The original note, as written at the time
NEW AUDIO MEDIA. A social platform with a continuous feed of only phone calls or audio calls. The limit is a max of 2 minutes at a time. The idea is to make it seem as though there is always someone to talk to every time.
Ongoing development
A social platform whose continuous feed contains only phone calls. Nothing written, nothing posted — a stream of live audio, capped at two minutes each, so that it always seems there is somebody to talk to.
The two-minute cap is the whole design. It removes the two fears that stop people calling: that the call will be long, and that ending it will be rude. Two minutes has a natural end built into it, so nobody has to be the one who hangs up.
And the feed solves the harder problem, which is not connection but permission. A person does not call a friend at eleven in the morning because they assume the friend is busy. But a friend who is visibly on a two-minute line is a friend who has publicly said I am available for two minutes.
That is a small and genuine invention: a way of broadcasting availability without broadcasting a status. Not “online”, which means nothing. Not “free to chat”, which is awkward to set. Just a line that is open, and a clock running.
The obvious objection is that it becomes noise — a feed of strangers talking. The answer is that the limit is the filter. Two minutes of somebody else’s conversation is not entertainment, so the platform cannot survive as passive consumption, only as a way of finding a person to speak to. It is a directory of availability, dressed as a feed.
The risk is that it turns talking into content, and a person performing for an audience of two-minute strangers is not the same person who calls a friend.
Keep it small. A neighbourhood, a family, a team. The moment it is global it becomes radio, and radio is not a conversation.