Over the past three years, Dabel has grown into an amazing community of creative and passionate people, sharing their love of conversation and genuine social connections. While we’ve had a blast talking and meeting so many different people, just like many of our users have had, we’ve come to a crossroads for the Doki Doki team.

While Dabel was a great place to meet and connect with people, we wanted to create an even more immersive audio experience that can be joined by anyone, no matter how much or how little you want to talk. As of the end of this month, we will be ending service for the Dabel app to focus our full efforts into the development of the audio metaverse and the Cubemint app.

While this was a difficult decision to make and we will miss all the great users we’ve met, we felt it was ultimately the right decision.

In the meantime, visit www.cryptofuzzy.com to see the first project in the Audio Metaverse, where mysterious creatures roam the sound world. Also, any users who signed up for Dabel with their email, we will offer priority invitations to join the Audio Metaverse, so we hope to see you there!

Thank you again to the amazing Dabel community and we will talk again soon :)

We’re Changing From Dabel to Audio Metaverse was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With the decline of active users on Clubhouse recently, the future of the audio social market is being questioned. Dabel has been recognized by BetaList, a startup product news website, as a social audio app that promotes accessible, everyday conversations with a priority on reaching “non-investors” and “non-influencers” users.

As mentioned in the BetaList feature, Dabel combats the problems of social audio with “an open environment where everyone can start a lounge, have a conversation and be heard, regardless of stature or influence.” An immersive audio experience is a key component; as shown with the Moods feature, where “a host can choose a background image and ambient sounds to create a more immersive experience, like meeting new people in a cafe or talking with friends by a campfire.”

Even with the stagnation of other platforms, it’s not the concept of audio social that should be questioned, it’s the way it’s being delivered. After all, thousands of users have had delightful experiences meeting and talking with new people, but after the novelty wore off, some users started to experience the same emotional fatigue as on other social media.

The same issues of having to compete for attention or falling in line under powerful influencers became stressful. Without the ability for anyone to reach their own social circles to connect with, many social audio apps end up replicating the social dynamics of conventional social media platforms, when audio can do so much more. While the experience is still social, the depth of the experience and potential for spontaneous interactions in an audio setting presents a broader stage for human connections.

Creating a product that customers love is what startups need more than anything else. Being featured on BetaList is an excellent service for startups to promote their brand new products from scratch to thousands of early adopters.

Dabel 2.0 has been in invite-only beta, but we are releasing a public link on June 16, to let anyone with the link join Dabel!

In the meantime, to join Dabel 2.0 and test the app in TestFlight, register your email address on www.dabelbeta.com.

What’s the future of social audio? BetaList features Dabel as a place for easy conversations. was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are some hard days where you just want to give up. Everybody has them and we’re no different. It’s how you handle these days that matters and while the VoiceOver rollout didn’t go exactly as planned, we’re taking this opportunity to learn and improve the Dabel platform.

While we’ve discussed the importance of making accessibility an enhancement, not an afterthought, we wanted to share some of the things we’ve learned from the Dabel 2.0 release.

These are the lessons we learned the hard way, but we’re so glad we did.

It’s Not an Open Platform If It Isn’t Accessible

Our mission from the beginning is to give people a comfortable place to talk and be themselves, who otherwise don’t have a safe place to go. We want it to be a place of warmth and acceptance.

It’s hard to share this vision if the app is hostile to some users who rely on VoiceOver and screen readers to use the app.

It isn’t “set it and forget it.”

Like building the product itself, accessibility is a continuous process of learning, testing, and building. We do the best we can to build a great product before we release it, but the process continues after users start to use it and give us real-life insight.

While this could sometimes feel tedious, this is also a great chance for users to make a meaningful impact to the overall direction of development!

The app can’t be fun if it isn’t easy to use

Getting everything labeled and put in its proper place in VoiceOver is important, but stopping there feels incomplete. Making users look for that mute button you use in every lounge or swiping through a bunch of options just to get to that “Follow” button just starts to feel like a chore.

We plan to add the Magic Tap gesture for muting your mic during lounges, but we want to continue incorporating convenient gestures to make using Dabel with VoiceOver more intuitive.

As always, we appreciate everyone’s candid feedback and patience as we continue to improve Dabel. Submit any issues you encounter while using Dabel on dabelbeta.com/feedback, so we can get the necessary information to fix it.

