Is Anchor the Most Civil Social Platform Yet?
People Being Nice on Social Media? Get Outta Here!
I’ve been playing around with this new platform called Anchor recently. It’s very young (it only launched in February, 2016). Founded by former Aviary execs Michael Mignano and Nir Zicherman, the app was launched with the intention of “democratizing radio” for the podcast era. (Read their launch Medium post here.)
I’ve found in my brief use of it that it’s a lot like an audio-based Twitter. You “tweet” up to two minutes of audio (called a “wave”), and then other users can “re-tweet” (called an “echo”), share, and contribute their own replies to the conversation. If it’s an interesting wave, these conversations can balloon past an hour really quick — but unlike a podcast, you can easily skip boring replies as you would in Twitter.
Once I started thinking of Anchor in relation to Twitter, what I found most interesting about this platform is the level of civility. Too often, Twitter can become an absolute cesspool of negativity and people tearing each other down, but the simple switch from text to audio in Anchor seems to have a civilizing effect for many.
Granted, it’s early. The firehose of content on Twitter dwarfs the content on Anchor, there’s no question. And we’ll see where Anchor is, if it continues to grow, over the next couple years. But at the moment, I have yet to hear a single wave on Anchor where someone is just being a dick.
Now, this could come down to a number of things: 1. Twitter text being misread. We all know how often emails are read with different inflections than intended by their author. Maybe Twitter is the same way and text just reads more harsh by nature.
Another alternative is that the simple act of having to speak your thought aloud makes people blunt the edge of their comments in a way that they don’t on Twitter. For a lot of people, maybe demolishing somebody via text is easier than demolishing somebody with your voice.
I actually brought this civilizing question up as a wave on Anchor and got a number of responses. Listen to other Anchor users’ thoughts below.
The first responder, John M. Craig, told me about a period very early with Anchor where there were a few trolls, but it seems to have gone away now. I wonder if that’s because the trolls have really gone away or the growing number of users has just drowned them out.
Whatever’s causing the current civil Anchor experience, whether it remains or deteriorates, it’s fascinating to watch human behavior adjust to each new social platform.
P.S. One way we are using Anchor at StoryFirst Media is fielding opinions from folks on current movies for our weekly film discussion podcast Reel Fanatics. We then download the audio content and play it on the show for conversation fodder. There are tons of useful ways to employ Anchor to build your brands and push your audience to other platforms.
