[d0gbread]

What is it? I opened it up but it kinda throws you right in. Lots of recordings about being lonely. Is that what it's for, or was that some kind of prompt? Is it a mental health platform? Or is it meant to be more general, like a Twitter/Reddit but audio only?

[CharlesW]

Agreed, the site would benefit from clearly answering, "what is this and why should I care?". I poked around for a minute (most people will give it 10 seconds) and my impression is that it's sort of a digital lonely hearts club, or a global party line.

[mrweasel]

They do write: "We are on a mission to end loneliness"

I don't know, it's a noble goal, but I don't really see it being something to build an income on. Not everything has to have a commercial angle, but you need to pay for hosting and you need to pay yourself a salary. If the last few months have thought us anything is that you need to have a plan for monetization (whatever that means to you).

[jaybhum]

Thank you very much.

Voice connections without the element of vanity (photos, videos) can allow for authentic connections between strangers that texts cannot convey. It is what we believe in and first-hand experienced on our app.

We first want to achieve the network effect so that the platform has value to users, then we do have some premium features in mind that we can serve to enrich the experience of power users.

Thank you for your thoughtful remark!

[mrweasel]

Thank you for you answer, it's nice to see that there's a plan for you to pay yourself in the future, and one that doesn't involve ads or "big data". Best of luck.

[jaybhum]

It is the web-demo of the app that we have. On our iOS and Android app, we have onboarding pages that guide you what our mission is, and how to use the app. Sorry if the web-demo interface felt abrupt!

The goal is to facilitate people forming authentic connections using their voice in today's day and age where we are flooded with vanity-focused photos and videos and easy-to-misinterpret texts.

So far, the response from the actual users have been really great. I suggest you give it a try to connect with someone online1

[throwaway920102]

Just some feedback, I'm really thrown off that literally every conversation I can see just says something like "Hi, I'm lonely and this is why".

I don't understand what this is / it just feels like a survey for really short sort of useless replies to a survey on loneliness.

If the goal here is to just show a snapshot of one example of how this system works, you may want to have a modal or explanation saying "This is just an example, download the mobile app to see the full experience and other conversations".

[jaybhum]

That is a very good point.

On the actual app, you are able to carry a conversation with a stranger, going way beyond just sharing your short audio status messages.

We will try to capture that in the demo as well, either as an video or texts. Thank you for your feedback!