Datapoints.
Meeting people during covid, virtually.
Like staying connected with people in a world without physical distancing wasn’t hard enough…
Picture this: you’re at the grocery store checking out and the cashier waves goodbye and tells you to have a nice day. You look back holding your bags, smile, and walk out. Wait. How do they know you’re smiling behind the mask? Was it weird you turned around and stared at them without saying anything aloud? Probably.
Casual coffee shop conversation while waiting to order just doesn’t happen anymore, meeting people at the bar? Forget it.
Ever since mask-wearing became the norm in public settings, we’ve lost the ability to interpret another person’s facial expressions and understand what they’re feeling — an unspoken, implicit empathy. Think about how hard it is for the hard of hearing and those who rely on lip-reading to communicate.
2020 kinda feels like one painfully long fever dream that isn’t ending for some reason. To meet new people, you have to get really creative.
Quick note: I’m writing this sitting on an empty beach following a heavy election szn. Whether you’re celebrating, mourning, ambivalent or living under a rock, it’s different this time. Today I feel isolated, yet united with folks around the country.
The word isolated carries a greater emotional/social connotation than simply using the word “separated”. Feeling socially, physically, emotionally isolated is taxing, and taking time for mental health is underemphasized.
Those feelings are not unique to us as individuals but also present for us as a collective. Our nation feels more polarized and divided than ever, despite the impressive progress we made to show up at the polls and make our voices heard (regardless of who you voted for). As people, we seek comfort in those around us and in our sense of unity and belonging with others. Unfortunately, we’re not going to agree with everyone — in fact, we’ll meet people who see the world exactly opposite to how we do. I’m optimistic that we, as a collective, will better accept our differences (politically, culturally, religiously, etc), or at the very least be cordial, and move forward from hostility (and hopefully covid), together.
Won’t go too deep on a politics tangent — learned a lot from my time working in local/federal government and I’ll save the rambling for tech-related things — that said, would definitely recommend Eric Weinstein’s podcast with Timur Kuran about the economics of preference falsification.
Have to admit it’s weird to see a public beach in Southern California completely empty on a Saturday…How are we gathering these days?
Meeting people during COVID
The internet is kind of a cesspool. Roughly 90% is deep web, and the other 10% is still a lot of porn. As *exciting* as I’m sure that sounds, the internet is your friend — you just need to find the right space within it. For a long time, I avoided publishing content, shitposting on social media, and extending cold lines to complete strangers. It’s super uncomfortable! I’m giving it a shot right now with this medium article. Even if nobody sees it, maybe I’ll come back to this in 2 years and laugh.
As we’ve adjusted to a virtual-first social world, the internet has socially reinforced good and bad human tendencies. Here are a few I’ve noticed while meeting people online:
- Fearing rejection/the unknown (not making the first move)
- Fixating on others’ opinion
- Seeking normalcy in companionship/community
- Building to adapt
The same concepts can be applied to any sort of human interaction, even dating. Tinder in the age of Covid-19 is like the Wild West.. but that’s another story.
First impressions and continued exposure
Last week, a friend told me she’s busier than ever. Meetings go long, work is booming and people are vying desperately for more and more facetime with potential clients. That’s just it though.
“It all feels a bit transactional”
Facetime is a hot commodity. Over the last 8 months, we’ve been deprived of those chance, everyday interactions that led to new friends, and maybe some weird or unexpected situations. In relationship-driven industries/roles like venture capital, sales, customer success, etc., nothing can replace authentic, repeated interaction with a person. People are different online than irl (mostly). It’s hard to judge the content of someone’s character based off an online persona — or from how they position the camera on Zoom.
Networking/cold calls have all but switched to video hangouts as the norm, instead of a simple phone call. Did the added layer of video really improve the relationship, or make it harder for us to differentiate between genuine people and those looking to take advantage of our collective vulnerability? They say video killed the radio star, but I don’t think audio is dead. Not yet.
There’s something about physical presence that video can’t replace. Face to face time spent with friends new and old is something I won’t ever take for granted again. Rip social skills💀
Despite all our best efforts, we can’t force something that happens naturally.
