Show HN: I made crowdwave – imagine Twitter/Reddit but every post is a voicemail (crowdwave.com)
- crowdwave works best on your phone - unless you've got your headset and microphone plugged in to your desktop, in which case desktop works great too.
Here's the story:
So about six months ago I saw this post on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39910119
https://afterthebeep.tel is really cool - it's an anonymous voicemail box - you call the provided phone the number and leave a message. Blaine - the guy who runs the site (eventually) listens to and approves your message and writes a headline. It was fun, and I found I kept going back to it and listening to the messages. I left a message once and several weeks later it appeared on the site. Blaine, from comments I read, didn't seem in a hurry to take the site much further, which got me thinking...
And I simply could not get one question out of my head - "what would happen if users could just hit record on their phone, instead of having to dial a phone number?".
When I get a software idea I get pretty obsessive and that question just kept gnawing at me.
So, like the any reasonable programmer would, I stopped working on the project I had been working on for literally YEARS and took a detour. Because that's what you do isn't it - you just drop those multiple years of work and pick up the shiny new thing.
I saw that afterthebeep is open source and I loved the UI design - the Windows 3.1 aesthetic really appealed to me - it seems perfect for voicemail, so I grabbed the open source code and started development. I couldn't make much sense of the code - it was using tech I'm not familiar with, so I ditched it all except the layout and the graphics.
Fortunately, the project I had been working on for YEARS is basically a Twitter/Reddit clone, so I ripped the UI out of the afterthebeep open source project and did open heart surgery until like some bizarre Frankenstein's monster I had put the afterthebeep open source UI onto my code.
And I added in the functionality that I craved so much - a "record" button. Sigh.... relief. It was incredibly satisfying to hit record and see a message appear almost immediately. Nerd craving fulfilled.
But my satisfaction did not last long. I REALLY HAD TO fix that problem of getting the posts approved and headlines written. So I made a back end audio processing pipeline and fed the messages into an LLM, which ripped the text from the speech and I then shoved it into OpenAI and asked it to make nice headlines. And it worked beautifully - now you only have to wait 30 seconds to see your message with a nice headline! Ahhhh..... sigh, satisfaction... (it wouldn't be 2024 without an AI twist, would it now?).
But hang on! It would be SO much better if there was some sort of category system almost like subreddits - then people could post their messages into areas of interest. So I built the channel system and sat back.... job done.
Looking at the calendar, dreading to see..... I've dropped into obsessive coding mode and and I've been down this rabbit hole full time for MONTHS. I'm getting wary - and I'm also getting tired and sick of the effort - when's this going to end?
But wait, another idea! How much more cool would it be if you could have your own user account, and follow and like and subscribe! I've just GOT TO make that. AND surely it has to be multi language doesn't it? I mean Germans like talking too don't they? And user profile pics, and channel banner images, and options and settings. And if you don't put in terms and conditions and privacy and a cookie message then won't the Eurpoeans turn up and arrest me? At this stage I'm like a drunken junkie wanting just one more th...
143 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadhttps://www.crowdwave.com
I find it's the sort of thing I use probably at different times to when I might use Twitter - perhaps in bed before sleep listen to some messages, on the couch chilling.
The text wouldn't even need to appear on the site; it could be hidden in the accessibility meta tags.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6A4F09E968494896
That said, "Twitter/Reddit but every post is a voicemail" is a dream I wake up from in a cold sweat. It is a thinly-veiled threat. If you were trying to keep a cool website from me, and you accidentally said the name and I asked "what's that," if you said "oh, it's twitter/reddit but every post is a voicemail" you would successfully hide it from me. I cannot imagine a concept less compatible with the way I desire to experience the internet.
I'm happy for you, glad you built a cool thing, and I'm hopeful you see all the success you want from it. I shan't be going there.
The reason I say that is because I have frequently seen the same people who rage in text based media, have a very civil, even productive conversations on video (possibly because the human element is more obvious).
There is an open field out there for better functioning discussion sites, maybe audio/video micro-conversations could play a role (auto-transcribed as text is easier to skim and focus on chosen parts).
The trouble with audio is the barrier of entry. By the time you've wrote your script and managed to record it and edit it you might as well have made a video.
I appreciate the well wishes even if its not your cup of tea thanks!
Empathy equally applied would mean the message is never sent.
I am in multiple group chats: Spanish, Catalan, English. And with quick translators, we can all communicate with each other. With voice, it would be impossible.
I'm in a similar situation. www.turboscribe.ai works well at a great price.
Actually it isn't. I struggle with auditory processing, and routinely mishear things.
If I want to refer to something from an audio message a second time while I'm responding, audio messages are impossible to easily reference. Asynchronous audio messages are awful.
Empathy is also understanding that different people have different preferences, often driven by physiological differences. If my friends were dyslexic or blind or struggled to type, I would be open to voice memos for that reason, but they are all very proficient typists.
A written document inherently allows you to process it at your own pace. A voice memo cannot do that.
Radio and podcasts have been successful for hearing peoples voices, but its not for everyone.
Not everyone has to do it - I'm thinking that there's a group of people in the world who like talking and they're the people I'm hoping will enjoy it.
That's far different from "Hey it's Bob, ehm, so, yeah about tomorrow, we need a place to grab beers with John and Alex. I was thinking it could be SomePlace at X street. What do you think?" which costs the listener much more time than just reading a text message.
