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In the Sunday Blog post “Social Media: A Love-Hate Relationship”, I referenced a study on why people use social media. The clear-cut number 1 reason, which 47% of people said is a reason of theirs, was to connect with friends and family. In addition to that:
- 23% said to discuss opinions with others.
- 23% said to make new contacts.
- 21% said to find like-minded interest groups and communities.
The reason I bring up these four reasons is because they all fall under the umbrella of connecting with others. So the question I want to dive deeper into is this: what role does social audio play in accomplishing these purposes?
Let’s start with the top reason of connecting with friends and family. Before social media, connecting with others at a distance involved text, emails, and phone calls. The latter would often be reserved for important conversations and/or important people. This illustrates the fact that voice helps connect people on a deeper level than the written word.
How about these other reasons for social media usage? Discussing opinions, making new contacts, and finding like-minded people took on a different look with the advent of social media, but before that, we had message boards and good ol’ fashion meeting in person. At the root of these was conversation about ideas, interests, and each other.
The key word in all of this is conversation. Conversation is the cornerstone to getting to know new people and keeping in touch with familiar faces. It is the breeding ground for new ideas. It facilitates action. While the methods of conversation have changed over time, the end goal has not: connecting with others.
The next step in the evolution of conversation is social audio. Whether synchronous (happening in real-time) or asynchronous, social audio apps today have shown conversation to be a common use case. Undoubtedly, a driving force for this is because sharing our voices lends itself to conversation.
Think about it. Put two people in a room, and it is highly likely that they will talk to each other. It’s just what we humans do. This humanizing component of voice allows it to be a powerful engine for keeping in touch with family and friends, holding meaningful discussions with others on a variety of topics, establishing new relationships, and engaging with like-minded people.
Far be it from me to pigeonhole the use cases of social audio to the four reasons at the top of this post. Others will surely find it a suitable mode for entertainment, news, product recommendations, and more, but even these ultimately tie back to connecting with others through conversation. That’s the beauty of this untapped space. Voice-based social platforms have a long way to go, but it’ll be exciting to see how people make the most of it.
Tuesday Deep Dive is a series where we discuss in more detail a specific point made in the previous Sunday Blog.