Because Sound is Social. Isn’t it?

Do you love the information Twitter provides but hate deciphering it through the layers of hashtags and abbreviations? Audioboo could be what you’re looking for. Audioboo provide a service to smartphone users which allow them to record and upload self-made audio recordings up to five minutes in length. These clips, known as ‘boos’, can have a picture added to them and are then featured on the user’s channel on the Audioboo site. Much like Twitter a user can peruse other’s channels and listen to their previous boos or, alternatively, choose to listen to one of the incoming boos from various users. AudioBoo was one of the first projects to be funded by 4ip, Channel 4′s technology innovation fund, and launched in early 2009 with the introduction of its iPhone app. Since then it has since added apps for both Android and Symbian based phones (the latter somewhat redundant), added twitter integration and geo-location to boos. Further signs of progress came along in mid-2010 when they received funding from radio content firm UBC media and also saw the number of downloads for their iPhone app reach 120,000. These footsteps would seem to be the logical progression of a company on the fast moving path to success, but are they?

There are other companies on the web that offer similar services to Audioboo, such as Soundcloud, iPadio and Cinch. Out of these three the closest rival to Audioboo, in terms of similar services, is iPadio and Cinch; they offer the posting of one’s self-recorded audio clips and also have a social element to their services. However, over the course of the last year or so, iPadio has moved toward targeting businesses and cut back heavily on their social elements. Cinch on the other hand have maintained the social aspects but have failed to attract any decent number of users at all. The more successful of the rivals is SoundCloud which has managed to carve out a large user base and become an established audio-web tool. It is similar to Audioboo in the fact that it’s based on uploading sounds with the view to the public sharing of them, but Soundcloud is centred more on music track distribution than anything else. Despite this it is still a comparable service and given its slickness and ease of use has become widely used, far more than Audioboo. One benefit Audioboo does have over Soundcloud is that, for a casual user, any uploaded content is far easier to stumble across than if uploaded on Soundcloud due to the live feed on the ‘everyone’s boos’ page. It is perhaps this aspect, combined with the eagerness of some public figures to be part of the next big thing, which has led to the number of celebrities willing to champion Audioboo. Figures such as, Stephen Fry, David Milliband, Rory Cellan Jones, Robert Llewellyn, Tony Blackburn, and Chris Moyles have all used and backed the service, albeit less so recently. There has also been a good level of exposure achieved through coverage from BBC, Guardian and successful blogs such as TechCrunch, but, despite this Audioboo doesn’t seem to have broken into the public consciousness yet.

It is perhaps the level of anonymity and unequivocal clarity that comes with twitter that has made for its meteoric rise. Despite it being broadcast to the whole world a Tweet is simply characters on a screen, and only so much can be inferred about a person from 140 characters. A person’s voice is undoubtedly a much more personal thing and consequently potential Audioboo users may be put off by the slightly higher level of intimacy broadcasting your voice, rather than text, brings. It may just serve to attract a different, less professionally minded audience than Twitter; an audience more concerned about the portrayal of information rather than the cold hard facts.

Another thing Twitter and similar sites have given us is an insight into breaking news, often with user taken pictures or videos uploaded. A famous example is that of the passenger plane that crash landed in the Hudson River in New York, within minutes people had taken photos and shared them on Twitter. It wasn’t long before some of the photos had been seen by millions or people. The point is, if you are out and about and witness something noteworthy and you want to record it your portable device’s camera or video functions, not Audioboo, will be your first port of call. Additionally Audioboo doesn’t seem support the option to upload audio from a video, these two aspects will almost certainly have an effect on the type of information people ‘boo’. Perhaps one example of this is the British Library’s SoundMap project in which their aim is to discover Britain’s acoustic landscape, or ‘soundscape’, through a community-led survey using user uploads via Audioboo. There has been a reasonable amount of user interest and uploads (in the hundreds rather than thousands). However, I’m not sure whether it says more about the project or Audioboo itself that most of the uploads are extended clips of half-full tube carriages or of places that were undoubtedly a lot more interesting when experienced with more than just your aural sense. A cold, untouched, snowy park glistening on a bright, brisk morning makes for a boring listen.

Back in March 2010, a year after Audioboo launched, the number of boos per hour was around 20, a year later and it is only just pushing the 30 per hour mark. In comparison one year after Twitter launched it had an average of around 150 Tweets per hour and after two years had a Tweet per-hour average of over 35,000. It is very hard to see Audioboo ever achieving anywhere near Twitter’s second year figures let alone their current Tweet per-hour average of over 2.5 Million. Consequently I believe Audioboo’s best chance of success is to focus on the premium side of their service, Audioboo Pro, which aims to ‘bring radio stations closer to their listeners’. Perhaps a strong link for the future lies with journalists who no doubt could put Audioboo’s services to great effect. However, journalists tend to move toward and stick to established technologies and so a significant nudge would most likely be required for any large scale engagement.

The social side of Audioboo is certainly a nice idea but even with the funding, marketing and celebrity endorsement it has received it has failed to really catch on. Be it the hesitancy of people to record their own voice, their lack of relevant technology or the perceived effort it takes to contribute, the future for Audioboo looks to lie somewhere on the outskirts of the realm of social media. Nevertheless, one lucky break or key piece of exposure could launch Audioboo into the public consciousness and once social networking sites grab on they grab on tight, for a while at least.