Perhaps I have only mentioned to my familiar friends that I want to develop a decent voice chat room and open it for people I know to use. Now it can be officially announced: Mission Finished!

Taking this opportunity, I also want to talk about why I want to do this and what my desired community looks like.

Why? Is it a feasible business? Obviously not.

If it were me two years ago, I probably wouldn't have started developing something like this because it was never going to be a long-term business or a personal interest of mine.

Currently, as for successful online communities, they either transform into media, become matchmaking apps, or turn into general communication software.

Why is that?

I think there are basically two reasons:

Firstly, a community cannot be too big. Rome has its own problems, and the empire has its own flaws. If a community is too large, it means that everyone is a stranger to everyone else. The rules of conduct between strangers become arbitrary, and a series of things such as swearing and fraud will inevitably happen.

Almost all communities have experienced their heyday with few users at the beginning and then rapidly become a garbage dump after the number of users scales up.

Why are these communities willing to continuously lower the threshold, allowing a large number of new people to join and ultimately causing the community to completely become bad?
Because from newspapers, broadcasts, and television to the internet era, the basic profit logic is selling advertisements. The more users, the more advertising revenue.

Therefore, whether it is an investor, an advertiser, or an entrepreneur, they all only look at DAU, MAU, YAU, and other growth indicators, as well as serve for profit. If a community only has hundreds or thousands of people, the company behind it is not far from bankruptcy.

You can read similar stories over and over again on websites like Huashu, Tianya, Zhihu, Bilibili, AcFun, Weibo, and Tieba. All communities aimed at the masses will inevitably decline, and it's only a matter of whether it will happen in ten years or three years.<br/><br/><br/>The second reason is:

Secondly, the community does not belong to the user, and the user also feels that the community is not their own. Although we can see many people who do their best for a community, they are only a small group of people. Most people do not regard the community as their own property. Because they did not build it.

If every plant and tree in a community has your name on it, even if it is crude, you would not bear to destroy it. But for an outsider, every plant and tree is just an ordinary greening project in the city. You can throw away rubbish, spit, or pick a flower in any greenbelt of a city, which is not a big deal.

As there are more people like this, kind-hearted people have to form a self-protective reflex. Therefore, everyone's hostility level increases, and when others slightly oppose, they reflexively think that the other party wants to attack them.

Therefore, almost all communities will inevitably face their demise within three to five years, and if AC is not unexpected, it will also have the same ending.

And I'm not interested in building a tower in the sand. What I am interested in is developing projects that are universal, creative and widely applicable tools. Developing a voice chat room is clearly not one of them.

But why did I change my mind in 2023?

There are roughly two reasons.

Do a small thing.

My life's list contains many grand goals, each of which can only be started on for a year, and they are all too difficult. They always require a long time to verify and complete. On my birthday this year, I looked at the thousand ideas in my notebook and counted them. In fact, there are only a few completed.

There are too many things lying around as just ideas about the changes in the structure of the Internet, privacy protection, community, profitability and growth, which is such a waste.

And the training I received in recent years as an engineer, observing the Internet, and problem-solving skills have been limited to the ambitious goals I set for myself.

Children learn to do somersaults and don't need anyone to assign them homework. They also want to show off to their friends. Perhaps as humans, we all want to do a somersault to show off to everyone.

This leads to my second reason.

Do something different.

I will not turn this community into something like Soul, AC, or any existing Internet community. I think I can avoid false social connections through certain means.

First, I want to avoid the Matthew effect in the community. Celebrities on Weibo do not reply to other people's messages, and newcomers' posts are not replied to by others. This is because as communities get larger, there are divisions between celebrities and ordinary people, ultimately becoming a celebrity society where ordinary people are ignored.

So the size of this community will be limited to a maximum of one thousand people; basically, everyone is a friend of mine, or a friend of a friend. Registration for EAC will be by invitation only, and will not be open to the public.

Secondly, everyone in this community should be a co-builder, and all community agreements and development should be collective. I hope all modifications and updates will have different friends put their names on them, with a small line of text explaining who developed the icon or button.

Finally, I want to try something new. Does the community's profit model have to be shameless? Do we have to bite the lighter to succeed? Can't it be honest, fair, and dignified, without attaching wool to the pig?

In my expectation, everyone who joins should be my acquaintance, and if I ever bite the lighter, I would be losing face.

Enough talk, the website is now live at: https://eac.aaron404.com. If you don't know me, you can get to know me first so I can have a rough idea of who you are before you join.

The webpage can be used on mobile phones simply by allowing permissions. I won't be developing any dedicated clients since there's no point in wrapping a webpage in an app and packaging it just to impress investors or to increase app downloads in the App Store or to take a circuitous route for the so-called Castle in the Sky. That's not my style.

Mainstream browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari on both desktop and mobile have been tested and can be used. Generally, I use Chrome as the primary testing object, and there are no problems as long as it's Chrome or any domestically-made browser wrapped in Chrome.

There may be some bugs currently, which require your help in eliminating them, so the invitation code for registration has been restricted to limit each person to only inviting one friend, but the limitation will be lifted in early July.

That's all for now, and I wish everyone a happy life.