Meet 'Airchat', An Audio-Centric Social Media That Is Built Around Talk, Not Text

Using a social network is simple. Users just need to sign up, and sign in, and type or upload an image or video, and hit that send button.

Users can also see other people's posts, give a few likes, or comment on them. On pretty much every single social media platform out there, that is the main thing people could do, leaving other features as gimmicks, if not quirks.

One social media wants to change that.

Airchatfounded by Angelist founder and venture capitalist Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product chief Brian Norgard, is a social network that encourages users to "simply talk."

According to the media, the aspect of Airchat should be quite familiar and intuitive to users who use other social networks, giving users the possibility to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, respond to them, like them, and share them.

The difference is that the messages and responses are audio recordings that the app transcribes.

When users open the Airchat app, messages will start playing automatically. Users can quickly switch from one to another by swiping up or down. Users can also pause the audio and simply read the transcribed text, or even share photos and videos.

But the main idea of Airchat, is audio.

As a matter of fact, Airchat is pitched as a "social walkie-talkie."

"All human beings are made to get along with other human beings, we just need the natural voice," stated Ravikant in an audio from Airchat. "Online media with only text has given us this illusion that people can’t get along, but in reality, everyone can get along."

To make Airchat, the team combines the feed aspect of Twitter/X, with the audio-first format of Clubhouse.

Here, the feed talks.

As Airchat plays the audio or video from the update aloud while they're reading it. Scroll down to another message and users will hear that user speaking is speaking to them.

Users can reply with their own voice just as quickly.

After Airchat is done playing one voice note, it automatically scrolls on, playing the audio for the next update a highlighted reply.

More or less, Airchat is like a hands-free social media

To post, users have to tap and hold the Audio/Video button, and release it.

All voice notes play back at 2x speed by default. To slow it down, users can play at 1x speed by pressing and holding the pause button.

Airchat also uses AI to automatically detect the language users use, and create transcription for each Airchat voice note they make.

Airchat also makes conversation asynchronous, , meaning conversations don’t have to happen live. Users can record and post audio messages at their own pace, and replies can be made at any time.

This was reminiscent of what people used to find on Clubhouse, the live-audio conversation app that went viral during the COVID-19 pandemic before flaming out because it grew way too fast.

This approach is said to be able to eliminate the fear of public speaking, as "you can take as many passes at composing a message on here as you like, and nobody knows."

According to Brian Norgard, most early adopters of AirChat are introverts and shy individuals.

At this time at least, most active users on Airchat appear to be early adopters, tech enthusiasts, venture capitalists, and journalists.

Soon after its formal introduction, Naval Ravikant's app was high on demand.

At some point, the team even had to close off new sign-ups in order to prevent bombardment from the influx to its servers.

Airchat was quickly overloaded with people thirsting to get a glimpse of using the audio-centric app.

In an attempt to control the number of sign ups, Ravikant then gave a small number of users unlimited invites to share with friends.

But this backfired too.

"We’ve had an influx of new users, so we’re turning off the invitation capability for a little while," Ravikant said on Sunday.

At this time also, the platform is plagued by the moderation challenges.

There are numerous instances where users sent curses and saying explicit words. There is also a post that tells the founders to perform fellatio on each other. The is even a thread where users go back and forth telling a story about "gay Jewish teens" and "neo-Nazi killers."

Then, there is a channel where hundreds of users joined and talk about topics ranging from Iran's war on Israel, to the war in Gaza, and U.S. tensions with China.

Users shared strong opinions, meaning that many of the posts are unconfirmed news reports, or fake news.

But it's worth noting that Airchat’s stated policies emphasize self-moderation.

Users can mute or block a person, for example. But isolating individual post will never a general issue, Airchat that states that it won’t remove users from arguing about politics, will remove users for harassment, impersonation, foul behavior, and illegal content.

Regarding content moderation, Ravikant mentioned that the feed is governed by "some complex rules around hiding spam and trolls and people that you or they may not want to hear from," ensuring a user-friendly experience and a secure environment.

Ravikant said most of Airchat is bootstrapped, meaning that most of the funds came from his own pockets, as well as from Jeff Fagnan, a founding partner at Accomplice Ventures. '

"[OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman threw in a check, kind of blindly," Ravikant said.