‘Slow-cial’ app Roost forces you to slow down to the speed of a carrier pigeon
‘Slow-cial’ app Roost forces you to slow down to the speed of a carrier pigeon
“慢社交”应用 Roost：带你重回信鸽传书的慢节奏时代
Somewhere above the Great Plains, a virtual woodpecker is on its way to Alaska to deliver a message to my anonymous pen pal. At the same time, a zebra finch named Tucker soars into Manhattan to send a friend my shabby doodle of the Cool S. These messages take hours or even days to send, depending on how far the bird has to fly, as that’s the point of Roost, the viral “slow-cial” app that’s making carrier pigeons cool again. 在大平原上空的某处，一只虚拟啄木鸟正飞往阿拉斯加，为我的匿名笔友送去一封信。与此同时，一只名叫塔克（Tucker）的斑胸草雀正飞向曼哈顿，为朋友送去我随手涂鸦的“酷S”图案。这些消息的发送需要耗费数小时甚至数天，具体取决于鸟儿飞行的距离。这正是 Roost 的核心所在——这款爆火的“慢社交”应用，正在让信鸽传书重新变得酷起来。
Roost arrives at a time when people crave the opportunity to slow down and disconnect from the apps that constantly demand their attention and are embracing technology that adds friction. “Everything on a phone is instantaneous these days — every single thing you do, it’s like you’re always getting some notification or something,” Roost creator Logan Mendelsohn told TechCrunch. “[Roost] is kind of a break from the instant. It’s resonating with people in a way where they don’t feel pressure all the time to have to do something.” Roost 的出现正值人们渴望放慢脚步、断开那些不断索取注意力的应用，并开始拥抱那些“增加阻力”的技术之时。Roost 的创始人洛根·门德尔松（Logan Mendelsohn）在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示：“如今手机上的一切都是即时的——你做的每一件事，似乎总会收到某种通知。”他补充道：“Roost 算是一种对‘即时性’的逃离。它与人们产生了共鸣，让他们不再时刻感到必须去做点什么的压力。”
When you sign up for Roost, you choose four birds to add to your rookery, which allows you to send messages to your friends on the app. Each bird moves at the speed that it travels in real life, so a falcon will deliver a message much faster than a hummingbird. (Yes, not every bird is a carrier pigeon, but including other species makes collecting birds and seeing your friends’ birds more interesting.) If you really want to slow things down, you can send snails or turtles instead. 当你注册 Roost 时，你可以选择四只鸟加入你的鸟舍，从而向应用里的朋友发送消息。每只鸟的移动速度都与其现实生活中的飞行速度一致，因此猎鹰送达消息的速度会比蜂鸟快得多。（没错，并非所有的鸟都是信鸽，但加入其他物种会让收集鸟类和查看朋友的鸟儿变得更有趣。）如果你真的想把节奏放得更慢，甚至可以选择蜗牛或乌龟来送信。
A senior product manager in trust and safety at Ticketmaster, Mendelsohn started building Roost as a fun side project to use with his friends, but they loved the app so much that they encouraged him to publish it to the App Store. Mendelsohn’s friends were onto something. The app developed a very small niche following, but it started to grow exponentially when a mother posted on Threads about how her daughter was communicating with her friends in Elizabethan English on an app that sends messages at the speed of actual birds. 作为 Ticketmaster 信任与安全部门的高级产品经理，门德尔松最初开发 Roost 只是为了和朋友们一起玩的一个有趣副业，但朋友们非常喜欢这款应用，于是鼓励他将其发布到 App Store。朋友们的直觉是对的。这款应用起初只有极少数的小众用户，但当一位母亲在 Threads 上发帖，讲述她的女儿如何通过这款以真实鸟类速度发送消息的应用，用伊丽莎白时代的英语与朋友交流后，用户量开始呈指数级增长。
Within three days after that post, the app grew from 10,000 to 100,000 users. Now, about five weeks later, Roost is about to hit 300,000 users. “The people are what really make this platform, and what people kept talking about is how wholesome it is, and how whimsical it is, and how much this really helps them put more intention into what they’re saying to people,” Mendelsohn said. “There’s a lot less pressure when you know that the message isn’t going to someone immediately that I think has really resonated with the user base.” 在那篇帖子发布后的三天内，该应用的用户从 1 万激增至 10 万。如今，大约五周过去了，Roost 即将突破 30 万用户。门德尔松说：“用户才是真正成就这个平台的人。大家一直在谈论它有多么纯粹、多么奇妙，以及它如何帮助他们在与人交流时投入更多的用心。当你意识到消息不会立即送达对方时，压力会小很多，我认为这一点真正引起了用户的共鸣。”
