Apply HN: Bleepmic – 30s audio notes
Problem: We want people to be able to have conversations in a way that is independent of location and time. We strongly believe that when people actually talk, barriers and stereotypes go away. We want to leverage the power of the internet to achieve that.
Our Solution: Bleepmic. With 30s audio notes (which we believe is the limit of keeping people focused on what you are saying), people are able to have conversations in a town hall like manner while not being limited by proximity or time. You can jump into a conversation started by someone in Wyoming, for example, and share your two cents and then checkin in an hour, hear what other people said and jump right back in with your thoughts.
Check us out on the App Store! Interesting idea. How will you get users? Do you expect people to say "you gotta be on bleepmic" to their friends, or is there another way that people will hear about your product? What kind of usage patterns are people showing? Our target users are the ones who like to listen to radio and even like to call in. We are looking for content creators. As the content gets better we believe people will be more attracted to the product and the network effect takes place. That said we really believe that the platform allows for meaningful organized conversations. So once those start to happen en masse we think people will find it interesting and useful. As for your second q: People are not posting enough so we are working on that now! Is this actually better solved by audio than by text? Audio will require full attention and doesn't allow people to scan comments. It seems like a lot of work to actually be involved in a conversation like this. Totally agree. You have to be selective and the system has to account for that. That's what we want to do now. What kind of anti-troll solutions are you considering? Great question! That's like my worst nightmare. Although its a relatively "good" problem to have in the future (i.e. we have a lot of users to suffer from that problem). That, and the concept of "noise" like useless silly stuff, are our primary focus going forward. My solution is to remove the ability of public trolling in a nutshell.