What a VoiceOver Accessibility SNAFU Taught Us was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this article we’ll take you through your first time in Dabel and how to start a lounge, as well as how to send feedback and some of the key (future) features.

Some features are still under development so we’ll update this article whenever we launch them.

Thank you for waiting! Let’s get started.

Before we start

• If you are a Dabel 1.0 user, please delete the old app first. If you don’t delete it, an installation error will occur.
• On April 24th we got a little too eager and sent out the TestFlight link prematurely. Please remove this version of Dabel and reinstall the latest Dabel 2.0 version from the TestFlight app.
• On May 11th we released a new update with a fix on the implementation of VoiceOver

Now, let’s have a look on how to use Dabel 2.0.

1. Install Dabel

Immediately after you sign up at www.dabelbeta.com, you will receive an email from us with a link to install TestFlight and Dabel.
Download the TestFlight app first and then install the Dabel 2.0 Beta version app (in TestFlight)!

2. User registration and onboarding

If you open Dabel, you will be able to create an account using Apple, Facebook, or Twitter.

After doing this, you will be able to create a username, upload a profile picture and finish setting up your profile.

To help you get started we’ll suggest some users for you to follow. When you follow them, you’ll see when they open a lounge.

Onboarding features under development

Some of the onboarding features are still under development. We will list them here and let you know when they are implemented in the app. New users who then create their profile will see these new onboarding features:

• Suggested themes you might be interested in
• Suggested lounges you might be interested in

3. Home

After these steps, you will enter the home screen. There you will see lounges you are invited to and lounges that are currently being held on Dabel, by people you follow and don’t follow. On top of the home screen you can see who’s online among the people you follow. Feel free to join a few lounges, follow other users, start lounges together and meet new people.

4. Create a lounge

Setting up a lounge is slightly different from Dabel 1.0:

• Tap ‘Create lounge’ in the navigation
• Enter a Lounge Theme or select a frequently used one
• Invite users: press the ‘+’ button to invite users to your lounge
• Tap ‘Create lounge’

A lounge will always start private at first. If you want to open the lounge, just tap the key lock button on top.

Furthermore you have the option to change the mood of your lounge. Tap the settings button on the top right and change the wallpaper, set an ambient sound or add tags that define your lounge.

5. Schedule Lounges

You can now schedule your lounges in Dabel.

• On the upper right corner of the home screen, you will see a calendar icon.
• Tapping the calendar icon, there’s a tab with an overview of all the scheduled lounges (“All Lounges”) and a tab with your own scheduled lounges (“My Lounges”).
• Hitting the calendar icon again in the upper right corner you are able to schedule a new lounge setting the talk theme, inviting people, date and time.

6. Discover

・Hashtags: shows what tags are being used in lounges.

・New lounges: shows the latest lounges and Talk Theme highlight. Tap “See more”, to find more opportunities to talk through the categories “Lounge”, “Theme”, “User”, “Tag”.

・Recommended themes: our recommended themes displayed in a chronological order (including past themes).

This page is still undergoing changes and is not fully implemented yet. We will keep you posted on the updates.

7. Report bugs and send feedback

Send feedback in TestFlight
Take a screenshot, open the image, tap the share icon in the upper right, and you’ll see ‘Share Beta Feedback’ in the menu below. Add a few notes to tell us how your experience went and press ‘Submit’.

Send feedback through our Google Form
Sending feedback through TestFlight can be a little confusing for some. Instead, you can go to our Google Form to submit your feedback and bug reports.

Go to https://www.dabelbeta.com/feedback.html

Once again thank you for staying with us. We’re working hard behind the scenes to get Dabel 2.0 up to full speed soon!

Dabel release notes

You can find the latest release notes (14th July) here: https://www.notion.so/Release-Notes-f8d3839db5dd4a9585cfc1fe32699944

Getting started with Dabel 2.0 in TestFlight was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dabel has come a long way, July 2019 to be exact. Although the app has seen some changes since then, today’s release will be the biggest update so far. Dabel’s purpose on the other hand, hasn’t changed: create an open place for inclusive conversations, for anyone at anytime.