As a trust and safety professional by day, Mendelsohn knows that any social platform — even his innocent bird app — has the potential to be abused. So, by default, only a user’s city is shared with their friends. You can choose to manually enable a “close friends” feature to share your precise location with specific people, however. 作为一名日常从事信任与安全工作的专业人士，门德尔松深知任何社交平台——即使是他这款纯真的“养鸟”应用——都有被滥用的可能。因此，默认情况下，系统只会向朋友分享用户的所在城市。不过，你可以选择手动开启“密友”功能，与特定的人分享你的精确位置。
“I personally think that for any new platform that connects people, trust and safety should be the first thing they think about,” Mendelsohn said. “When you’re able to start at zero with that lens, then you can build it into the platform instead of doing it later.” “我个人认为，对于任何连接人们的新平台来说，信任与安全都应该是首要考虑的问题，”门德尔松说道。“当你从零开始就带着这种视角去构建，你就能将其融入平台基因，而不是事后再去补救。”
Privacy concerns were also front of mind when Mendelsohn created the “Pen Pals” feature, which allows you to exchange messages with anonymous users in your age group. When onboarding onto the feature, you are explicitly warned not to give out your actual contact information or personal details. The app deliberately does not support photo sharing yet, as Mendelsohn wants to build out more sophisticated content moderation tools first. 当门德尔松创建“笔友”（Pen Pals）功能时，隐私问题也是他考虑的重点。该功能允许你与同年龄段的匿名用户交换消息。在首次使用该功能时，系统会明确警告用户不要泄露真实的联系方式或个人详细信息。该应用目前刻意不支持照片分享，因为门德尔松希望先构建出更完善的内容审核工具。
Given the sheer size and scope of Roost — did we mention there are mini games? — it doesn’t come as a surprise that Mendelsohn has used Claude Code throughout its development. But the kind of people flocking to Roost tend to be people who are fatigued by the state of the tech industry, which drove them to seek out a “slow-cial media” app in the first place. 考虑到 Roost 的规模和功能范围——我们提到过里面还有小游戏吗？——门德尔松在开发过程中使用了 Claude Code 也就不足为奇了。但涌向 Roost 的用户群体往往是对当前科技行业现状感到疲惫的人，这正是他们最初寻求“慢社交”应用的原因。
Soon, Mendelsohn started receiving an onslaught of complaints from people who were disappointed to learn that he used AI-generated art for the images of birds. “On the AI art side, I completely understood the feedback. I won’t lie, it was daunting to see the reaction online, [but] I don’t think it’s productive to dig your heels in when your community is vocal about something they care for,” he said. “At the same time, I also knew I couldn’t flip a switch overnight. Replacing the art in an app this size takes time, planning, and money.” 不久后，门德尔松开始收到大量投诉，用户们对他在应用中使用 AI 生成的鸟类图片感到失望。“关于 AI 绘画，我完全理解大家的反馈。说实话，看到网上的反应确实让人感到畏惧，但当社区对他们关心的事情表达强烈意见时，固执己见是毫无意义的，”他说。“与此同时，我也知道我无法一夜之间完成切换。替换掉这样规模应用中的所有美术素材需要时间、规划和资金。”
Mendelsohn’s resources are limited as he continues to work on Roost in his spare time. He has no outside funding, and the app only generates revenue from in-app purchases like extra birds. To address users’ concerns about the use of AI, he’s now running a contest that will allow artists to contribute art instead. While that has satisfied complaints for now, the situation reflects a rising tension in the consumer app space. Many users now boycott AI art out of respect for artists, but the situation with Roost’s vibe-coded app shows the situation isn’t always cut-and-dried. 由于门德尔松是在业余时间开发 Roost，他的资源非常有限。他没有外部资金支持，应用唯一的收入来源是购买额外鸟类等应用内购。为了解决用户对 AI 使用的担忧，他目前正在举办一场比赛，邀请艺术家们贡献原创美术作品。虽然这暂时平息了投诉，但这种情况反映了消费类应用领域日益紧张的矛盾。许多用户出于对艺术家的尊重而抵制 AI 艺术，但 Roost 的案例表明，事情往往并非非黑即白。
“As a solo founder, I don’t think I could build and maintain something at this scale without AI-assisted development, but every product decision and direction for Roost still comes from me and the community,” he said. “作为一名独立创始人，我认为如果没有 AI 辅助开发，我无法构建和维护如此规模的产品，但 Roost 的每一个产品决策和发展方向依然是由我和社区共同决定的，”他说。