Do you have some user research you could share?<p>I remember thinking about this exact problem (branching conversations, in particular audio), but I couldn't find a reasonable consumption pattern.<p>Looking at how I consume podcasts, it's a completely passive experience - I probably have something in my hands and can't talk. Choosing paths is just too much interactivity.<p>I figured that maybe that's just a wrong mode to look at it and people can consume the whole thing differently, not as a podcast. Ok then, I'm an obsessed power user/fan, I consume the whole thing, all branches. Given how human attention/memory works, that means returning to earlier parts of recording after listening to branch at least some of the time, multiple times experiencing 'where did we start? Let me go back a bit. Oh, that topic was the starting. Let me forward a bit now that I know it'. That's horrible, I think. You were at least more reasonable than me when thinking about it and decided to have only 1 level of branching ; )<p>In similar vein, what happens when comment gets added after I already listened/how do I know which parts are 'the definite experience'? Unlike previous two issues, those questions are answerable, but I'd still like to hear what you think the answers are!
When I was reading the website, I thought "oh, I misunderstood: this is a threaded voice memo app, that's cool".<p>Threaded voice memos would be cool. I have some friends who send voice memos like emails and I like it a lot. If we could converse more like email that would be cool. Maybe there's even something like a blockquote in threaded voice memo universe? (Low pass filtered sample of the original memo?) :-)<p>I agree with other commenters who are confused about the use case for this though. Podcasts are passive in my understanding. I don't listen to them but the people I know who do listen to them in situations where they really wouldn't want to be doing something interactive. (Like working on a car, or walking the dog.)<p>Edit: thinking about it a bit more, I suppose you're trying to set up a broadcast platform, not a communication platform. In those terms I think it makes more sense, but maybe using the words "conversation" and "friends" leads the mind in the wrong direction. You might try appealing to podcast authors directly?
Looks nice, the “tree” visualization gives the UI a pretty unique look.<p>Why did you decide to work on this specific idea? I don’t quite see what problem this is meant to solve and for whom, which makes it a little hard to understand the app.<p>I hope that doesn’t come across as discouraging an interesting experiment.<p>The demo video focuses on how the UI works, but it might be more helpful if it showed a situation someone is in where they have a use for this. Basically, “real” people doing real recordings, not just the same person talking for a few seconds to show that the app is recording.
When I saw this app I immediately thought of it as a better way to record podcasts together.<p>It’s always a hassle to combine separate audio streams, and simply using the zoom recording isn’t usually good enough (the quality is quite low).<p>So having an app that records on-device but later merges those audio streams seamlessly is very useful.
So here is one potential application: consulting, advising and/or one-on-one tutoring/teaching.<p>There could be a parent script on a particular topic-call it a mini-lecture-which can then be “forked” by each user (or team). Then there would be a private and unique version of that interaction which is uniquely identified and stored for the advisor as well as the user.<p>The advisor might want to monetize these “forks” somehow-so that would need to be considered.<p>A side-by-side comparison of this with an asynchronous “zoom” experiment would be interesting to test the value of audio alone.<p>Cheers! Looks interesting!
Isn't the async part redundant, otherwise you'd call it "live", and the "micro" part wouldn't make sense (blink and you missed it!)?
My cousin and I talk regularly and we often go down long branching tangents. We joke that we wish we had a git version control setup for our convos so we could keep track of all the branches and find our way back to the main branch. Roads seems like it's going to be a pretty good fit for us. What would really be awesome is if roads could have roads.<p>Edit: I see from the comments that nested roads are on the way. Excellent!
I think this is excellent. Maybe what Clubhouse should have been! The onboarding is pretty slick. My only comment is the speaker is too slick/perfect. Think it would be cool after her to have a second more “typical person” speaking to get a feel for what it is like talking to friends.<p>Also audio upload time was a bit slow.<p>I like how add friends just lists everyone on the platform! Quaint!<p>Could this be a place to make friends?<p>But an interesting idea.
Add some localization features to this and you are golden. Such as find roads around where you are. People can leave comments on restaurants and bars, or hook up in new ways. Also add some rough categorizations, such as "review" or "blog". There are communities that form around such things. Think Pokemon Go or nature observers. Or tourism for that matter
Interesting idea. Well done and good luck with it.<p>IMHO, the use case for async audio notes is not entertainment
"podcast". People listen in a passive and linear way.<p>But the use case is team planning and note taking for on-the-go and
hybrid WFH teams.<p>Add some ability to "call-in", listen and add comments and you've got
something like an audio Kanban board.<p>Also add voice2text to dump a threaded transcript.
I think this is a cool idea and well done. I've thought about it myself a few times over the decade that I've been listening to podcasts. Most podcast conversation is passive but at times I want to say something to a creator when I'm listening or talk about a specific point, but can't do it because ... well it's passive.
Hey cool idea to explore, often feel audio is sync only and text more async. One idea is to mix both, like you could automatically label branches so people have an idea what the comments are about before listening to them. I feel not having topics mean a user have to listen for a while just to decide if they wanted to in the first place.
Looks interesting. I feel like this might replace few of my group "chats" where we're too lazy to write and prefer sending voice messages most of the time. But not sure yet if that needs a long recording to keep the commenting going, or if you can comment on a comment to make tree deeper.
there's been a few similar products that you could learn from, for example: <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/products/lava-beta" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.producthunt.com/products/lava-beta</a>
Nice, I have been working on something similar and really nice to see how you have approached the UI.<p>My approach was to focus on the tuition market with the voice comments for feedback from the tutor.<p>Always impressed seeing ideas come to market.
Castini is an app-free, browser-based alternative:<p><a href="https://castini.frequal.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://castini.frequal.com/</a><p>No bloated download. No upgrade treadmill. Just short podacsts with no install.<p>Castini-hosted podcasts include:<p>* Castini Show: <a href="https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Castini%20Show/23941716-cdac-48c7-a19b-23a0f332dd47" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Castini%20Show/2394171...</a><p>* Flavourcast: <a href="https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Flavourcast/f7e171e8-22de-4f3b-adbb-5462991343c5" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Flavourcast/f7e171e8-2...</a>
I was working on a similar idea for a bit. I wanted to support a tree-like structure for branching conversation but never figured out a good UI for it. I really like your approach!
Is it possible to upload existing recordings to the app or is that a planned feature? That would be especially cool for people commenting on lecture recordings.
Thank you so much! I have been wanting something like this for a long long time!<p>Can you add a monthly GoCardless subscription so I can help this service continue to exist?