Invite-only beta test

As you might have read in one of our previous blog posts, at first we’re launching Dabel 2.0 as an invite-only beta test. Here are a few reasons in a nutshell:

• We’re trying to keep the app stable and reliable so nothing breaks
• We want to grow a healthy community of Dabel users
• We’re building the most accessible social audio platform users have ever seen: better compatibility for VoiceOver users and design improvements for blind and visually impaired users

Can you still get an invite? Yes. How? Very simple. Visit www.dabelbeta.com and sign up there.

What’s new?

In 2021, 33% of users have started their own lounges. Therefore, implementing the feedback of our core users was important to take Dabel to the next step: focusing more on user relationships and a helping users find better conversations.

Some of the new features include users being able to set a Lounge Mood for an immersive audio experience and using the Lounge Themes feature to easily set up and start a lounge.

I signed up… what’s next?

First, you will receive an email from TestFlight inviting you to download the TestFlight app and redeem the beta app of Dabel.

Once you did this, you can open the app, create your profile and start Dabeling!

Need some guidance using the app for the first time? We got you covered. Join one of our onboarding lounges this week where a team member will explain to you how to use and send your feedback on the all new Dabel:

Onboarding lounges schedule

• 25th April: 5pm — 5:30pm PT
• 26th — 30th April: 9am — 9:30am CEST & 5pm — 5:30pm PT

Once again, thank you for your continued support. We’re very excited about the launch of Dabel 2.0 and we hope to let it evolve into the best possible version with the help of our awesome Dabel community.

The wait is over: here’s Dabel 2.0! was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a previous blog post we told you about our lounge themes feature. Long story short: they make it easier for hosts to start a lounge, without thinking too much about how to start the conversation.

And as much as we want conversations to flow easily through themes, we wanted something to support this flow as steadily and relaxing as possible. To do this, we brought in a familiar friend in a new setting: tags.

Tags are dead… right?

Yes, tags and hashtags in general have been much discussed. In the 14 years that they have been around they experienced just as much highs as lows.

But they are still around.

Of course, #noonewantstoreadawholesentencewithoutspaces or keep scrolling down to pass all the (mostly irrelevant) hashtags.

And that’s the thing: tags aren’t necessarily annoying, often they are just misused. When they are used correctly, you will smoothly find your way to the right content and in the case of social audio: the right people.

Rethinking tags for social audio

And when we say right people, we do mean the right people.

The Lounge Themes feature may help you start an easy conversation and connect with people who are interested to talk about the same thing. But that doesn’t automatically give you any insight in what kind of light you will have this conversation. Here’s where the tags step in.

When setting up a lounge in Dabel, you will be able to add tags to your lounge who will appear below your Lounge Theme. This gives a user who potentially wants to join your lounge some immediate insight on the intentions of your lounge, how the conversation is held and/or what kind of atmosphere to expect. And when the Tags, and Lounge Theme tick your boxes you’re ready to join the conversation.

Tags still seem to be a unique feature in social audio apps today, and we hope they’re here to stay.

🙋‍♂️Try out all the new Dabel 2.0 features by being part of the invite-only beta! Sign up for early access at www.dabelbeta.com

Lounge Themes set the topic, Tags set the tone was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Meeting new people can be hard. Trying to break the ice, thinking of ways to start the conversation, nervously asking them questions can all take the wind out of your sails before you really get started. With all that anxiety, it’s no wonder finding meaningful conversations can be difficult. But what if all you had to do was think about what you want to talk about and find someone feeling the same thing?

The new Lounge Themes feature in Dabel provides a list of talking themes to pick from, to make it easier for a host to start a lounge and a wandering user to find a conversation they want to participate in. That moment when you meet someone who also had a hard day at work and is in the same mood to vent, that’s what we want everyone to experience.

The idea is not to manufacture content that someone else will enjoy listening to; it’s to make sure everyone in the lounge has a great time and appreciates each other’s company. Just feel like talking, but don’t really have a topic in mind? Perfect. Pick one from the list and see where the conversation takes you.

What if you actually do share the same interests and you just didn’t know it? Two people could share a deep passion for a subject that they’d love to talk about, but they just don’t realize that there are other people interested in the same thing. Or it could be that you don’t have anything specific in mind, you just want an excuse to start a conversation with someone. In Dabel, we think these are both equally important because no one should struggle to find a conversation that they enjoy.