“It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.”
Consciously, or unconsciously, we control every aspect of how we convey ourselves to others on the internet. Every Instagram photo, Facebook update, Tweet, Blog post, Snapchat story, etc is more than meets the eye. Photoshop, Filtering, Ghostwriters, and bots don’t help us be our most authentic selves when we place more intrinsic value on how we look or sound than the message we are trying to share. Can’t live without clever captions either.
“The Social Dilemma” came out recently on Netflix and exposed the evils of social media taking advantage of addictive tendencies and social anxiety to trap us. Though true, I don’t think that tells the full story. For every troll, there’s a potential friend. It just takes 20 seconds to dm someone “Saw you’re building x, we should talk!”, recommend them a book, or tell them you liked their recent video edit. Seems simple, but nobody does that! It’s intimidating to make the first move, easy to overthink things and opt for the path of least resistance. One piece of advice that never fails — kind words go a long way. At the very least, someone is getting inbound messages in a time when they might need it.
To qualify my optimism, I fall victim to the same social ‘persona-control’ quite often, and care about what and how I say what I say. Can’t say there isn’t a deleted tweet here and there and very calculated texts/emails. The crux of our social media issue is that if we control, edit, filter our online personas this much — in a world where that’s the only way to make new friends — then we might as well reconsider what it means to build authentic virtual relationships.
On the other hand, there are authentic relationships to be made, friends to meet serendipitously in corners of the internet you didn’t know existed, and above all, ideas to build with them.
In theory, your first time meeting someone should be inconsequential to the relationship, yet it means everything. However, It’s human nature to be judgmental. A bad first impression sets a tone for a weak relationship, or lack thereof, simply because it was bad. From first meeting, you notice the smallest things — body language, manner of speaking, eye contact, topics of conversation, confidence, etc.
When you take away the in-person side of a first impression, a virtual shadow remains. With video calls, you lose the sense of another person’s physical presence. With only audio, there is no body language, no presence (physical or visual) to connect to a voice. The only thing left is manner of speaking.
And that’s painfully isolating. In a previous post, I shared my view on intelligence (and how everyone maintains a different definition). Many factors play into one’s determination of others’ intelligence, namely the little data points from a first impression. John Baugh says it best in his Ted Talk about Linguistic Profiling — a person’s accent, and thus their manner of speaking, is a cue for their characteristics. For more on this, see accent prestige theory.
In a different post, I referenced the rise of new social platforms and community-building to help us adjust to a digital age. I’m blown away by how different social audio platforms and environmental factors are adapting even further to get around that layer of social vibe-checking, while others feed the flames of hype. These platforms as an outlet to meet others in a community space, as a space for creatives, for industry folks to talk shop or to hang around. But it doesn’t take long for internet anonymity to bring out the trolls and bigots of the world wide web.
Case study: Clubhouse vs. Sonar
Clubhouse is a platform with great potential but a bad track record. An audio-only social app, Clubhouse gained popularity over the summer as an exclusive, invite-only community where you had to “be someone” to be part of it. It was a massive Twitter flex to say that you attended X talk on Clubhouse or were hanging out in a room with person Y and person Z.
The quality of conversation was super high, people went in there to seek out other intellectuals from assorted online spaces and make new friends by hopping in and out of different chatrooms. It’s like AOL, with a big old wall up to vibe check all potential entrants. Great in theory. People in tech would host talks about important topics on the platform, like diversity, increasing access for underrepresented founders in tech, etc. Mind you, this was still Clubhouse, an app in closed, private beta with less than ~500 total users at the time. Ironic.
The platform grew initially as a status symbol, and there are elements of this that never went away. Over time (as more users joined), intimate conversations were diluted, rooms grew bigger and splintered. Now, the app has diversified its offerings into ‘clubs’, scheduled talks, and large open rooms, like a live podcast with a virtual stage. Two prominent Silicon Valley investors, Eric Weinstein and Marc Andreesen, for example, spend lots of time on the app very late at night, often engaging with an audience of 100+ people.
