post, out loud.
I’ve been composing tweets in my head for almost 20 years.
I roll them around, edit, and rethink them.
I do the same on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram.
When you let go, Airchat posts, unless you slide your finger over to the left to delete.
It does not feel natural and I cannot speak my pithy post thoughts out loud in every situation.
I can’t start speaking an Airchat while sitting six inches from another commuter.
There has to be a way to surreptitiously add posts without getting looks.
AI voice generation is now almost good enough, with ample training, to recreate our voices.
Here that might make sense.
We are not yet done with this over-sharing experiment.
If we need to do it with our voices, why not?
