TalkPriority: Podcasting Meets Group Calls

We are living in a podcast boom. It is a great time to start a podcast, and to listen to podcasts.

Podcasts are a wonderful medium. Podcasts allow us to listen to conversations between two people, and feel like we are present in the room with them. Podcasts have gained in popularity recently because of bluetooth headphones and 4G.

Bluetooth headphones and 4G also improve the experience of phone calls.

People mostly communicate through text these days. But phone calls are better than ever. Every week, I have a group call with my siblings. I am also spending more time on the phone with old friends, as well as my parents.

These phone calls are more enjoyable than listening to a podcast. They fill time similarly to podcasts.

While I am on a group call, I wash dishes or jog through the park. It is like listening to a podcast and interacting with it.

I like to call people who understand good conversational norms. This means that they listen to me and ask questions. They don’t monopolize the conversation. If I could have more phone calls like this, then I would be listening to fewer podcasts.

The Social Network For Phone Calls

What would a social network based around phone calls look like?

Here is my idea.

This is TalkPriority. The user flow works as follows:

1. User signs up
2. User is put into the “talk room”
3. Only one person can talk at a time. You push the green “Push to talk” button in order to talk
4. Everyone has a “priority”. You can interrupt anyone who is ranked lower than you. Your ranking is based on how little you talk.
5. When you are talking, your “seconds not talked” goes down. When you are not talking “seconds not talked” goes up.
6. In the “transcription room” your call is transcribed so that people can look through the history. This lets anyone who joins the call have context for what is going on.

I want to try this, so I am building it. It will be open source and built on FindCollabs here.

If you are interested in trying it out or helping to build it, join the FindCollabs or leave a comment here on DEV.