But I think this site might be on to something with the voting and all. That should bring out the content that's worth listening to.
Its really because on the back of my mind I was wondering if there's a way to have revenue without intrusive advertising or anything.
And, inspired by the games industry where people seem very willing to buy digital good to make their characters look good, I thought well thre are people on the internet who really value having exactly the username they want. And then I thought well maybe I should hold off giving away what might be a practical, non intrusive way to generate revenue. Thus I though, well the easy way is just to put a number on the end of the username. That's the thinking. If you've signed up, as an early joiner I'd be happy to give you your username without the number - email me at developers@crowdwave.com and I'll fix you up.
I do wonder whether a big company could sue you to give them the account for free on the premise of this being 'blackmail'. Might be something to keep in mind. But once BigCo sues you for this, you probably don't need their money anymore ;)
What is the intro sound to each clip? Feel like I heard it before somewhere.
Depends how old you are!
In the olden days when you had a "phone message machine" at home, you'd come home and press the play button to listen to your messages, then hear a beep between each message.
It's meant to sound like the click of the play button and the beep.
I was just casually searching domains and there it was, available for $10.
You would not believe how fast I reached for my credit card.
Audio can be great for conveying emotion versus text (and without the awkwardness of video). It’s also 3-4x faster than typing out comments. I’ve seen stats saying it produces up to 8x more content because of how easy it is to talk vs type (especially on mobile).
Maybe if the posts were transcribed it would help (although that’s expensive at scale, especially for a side project without a clear path to monetization).
Regardless, kudos to the creator for trying something new and fun in such an apparently ‘controversial’ medium.
That's my experience! n≈30 Gen Z.
It's also 3-4x slower than reading, on the other side, and impossible to search (without some voice recognition tool slapped over it)
> up to 8x more content
So, you have to lose up to 4x8 more time to obtain the information you probably didn't need
Audio messages should only be occasional, in my opinion
Yeah faster for you, much much slower for everyone who has to receive it and listen to you ramble incoherently. That's just selfishness talking, just like that friend who is always late for things making everyone wait. "My time is worth more than yours".
When will I get auto speech to text for all voice messages on all messaging apps? Or better still auto-decline all voice messages; "Sorry this recipient has disabled voice messages".
Though I think there may be a target audience in the blind community; who could find the demi-organic nature of recorded speech more conducive to genuine conversations than their standard text-to-speech conversion software.
(Which I think there's a good chance a lot of them are using for one of their primary social networking interfaces anyway).
What is true though is that I avoid audio chats where possible. Not because I'm scared of them, but because it's way too intrusive. I might be listening to music, or I might be in public without my headphones. How do I record something discretely if I'm out of the house. Sure I might publish it publicly, but I don't want a random stranger next to me hearing in case it's something only a niche community might understand.
I've read through several of your comments, and none of them offer anything even remotely useful. It's all just mean and unhelpful, and I don't see how it adds to the conversation at all.
You are being mean and unhelpful. GP really has a great point in asking you why you felt the need to get on this high horse and talk down to everyone around you. For asking you this you've responded to them with more personal attacks. Ironically, this was their complaint to begin with - you didn't add anything to the conversation with your reply. Please do better.
I wish the HN vibe was more like a digital makerspace and a bit less a tech business news. Sure, I don't think crowdwave will ever be as big as twitter or reddit, so what? That's not a bad thing! Reddit was infinitely better 15 years ago. Even if you close the site tomorrow, I already got some joy from it.
Anyway, I like it, really good job! (:
PS: Does anyone know about an online community similar to HN that actually has that digital makerspace vibe? I said that and know I want it to exist.
Regarding other online communities maybe IndieHackers?
+1 to the digital makerspace idea. I've also been looking for such a thing. Probably the closest thing I know is the maker side of YouTube where people show what they are working on. But obviously you're "encouraged" to "industrialize" your hobby and the barrier to entry is huge...
Would be cool to find a community that is very welcoming and non-constructive feedback is not allowed.
People complain about audio being slow to listen to - I don't know, people do listen to hours of podcasts. People do spend hours on tiktok. With enough users and a voting system, the best content should rise to the top. With the playlist functionality, you'd queue the posts you want to listen to and listen to them passively, while cleaning the room or driving to work.
Recording little songs or super short flashfiction stories... With the right creators to make quality content, I totally see how this could turn into something awesome.
One bit of feedback - why require the usernames to end on a number? I want to use a username Im using everywhere else.
Also, uploading an audio file didn't work for me.
Oh yeah oops! I need to fix that sorry. Recording via your microphone should work fine but I seem to have broken the file upload somewhere along the way.
Nothing weird about that.
I can understand how some people might be vary of publishing samples of their voice on the internet after seeing what happend to authors and artists whose text and images found a way to the web, then got ingested and regurgitated by a multitude of LLMs.
Hmm. "Recording song" => copyright nightmare for all involved. Short stories .. well, do you know why youtube is banning ASMR?
Plz bro. You cannot possibly even be serious with this.
There's like totally not even any such thing as in integer smaller than 1 bro. Did it expect a length of zero minutes? Is it like the Dirac Delta Eq where the timeframe is infinitesimal and the area integral is one?
I left the one minute limitation in when I was doing some testing.
I've kicked it back up to 12 minutes which is what it should have been.