Product teardown: Airchat

Airchat was all over my Twitter feed last week. From one moment to the next, it felt like everyone was telling me to 'DM for an invite'.

So I did.

Airchat is Naval Ravikant (famed investor) and Brian Norgard (Tinder ex-CPO)'s newest take on a social app.

Airchat is an asynchronous voice social media app (more on that description later). You hold the microphone button and talk. Your voice is recorded and transcribed and, as you release the button, immediately sent to your followers who can reply the same way.

Invite-only access and signup flow

Signing up to Airchat was relatively painless. It required a personal invite from an existing member, which I received last Friday via X (thanks Elie!).

The invitation sent me a download link via SMS which took me to the iOS app store. Once installed and opened, I created my account in a few simple steps. The signup flow is very short and straightforward: pick a name, set a profile picture, follow a few people; you're in.

The personal invitation is a nice touch. It's both a great way to generate buzz and to manage the app load. Given who the app's founders are, they likely expected a lot of interest.

Interestingly, Airchat also displays who invited you to the app on your profile. It's a nice social proof indicator. I can foresee people valuing the opinion of users invited by Naval more than others, for example. 

As my signup experience comes to an end, I am thrown into a feed.

I immediately notice Naval. A lot of Naval.

Intentionally, no doubt, Naval was interacting with a lot of people. It was part of the appeal of joining the app: you might get to interact with Naval directly. Oh, and you might also get to reserve a cool handle!

The UI is simple and beautiful, very white with dashes of moving colours around people's profile pictures. At first sight, it's a familiar UI, too. A vertical feed of other people's posts with a 'post box' at the top to engage.

Note: in the time it took me to write this post, dark mode came out. Whoop! Sorry for the inconsistency in screenshots.

Then, you hear it.

Voice notes from strangers

As I scrolled through my feed, voices started playing.

I quickly grabbed my headphones. The millennial in me couldn't handle the fact that 'voice notes' were coming out from my phone's speakers; even though I was alone at my desk.

As I described earlier, each post is a voice recording. As you scroll through the conversation, you hear each person's voice as they engage in the chat. And it's...

Wonderful.

I never expected to enjoy it this much (see my 'millennial' comment above). Each message feels personal, even though they're not directly aimed at me. 

Each conversation feels like a real conversation. There's true back and forth.

The UX is excellent, too. 

As a note ends, the app seamlessly scrolls through to the next note, creating a 'real conversation' feel. No awkward pauses. Haptic feedback also adds to the experience, lightly vibrating as you move from message to message. I can't explain why, but it feels like it adds a lot.

I lost myself listening (aka eavesdropping) for about 30min.

Chiming in

Engaging felt surprisingly natural.

As a note is playing, a 'Reply' button appears at the bottom of the screen. Press, hold, talk, release; this sends a reply to the person you were listening to.

I love the UI here. It's incredibly self-explanatory. It's clearly a reply button. It also gives you great feedback on who you're actually responding to, changing the default 'talk' image to the profile picture of the person you're engaging with.

As you release the microphone, your voice note is transcribed. The transcription and the record are both excellent. I suffer greatly from filler-word-itus and, surprisingly, couldn't find any in my first note. Did I just overcome years of um's and so's? 

Nope. Just great transcription.

But there's more.

Voice did something to me.

As I chimed in various threads, I found myself extremely focused. Engaged. Actively listening to previous points and attempting to add value through my response. I tried hard not to mumble or make mistakes.

Each interaction felt thoughtful. Human.

Why? I can only assume it's down to the voice. My voice joins my name (handle) and my face (profile picture) to form an almost complete individual. 

This feels like me. 

Stickiness and changing my expectations

I've been using the app every day for about a week now.

As activity ramped up, I found myself somewhat lost with some of the interactions and UI. Here's an example:

Looking at this screenshot (and forgetting for a minute that this is read via a voice), what do you think is happening?

I'd expect the top bubble (Nivi) to be the start of a thread, the middle circles to be people chiming into the thread, the next bubble (Nasser) to also contribute, and the last bubble (Nivi) to be the latest message in the thread.

And... it's hard to say if that's right or not. As you scroll through the app, the first message plays out loud, then the second message too -- but the middle bits don't. Are there messages I'm missing? Am I missing parts of the conversation?

If I click on the first message, it takes me to a separate 'page' and I notice... it's often. not the first message at all!

Often, what I thought was the first message was, in fact, a reply to another message & part of a much longer thread. And the contributions from the ‘people in the middle’ are nowhere to be found.

This experience is very confusing. I expect to see the entire 'thread'... and that's part of the problem.

Naval explains the intention of the app is to feel like you're walking through a house party. People are talking all around, you eavesdrop and join the conversation as and when something piques your interest.

Would you join a group of people and ask everyone to catch you up to the entire conversation? Of course not.

And that's part of the point of Airchat. That's what makes it different.

Not going to lie, it requires quite a bit of adaptation. I still struggle with it. I want the context! But it is a new and refreshing experience.

Moving forward

I expect I'll continue to use Airchat. At the moment, I use it about 30-40min a day. Interestingly, I find myself using it without sound (just reading) about 40% of the time; mostly in bed.

I find hearing people's voices amazing. It's such a human experience. Someone on Airchat said something of the effect of: "On Twitter, we're users. On Airchat, we're humans". And I completely agree.

There are barriers to engaging on Airchat, however. 

I can't sit on my phone in public, on a bus, or around friends and casually send voice notes. That might just be who I am. It's also part of the appeal. If you're in the Airchat 'house party', that's where you are.

Because I feel some amount of pressure to engage meaningfully, I also find myself lurking more than usual. It's hard to jump into a conversation without context. I funnily feel like I almost lack the social skills.

Also, frankly, I’m enjoying eavesdropping on conversations between people who know what they’re talking about. I get Naval’s point. It’ll get boring if I never participate. But it’s still quite fun.

There's still a place for the classic social media text interaction. But Airchat does feel less noisy (maybe because we're early?), less bitesize-y, and more engaging; a place for 'smarter' interactions.

For now, I'm seeing mostly tech chats. A bit of sports. I expect this to grow and broaden soon (Airchat are soft-launching groups which centre around a single topic).

I haven't been this excited about a social app -- or any app! -- in a long time. If you're on there chatting away about product, give me a shout!