Mobile designed social media

It was only a matter of time before a social media platform was designed with mobile specifically in mind. And that audio would become the next big thing. Welcome to the world Audioboo, the simple way to share audio.

Audioboo is an audio-digital archive, web-connected dictaphone or simply a great way to let your friends, family, customers, colleagues or target market know what you’re up to.

Launched initially as a free downloadable application for the iPhone, Audioboo works by allowing smartphone users – iPhone, Android and Nokia, with Blackberry and Windows Mobile following soon – to record and playback digital recordings of up to five minutes. These recordings – known by users as ‘boos’ – can then be posted on the Audioboo website where users have their own pages similar to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Users choose to follow and listen to ‘boos’ that interest them, link them to other social media sites or download them to their mobiles (just like a podcast). Photos can also be added along with a title, geotagging and category tagging. It’s basically Twitter without words, with the ultimate goal – according to Audioboo’s CEO Nick Hancock – that the term ‘to boo’ becomes as common as ‘to tweet’.

Audioboo is the new face of online media content and can be credited with the birth of the ‘audio-blog’. Five hundred thousand monthly users tune in to listen to what businesses and high profile contributors such as Stephen Fry have to say. BBC London, for example, is using it to report business reactions to news such as the effect of the Budget and the way forward for businesses caught up in the Arab spring.

So is another social media platform really needed and, if so, how should businesses use it?

Audioboo adds a different dimension to how you can communicate with your customer base, your colleagues and your target market. It represents another way to network, which cannot be ignored in today’s competitive business world, and offers businesses another audio route to market previously only reached by radio advertising – just like Twitter uses the written word to by-pass the press.

Similar to our recent blog on online video, Audioboo is especially relevant for businesses whose products require quick tips or directions – it’s a friendly voice to talk a target audience through the process, plus allows businesses to provide their views on the news, and post comments and interviews.

For any business that regularly blogs, an application like Audioboo can bring the blog to life, allowing audiences to not only read the text, but also listen to the author in their own words.

“We’ve long been predicting the effect mobile will have on the way businesses communicate and this is a classic example of how social media is developing with mobile technology in mind. Smartphone users can do it all from their handsets – from recording the ‘boo’ to uploading and sharing it. For businesses interested in maximising mobile marketing this is well worth considering if it corresponds with campaign aims and objectives.”
Mark Littlewood, managing director