Airchat: Is Audio The New Era of Social Media?

Indian-American investor Naval Ravikant and former Tinder Executive, Mr Brian Norgard, have re-introduced the voice-centric social media app 'Airchat' for iOS and Android.

The tagline “Just talk” says enough about the application. Airchat was initially launched in mid-2023 but was taken down due to lack of popularity. 

Further Details on the Airchat

The Airchat and Thin Air Competition:

This sensational social media app is made just like other social media apps, with features like 'following each other', 'posting', and 'commenting', alongside some extra audio features. The logic behind the new concept relies on the popularity of voice notes. According to WhatsApp reports, in 2022, more than 7 billion users preferred sending voice notes on WhatsApp daily. 

Rollercoaster Journey of an Audio-Based Social Media App:

Every coin has a head and tail, so if you notice Side-A, you can say that this new app has zero competition, but if you notice Side-B, you will realize that Clubhouse was based on the same idea, but with time, the app lost all its popularity.

In 2020, Twitter started ‘Twitter Space’ to beat Clubhouse and gained more popularity. 

There were no criteria to join Clubhouse, but Twitter limited the reach of this feature to users with a minimum of 600 followers. However, after some time, Twitter made this feature public. 

What can we expect from Airchat?

First of all, Airchat is currently available only by invitation. The app is among the top 24 social media apps on iOS at the time of writing this article.

Video platforms have seen major changes in the past few years; the increment in the popularity of Tik-Tok, Instagram reels, and YouTube Shorts is enough to explain the advantage of ‘Quick-Bite.' Airchat is also on the same path for repeating the ‘Quick-Bite’ pattern in the audio segment.

But there is a catch in the app- it seems, it doesn't have any monetization plan, and they have paused the invitation to organize features. 

On Twitter, tech enthusiasts are claiming that the popularity of this app is just a "bubble." Additionally, Airchat supports the implementation of audio chats. You can chat and communicate with your friends.

The ambition of developers to make an app like this is to remove the boundaries between the digital and the real world. They planned to provide a place where people can talk to each other because voice makes more sense to understand something. 

The reality is that people supported voice notes during the pandemic, and even after that, it still is a popular feature, which attracts huge traffic.