User/Inventors

There's no great feature to announce today,(that'll change very soon;) but I couldn't let another day go by without pointing out something that we'd hoped from the beginning has come to pass. Users are inventing. We're a fairly creative bunch, and any good cup of coffee will bring forth two or three new uses for a voicethread, but from the beginning we all said that although we would start it, it would be the users that led the way, that if you put a compelling new tool in peoples hands they would use it, inventing new ways to tell stories and collaborate. It has already begun to happen. We don't think we're drinking our own Kool-Aid when we say our users have created some awesome content. Many voicethreads are explorations and first time attempts, but the human voice is filled with complex meta-data that can't be reduced to symbology. People are using this oldest of tools to transform images that held no meaning to the outside world, sometimes no meaning even to close family, into complex, and sometimes even sublime, stories.
Again, no features to talk about today, just a thank you from the whole development team for rewarding our hard work.

-Steve

Voicethreads of a modest size

A voicethread is...

..a place to foster, capture, and then share the group conversations that surround evocative shared media. A mouthful but all true. People have always talked and shared the ideas inspired by evocative media, we all do it all the time, day in and day out, online and off. But there's never been a particularly human interface for it on the web. Normal human conversations are overflowing with metadata, like who the speaker is, and all the known details of their history, and we humans are astute readers of and sponges for this information. But in order to reformat conversations for the web, we've stuck some dynamite in the middle of them, blown them up, picked up the various pieces, labeled them, and then reassembled them to try to recapture something of the original soul of a human conversation. It's a bit like trying to recapture the experience of flight by re-assembling 98% of a crashed airplane's parts, you can get the basic shape right, but the feeling your looking for will be elusive. So instead of trying to capture group conversations by re-assembling as many 'parts' as possible, we're going to take a stab at doing the opposite, strip as much as possible away. We're hoping that making a paper airplane and tossing it out a window will better capture the wonder of flight, than gazing at an exploded-diagram of an airplanes parts.
While Voicethread is in many ways a beta product with so many cool features coming round the corner, we're releasing now because it's core is intact and robust and we need to learn more about our users experience. So please go and fill the empty gray vessels that are voicethreads, use them in ways we haven't been able to imagine, and then give us your best curmudgeonly feedback.(nice feedback is good, it makes us feel nice, but critical curmudgeonly feedback makes us better, maybe you could do both?)
Thanks for you interest -Steve Muth

Press release

Voicethread
http://www.voicethread.com

Durham, NC March 8, 2007 – http://www.voicethread.com – Voicethread.com, a website that captures the voices that surround shared media, is introducing Group Audio Blogging (GAB) to the Internet.

Voicethread is enabling users to create "VoiceThreads" much the same way a blogger would create a post or a page on a social networking site. While a blog is mostly written, a VoiceThread gives the distinct benefit of recorded group conversation.

“We’ve taken the 'instant' out of Instant Messaging, and replaced it with the voices that surround evocative media," said Steve Muth, Co-Founder of Voicethread. “Text is wonderful, but a human voice has an undeniable power.”

Group Audio Blogging adds audio to an arena that has been heavily text focused up until this point. Bloggers can easily add a VoiceThread to their blog and encourage an audio debate among readers.

VoiceThreads are in no way limited to blogs and can be used by all Internet users for an array of purposes, from personal stories to educational projects and marketing tools.

• Students can record their friends’ voices in an audio yearbook
• MySpace users can enhance their profiles and use VoiceThreads to leave recorded messages for their friends
• Service men and women deployed abroad can read a bed-time story to their children

“VoiceThreads transform any image into a discussion that can be shared not only over the Web, but over time. Like a Tivo for voice conversations, you can contribute whenever you want,” said Ben Papell, Co-Founder of Voicethread.com. “The conversations are more thoughtful, they can be saved forever, and they’re easily shared.”

Find out more about Group Audio Blogging and create your own VoiceThread today at www.voicethread.com

About Voicethread.com
Voicethread.com is the pioneer of Group Audio Blogging (GAB), striving to bring casual group audio into the blogosphere and the social networking arena. Voicethread allows Internet users to create “VoiceThread” which can be added to blogs, social networking websites and personal websites or hosted free of charge on Voicethread.com. VoiceThreads can also be leveraged for marketing and educational purposes, just to name a few. More information on Group Audio Blogging is available at http://www.voicethread.com