Innovation Spotlight – Voicefield: What if Twitter Could Talk???

Social networking is all about building and strengthening relationships by establishing online communities of individuals with shared interests.

According to Wikipedia, social networking sites “allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.” Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace and a few other well-known social networking icons come to mind.

Now think back for a moment to a time, not so long ago, when your primary means of building and strengthening your relationships wasn’t text-based (or in the case of YouTube, video). When you preferred getting together with your “network” (a.k.a. friends) and actually chatting out loud (in cmplt wrds not txt abbrs – LMAOROTF) . Or you would pick up your phone and use that device for what it was originally intended: talking.

You remember talking, right? It was nice. Conversations are so much richer when a voice is actually involved. Which begs the question…where is the “voice” of social networking?

Enter Voicefield, a breakthrough social networking concept that capitalizes on the quaint notion that it’s nice to hear people speak. Think of Voicefield as “Voice-Twitter,” “YouTube for the Spoken Word,” or “Talking-PostSecret.”

Voicefield is the brainchild of New York City entrepreneur, Trevor MacDermid, who explains, “In essence, Voicefield captures voluntary voice messages and makes them available online—so you can say anything you like, and listen to others do the same. In an era of exploding self expression, Voicefield celebrates the most personal form of communication, which lately seems to have been cast aside: the human voice.”

While still in its infancy, the potential for Voicefield is obvious… and enormous. Who doesn’t enjoy taking the floor every once in awhile? (Think karaoke.) And while, just like poorly-utilized Twitter, many early users treat their fellow Voicefielders to a description of the bar they’re trying to find their way out of, or the size and juiciness-factor of the burger they just downed, one can only imagine how more creative and ambitious users will leverage the technology.

Voicefield collects sentiments from any phone or from your computer’s built-in microphone, at any time. Messages might be confessional, emotional, frank or drunk. Callers can choose to be anonymous, themselves, or a made-up persona. Here’s one of our favorites from user Andrew Andrew, titled “Waltz.”

The Voicefield interface is equipped with caller-ID, so messages can be attributed to a particular area code, time and date, and even a specific registered user, and tagged by subject matter, theme, response to question and popularity.

And of course, if you’re really entertaining, others can choose to follow you and your voice posts. (Just imagine what Twitter’s @sh*tmydadsays could’ve done with this!)

The best way to get a feel for Voicefield (and how much fun it can be) is to give it a try. Again, there aren’t a ton of great messages there yet; this is still a new concept. But that means the Voicefield is wide open for your expressions of brilliance.

There are two interfaces:

by phone, (212) 937-8981 (there’s also a toll-free number: (877) WWW-VOICE);
by web: www.voicefield.com.

So if you have something to say, stop typing and start talking…on Voicefield. Who knows? You might actually like what you hear.