Why we believe in the future of voice dating
Lately there’s been a lot of buzz over Clubhouse, an audio chat app that allows real time voice communications within invite-only conversations rooms. We’ve also seen growing pervasive applications of voice technologies in other applications, from virtual meetings, party chat rooms, and p2p audio clips being transmitted over Whatsapp messages in growing volume.
There’s clearly something magical about voice communications. Maybe is the authenticity of hearing someone’s voice, or the lean approach it offers in communication. I mean, why go through the hassle of typing out something, and figuring out the right emojis, fixing grammatical errors when the essence of what you’re trying to convey can be communicated within a few seconds over voice?
At Holler Date, we believe voice technologies will continue to have growing relevance in changing the way we meet online, particularly within the dating industry.
Now one of the caveats of operating in the dating industry is that it’s pretty much riddled with scandals, scams, sexually suggestive themes, hook ups and whatnot. As for ourselves, we were subjected to multiple reviews just trying to run a dating ad on Facebook and for good reason. Dating ads get typically reported 3x more than any other niche!
How do we carve our little niche in this intensely competitive space? How do we get past those scandals and negative vibes that are commonly associated with the online dating space? We go back to our basics and our core mission tenets. Building genuine relationships that prized personality over looks.
At Holler Date, we genuinely believe that the most effective approach to accomplishing this is through the use of voice. To quote from Germain electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze.
The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional.
When users join our platform, they’ll be prompted to upload a 15 seconds audio clip introducing themselves.
After which, they’ll answer a few simple questions about their gender orientation and upload a profile picture. This profile picture is only revealed when another user has chosen to reveal the picture using their limited reveal points on the voice clip.
We believe this approach accomplishes our core mission tenets through the following.
Firstly, by prioritising voice clips over profile photos, we attract the right audience to our platform; serious daters who are geared towards personality fit. By enforcing a daily reveal points limit, we ensure that photos are only revealed when there’s genuine interest in the person’s voice clip.
Secondly, we disassociate ourselves from the common adult or sexually suggestive themes that is commonly associated with many dating platforms when a person’s looks take the forefront of their profile. At Holler Date’s browse members section, you’re only going to be presented with voice clips of other users on the site. This reduces the tendency of people having the motivation to post suggestive photos and themes on the platform.
Lastly, we preserve a level of anonymity on the site. We believe that one of the primary barriers of getting new users to join a dating platform is that nagging phobia that other folks within their social circle would know that they’re on a dating network. By hiding their photos by default, we think it’ll reduce that phobia and encourage more users to try the site. Well, time will prove if we’re right but so far, the results have been really encouraging!
To be clear, we certainly aren’t the pioneers in bringing voice to the online dating space. In 2015, Revealr which worked on a similar model was acquired by Venntro Media Group. Nevertheless, we believe that given the looks driven themes in many of the major dating providers, there’s going to be a sizeable niche in the voice dating space. In the near future, we’ll be adding even more exciting features like tonality or speech frequency, or language filters on the platform. So do stay tuned for more updates!