Clubhouse rooms are a lot like conference calls, with little profile images. Only one person can speak at a time, and they do so as eloquently as they can to appear a certain way. The small, intimate conversations on Clubhouse have not completely disappeared, however, organic convos are few and far between.
Now imagine you’re a dot. No profile pic, no bio, just some emojis, and a virtual space to customize, navigate, meet new friends.
Very rarely will you find an app like Sonar to balance the awkwardness of meeting people online, giving you the confidence that you can be friends with anyone; since really, everyone is just a dot on a grid. Your only identity in Sonar beyond your @ is how you interact with others.
The best consumer social apps are ones where the user is able to express themselves and engage with others how they want to. The early days of Sonar weren’t much more than a few dots moving around and talking to one another — the main feature was spatial audio (you can only hear and speak with other dots close to you). After a few months of updates and user-focused tweaks, the team has added droppable emojis, over 300 text and emoji sounds, customizable radio stations, private spaces, and more. I find myself spending a lot of time there, doing everything from meeting new friends to listening to podcasts on the radio or vibing in a space + coworking.
The features might sound distracting, but they’re truly a cherry on top of an already cool spatial audio app. Especially if you’re meeting someone for the first time.
Like its real-life counterpart, each virtual space has its regulars, its own unspoken rules, regulations, and norms. A virtual ~environment~, if you will. Any environment shapes our experience in a given space (real or virtual) and similarly, our behavior.
“Growth is important, but also the quality and type of growth” — Turner Novak
These apps, in theory, are the same. Consumer social. Audio and invite-only. Mobile. Though they look similar on the surface, the way these products have grown (and how they’ve acquired users) since inception have driven their change over time.
I’ve met folks who enjoy both platforms and have different use cases for both. Most cross-platform users will come to Sonar to escape the drama that a social platform like Clubhouse provides… even though Sonar itself is a social platform.
But is Sonar a social platform?
Consumer social apps are largely based on identity. Typically, users create ‘profiles’ where they put content and personal info to share with their connections/followers. Any social apps you can name — Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Tiktok — center around a virtual identity, a presence. That’s what we’re so careful to protect. Our reputation online.
Clubhouse has ~50k total users. Sonar has ~1k (estimate). By total users alone, they’re both doing well. After Clubhouse invites became less exclusive, the platform saw explosive user growth. Such rapid growth came at the cost of a relatively high churn rate, practically no iteration on the original product, and the same systemic lack of moderation. That said, the growth is impressive. The feeling of exclusivity hasn’t yet disappeared, and people like clout. Such adoption demonstrates a shift to audio-first social.
With a social app, a sense of belonging is absolutely paramount. People join not because it is some novel or unique tech (see Soapbox, Twitter Spaces, etc.), but because they want to stay in touch with friends, up-to-date on the goings-on, and meet new friends (hence social *network*). The survival of a platform like that will depend on the flexibility to continue delivering a nicely-packaged user experience.
Sonar is the social, minus the media. There is no profile to build, no reputation to protect. Despite this odd inflection point, they’ve seen sustained retention, and daily active users only continue to grow. I believe this stickiness stems from authenticity. The reason retention is so high with Sonar versus Clubhouse is because people have better odds of making genuine connections, and it’s super intuitive to use. Everyone belongs there because nobody does. You could be talking to the Founder of Figma or a college kid from Minnesota. Everyone’s just a dot.
People seek authenticity in ads, in relationships, and in the products they use. In my opinion, the spatial element of sonar, coupled with the extremely customizable spaces, add a unique layer on top of the purely social elements. I’m excited to watch the evolution of these platforms and their continued user growth. I’m skeptical that anything will emerge “on top” of the social audio market (if there is one). Right now, sonar is the best place for vibes.
let me know if you want to try either of these out!
My update:
- working
- turned 21, reflected on 8 months of covid and spent time w/ fam
- cooking more, hot saucing on the weekends
Thanks for reading my thought vomit :)
