Audioboo - An Audio Twitter

Twitter has grown massively in the last few months and is now mentioned in mainstream media as much as more established internet sites such as Google and Facebook.  Audioboo is a new online application which is like Twitter in that it allows people to send updates on whatever they want to a central service, however it is different in that at present they can only be sent from Apple iPhones.  However, as the name implies instead of relying on text as Twitter does, Audioboo utilises sound instead.

Twitter calls all the messages sent using the service Tweets, Audioboo calls messages Boos.  Audioboo is a free application available for people to download onto their Apple iPhone, from the Apple iPhone App store.  Once they have done this, it is possible to send 'Boos' from their own personal iPhone through to the Audioboo service.  Once the software has been downloaded it is relatively simple to use.  Firstly the Audioboo program on the iPhone has to be opened.  Once this has been done it is simply a case of clicking record on the iPhone, and the audio clip is being recorded.  This can be any length of time up to 5 minutes.

Once the Audioboo has been produced it is relatively simple to publish, it is merely a case of clicking publish.  However there are other options - a picture can be added as well as the ability to give a location of where the Audioboo has been recorded.  This process has been shown in the two videos included here.

It is possible to listen to all the Boos on the Audioboo website.  The Audioboo website is very similar to Twitter.  On the website it is possible to search Boos based on the tags which were added when they were created.  In addition, it is possible to follow people in a similar way to is possible on Twitter.  All the Boos are listed on the website, and they have a little picture which was added when they were created, or a default image if none was added.  The Boo is listened to by clicking on this image, and the Boo plays within the same browser window.  Each Boo has a name, a location where it was created, and the screen name of the creator.  Tags if necessary are shown along with how long ago the Boo was created.  Finally each Boo can be rated by giving it the thumbs up or the thumbs down.

There have been plans for the Audioboo application to be available on other phones other than the iPhone.  In addition, I would expect that sometime in the future there will be the opportunity to use Audioboo using a PC/laptop microphone.  By doing this the potential market for Audioboo will become much greater because at the moment it is limited somewhat by the need to have an iPhone.  However, this hasn't limited the use of Audioboo too greatly, because even within three months of being released the Audioboo website is already ranked by Alexa within the top 100,000 global websites, and growing rapidly.