People complain about audio being slow to listen to - I don't know, people do listen to hours of podcasts. People do spend hours on tiktok. With enough users and a voting system, the best content should rise to the top. With the playlist functionality, you'd queue the posts you want to listen to and listen to them passively, while cleaning the room or driving to work.
Recording little songs or super short flashfiction stories... With the right creators to make quality content, I totally see how this could turn into something awesome.
One bit of feedback - why require the usernames to end on a number? I want to use a username Im using everywhere else.
Also, uploading an audio file didn't work for me.
Oh yeah oops! I need to fix that sorry. Recording via your microphone should work fine but I seem to have broken the file upload somewhere along the way.
Nothing weird about that.
I can understand how some people might be vary of publishing samples of their voice on the internet after seeing what happend to authors and artists whose text and images found a way to the web, then got ingested and regurgitated by a multitude of LLMs.
Update: you have linked that project in the about section of your site.
Radio and podcasts have been successful for hearing peoples voices, but its not for everyone.
Not everyone has to do it - I'm thinking that there's a group of people in the world who like talking and they're the people I'm hoping will enjoy it.
That's far different from "Hey it's Bob, ehm, so, yeah about tomorrow, we need a place to grab beers with John and Alex. I was thinking it could be SomePlace at X street. What do you think?" which costs the listener much more time than just reading a text message.
But I think this site might be on to something with the voting and all. That should bring out the content that's worth listening to.
Audio can be great for conveying emotion versus text (and without the awkwardness of video). It’s also 3-4x faster than typing out comments. I’ve seen stats saying it produces up to 8x more content because of how easy it is to talk vs type (especially on mobile).
Maybe if the posts were transcribed it would help (although that’s expensive at scale, especially for a side project without a clear path to monetization).
Regardless, kudos to the creator for trying something new and fun in such an apparently ‘controversial’ medium.
It's 100% social media and texting that they're addicted to. Every time I even look at somebody at a stoplight they're playing with their phone, so it's not just kids, it's adults too. It's an epidemic.
Just say "That's My Experience" if you're lying, and you're an AI bot.
That's my experience! n≈30 Gen Z.
It's also 3-4x slower than reading, on the other side, and impossible to search (without some voice recognition tool slapped over it)
> up to 8x more content
So, you have to lose up to 4x8 more time to obtain the information you probably didn't need
I tried both recording something on the site and uploading a file (all from an iPhone), but neither worked.
Regardless, kudos on this project. Hope Bob gets his milk.
Though I think there may be a target audience in the blind community; who could find the demi-organic nature of recorded speech more conducive to genuine conversations than their standard text-to-speech conversion software.
(Which I think there's a good chance a lot of them are using for one of their primary social networking interfaces anyway).
I had fun browsing the different topics, and could see myself using this as a way to have "slow" social media usage.
That said, "Twitter/Reddit but every post is a voicemail" is a dream I wake up from in a cold sweat. It is a thinly-veiled threat. If you were trying to keep a cool website from me, and you accidentally said the name and I asked "what's that," if you said "oh, it's twitter/reddit but every post is a voicemail" you would successfully hide it from me. I cannot imagine a concept less compatible with the way I desire to experience the internet.
I'm happy for you, glad you built a cool thing, and I'm hopeful you see all the success you want from it. I shan't be going there.
The reason I say that is because I have frequently seen the same people who rage in text based media, have a very civil, even productive conversations on video (possibly because the human element is more obvious).
There is an open field out there for better functioning discussion sites, maybe audio/video micro-conversations could play a role (auto-transcribed as text is easier to skim and focus on chosen parts).
I bet the children of today's youth will be mostly "non-verbal" humans from birth and will communicate with humans one inch away from them via text message only. Vocal cords will become a vestigial organ. Unused. People in the year 2050 will find it totally cringe, bizarre, and unfathomable that "original humans" use guttural vocal sounds as a form of communication.
I've read through several of your comments, and none of them offer anything even remotely useful. It's all just mean and unhelpful, and I don't see how it adds to the conversation at all.
What is the intro sound to each clip? Feel like I heard it before somewhere.
Depends how old you are!
In the olden days when you had a "phone message machine" at home, you'd come home and press the play button to listen to your messages, then hear a beep between each message.
It's meant to sound like the click of the play button and the beep.
in the 1990s I helped build a dating site where people put their profiles on small voicemails. This is very reminiscent of that and I think the engagement was low because it was a lot to listen to
I wish the HN vibe was more like a digital makerspace and a bit less a tech business news. Sure, I don't think crowdwave will ever be as big as twitter or reddit, so what? That's not a bad thing! Reddit was infinitely better 15 years ago. Even if you close the site tomorrow, I already got some joy from it.
Anyway, I like it, really good job! (:
PS: Does anyone know about an online community similar to HN that actually has that digital makerspace vibe? I said that and know I want it to exist.
+1 to the digital makerspace idea. I've also been looking for such a thing. Probably the closest thing I know is the maker side of YouTube where people show what they are working on. But obviously you're "encouraged" to "industrialize" your hobby and the barrier to entry is huge...
Would be cool to find a community that is very welcoming and non-constructive feedback is not allowed.
I think having used "texting" only for their entire lives their verbal skills (and also social skills to be frank) are severely underdeveloped. A modern 20 year old will be able to express himself verbally at the level of a 10yr old from when I grew up. I don't mean the thoughts aren't there. I just mean they're unable to articulate those thoughts. Their mind is like a 20yr old, but their ability to vocally communicate is at the 10yr old level.
so...unfortunately this app will only be popular with the over-40 crowd but gosh darn it there's billions upon billions of us. :)
What is true though is that I avoid audio chats where possible. Not because I'm scared of them, but because it's way too intrusive. I might be listening to music, or I might be in public without my headphones. How do I record something discretely if I'm out of the house. Sure I might publish it publicly, but I don't want a random stranger next to me hearing in case it's something only a niche community might understand.
Its really because on the back of my mind I was wondering if there's a way to have revenue without intrusive advertising or anything.
And, inspired by the games industry where people seem very willing to buy digital good to make their characters look good, I thought well thre are people on the internet who really value having exactly the username they want. And then I thought well maybe I should hold off giving away what might be a practical, non intrusive way to generate revenue. Thus I though, well the easy way is just to put a number on the end of the username. That's the thinking. If you've signed up, as an early joiner I'd be happy to give you your username without the number - email me at developers@crowdwave.com and I'll fix you up.
I was just casually searching domains and there it was, available for $10.
You would not believe how fast I reached for my credit card.