“Yo, this is the deadly diva herself, Ms. Trouble. Yeah, baby!” So begins another Instaradio broadcast from the minor celebrity, Nickola Harris, who goes on to describe, in glorious detail, how she ended up in jail. Previous tirades, full of expletives and creative uses of English, touch on every topic imaginable, and as Twitter has become the outlet for short snippets of our written minutiae, Instaradio performs the same function for Harris.
Developed by a small team in Toronto, the idea behind Instaradio is to lower the barrier to audio sharing in the same way Twitter did for short text updates, Vine for video and Instagram for photos. There are similar services out there, but Instaradio is easily the best, with beautifully-designed iOS and Android apps that support categories, offline broadcasts, hashtags, sharing and more.
Founders Ryan Renna and Kevin Kliman, both with backgrounds in the Toronto and New York startup communities respectively, dub Instaradio as a platform for “micro-podcasting.” Users can record themselves indefinitely, even when the app is in the background, allowing others to listen in live or, later on, when the stream has been stored and archived.
In the latest version, released for both iOS and Android, Instaradio fleshes out its feature set, casting a line towards more mature social networks like Vine. Broadcasts must now be associated with a category, ranging from “Stories” to “Rants” to “Advice.” Top clips are now curated in a new Editor’s Picks section, next to a Global feed similar to App.net.
With this latest release, Renna explains that the app needed time to evolve. He wanted to explore the way others used the app, and create a social network from the disparate cases. He told me, for example, of a community organizer in Chicago who uses Instaradio as a means to speak, en masse, to the kids he mentors, and to the community at large.
“Instaradio could be a tool for journalists; it could be used for pocket broadcasting,” says Renna, who is lead developer at the company. He and CEO, Kevin Kliman, are pushing to make Instaradio the official broadcasting parter for a number of conferences and events, like literary readings, where audio trump visual. The app’s official launch, after months of quiet availability in the App Store, is at the Launch Festival in San Fransisco later this month, where they’ll be livestreaming many of the keynotes.
“Audio is consumed three times more than video on the phone,” says Renna, who believe that audio recordings are “more authentic” than text when it comes to learning about a person quickly. As smartphone microphones and speakers have improved over the years, he and Kliman noticed that people were listening to the audio portion of video clips while walking or commuting.
Instaradio is a platform aimed at keeping tabs on a person’s life over time. Nickola Harris, though she only has 107 followers, is dedicated to her craft, and her channel, often broadcasting several times a day. Other early adopters are using Instaradio to broadcast songs, both originals and covers; quotes and spiritual reflections; rants and raves; stories and poems; and good old fashioned pranks. The potential for hearing not only breaking news, but snippets of audio surreptitiously broadcast under the nose of oppressive governments, is huge.
Neither Renna nor Kliman know what Instaradio will turn into, but the platform is there, as is the interest. Now all it needs is listeners.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
