Forget Bluesky, Mastodon or Threads, here's another new social network entering the race: AirChat. The latter, however, has several particularities which deserve our attention.
Since the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and the success of TikTok, the social media market seems to be full of new competitors. Each with their quarter of an hour of fame: Threads, Bluesky or even Mastodon.
The latest is Airchat, but be careful, this time it is a social network with new concepts. Interesting enough for us to be interested in a small phenomenon which is starting, for once, in Silicon Valley.
What is Airchat?
Airchat is a social network that looks like a Twitter feed from afar. The big difference is that the keyboard is strictly prohibited. All messages published are from the voice and microphone of your smartphone. The application then takes care of transcribing this message into writing.
Airchat's slogan: don't write, speak. Don't listen, read.
This may sound like a detail, but this change makes Airchat different from other social networks. On Airchat, you must think at least about your message before starting, since you will have to speak out loud and in one go. The objective is to fuel conversations that are more intelligent and less toxic than what we have seen growing, particularly on X.
This system also allows you to transform Airchat into a radio or podcast, since you can listen to the audio recording that was originally used for the publication.
Listening to the audio of the message allows you to recover the author's intonation and therefore add context. We now know to what extent a written message can be misinterpreted by the reader.
Who is behind Airchat?
The application is created by a small team at Woosh Inc, around two co-founders, Naval Ravikant and Brian Nordgard. The first is a fairly well-known entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, he has notably invested in Uber, Notion, Twitter and Wish. The second was at the head of the development of Tinder for 7 years.
How to download and install Airchat?
Airchat is currently only available through a smartphone. The application is available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
However, registration on the social network is by invitation only at the moment.
A stunning transcription
We were able to get an invitation and spend a few hours on the social network. The first observation that we can make is the quality of the transcription of our various messages. We can see the application adjust the message in real time and in a few seconds arrive at a good written transcription of our voice message. The algorithm handles punctuation or elements of doubt very well when spoken. We only noted a spelling error in the writing of a first name on several messages in French.
For such a young service, the application is also very well made with a real emphasis on the quality of the user experience. On iPhone, scrolling through its feed uses the smartphone's vibration motor to give physical feedback to the user. Instinctively, this makes you want to slow down when scrolling through messages. It's the kind of little detail that's very pleasant to use.
What about moderation?
Moderation has become a key topic on social networks, especially in Europe. In the FAQ, Airchat developers indicate that they rely on a community self-moderation system.
AirChat ensures that it allows users to report malicious content, but also act directly on this content by deleting it. The usual blocking and mute tools are also available.
We don't remove accounts platform-wide for polite disagreement or political reasons, but we do remove accounts for harassment, impersonation, rude behavior, and illegal content.
It remains to be seen whether the platform will really be able to be satisfied with these answers if its popularity grows.
And personal data?
AirChat does not currently include any advertising, but the question of collecting user data still arises. In particular to feed the AI which is used to transcribe audio messages. The developers promise that this is not the case at the moment, although users' audio data is retained by the company.
The social network does not offer any indication on its official website or in its application on the use of personal data. All this leads us to believe that AirChat is not really GDPR compliant in Europe at the moment.