With the new Lounge Theme feature, everyone making and joining lounges benefit from a better idea of what is going on in each lounge. Hosts don’t have to rack their brain to come up with a topic to entice people to join, while users looking for a lounge to join no longer have to try to decipher what is being talked about in a lounge. Combining this with the lounge previews, you know exactly what you’ll be getting into before you join any lounge.

🙋‍♂️Try out all the new Dabel 2.0 features by being part of the invite-only beta! Sign up for early access at www.dabelbeta.com.

What do you want to talk about? Less searching, more talking with the Lounge Themes feature was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a platform that has always prioritized inclusiveness, the decision to launch Dabel 2.0 as an invite-only Testflight beta requiring was not one that was easy to make. However, considering all the factors in the app and community we are trying to build, we believe it was the right decision to make and we wanted to share with you why we decided to go this route.

Our aim is not to exclude people in order to create hype; our strong desire to create an open place for inclusive conversations made this a difficult decision. Ultimately, we came to the decision to initially launch Dabel 2.0 as a closed beta, based on reasons including quality assurance and community safety.

Try Not to Break Anything

Stability and reliability are two essential factors in giving users a great experience (nothing interrupts a fun conversation quite like an error message) and this was a chance for us to learn from the past and rebuild a more solid foundation.

Launching with a closed beta test lets us make sure things don’t break, but more importantly, it gives us the ability to create features that our users actually want. Without needing to worry about the problems that can arise as more users come on the platform, we can focus on realizing the ideal conversation experience. This also makes sure user voices get heard; users who sign up to become a Dabel 2.0 beta user will have a unique position to have their input guide the development process and make sure we provide an experience that is meaningful to our users.

Growing a Healthy Community

Since the early days of Dabel, we knew that a healthy community of curious and friendly users who were truly interested in a social experience based on voice, would be the foundation of anything we do. It’s about quality over quantity.

Having a core of current Dabel users lead the community at the launch of Dabel 2.0 is how we ensure that Dabel continues to be a safe and comfortable place to meet people through voice.

Building the Most Accessible Social Audio Platform Users Have Ever Seen

For blind or low-vision users who rely on VoiceOver to read aloud what’s on the screen, it’s crucial that everything is labeled properly. Without everything having the correct label, the app essentially becomes unusable, a development oversight that can make an app hostile to visually impaired users.

As we learned about accessibility and worked to improve compatibility with VoiceOver we started to think that just meeting the minimum requirements isn’t enough. In order to give all our users the same quality experience, we needed to make Dabel as intuitive to use with VoiceOver, as it is for anyone else.

And this brings this full circle; by building an app that’s open and fun for everyone to use, we are building a healthier community. By building an app that’s easy and fun to use, users can just focus on great conversations and keep the Dabel community a place free of toxicity. A cycle that feeds into itself in a positive way.

👨‍💻 Sign up to access Dabel 2.0 with just your email address at Dabelbeta.com.

Why Dabel 2.0 is launching as an invite-only beta (no, it’s not the reason you think) was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With planning for the new Dabel 2.0, we’ve had many discussions within the Dabel team about what Dabel is and what our goals should be. First, we went all the way to basics: how do we foster better conversations?

Members of our user community brought up numerous challenges and ideas, some that have already been implemented or planned, others we still haven’t been able to tackle.

Since the beginning, we’ve been guided by some core principles that still inform our decisions as we grow and develop new features. Ideas like creating an accessible space of deeper social connections, where everyone who wants to talk, is able to talk.

While we still strongly believe in these ideas and continue to inform the decisions we make today, we also felt it necessary to define what the distractions are that can make social spaces toxic.

We soon realized that it’s just as important to lay out what Dabel will not be:

• Influencers and celebrities will not be the center of attention
• Users shouldn’t compete to be heard or get “likes”
• Visual appearance or an impressive resume shouldn’t matter
• Don’t make lounge hosting a burden
• No one in a lounge should be ignored (or feel ignored)

It’s a tricky balance but we’re confident we can find it; open, inclusive lounges where the host doesn’t feel burdened by having to facilitate the entire discussion, while all participants also feel included. We are trying to build a place where everyone can talk when they have a desire to say something, but people aren’t just talking over each other.

Be a part of the new Dabel 2.0 community and give your feedback! Sign up at dabelbeta.com to get invited to the beta test.

Dabel Won’t Be Everything For Everyone was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Take a listen to our audio press release (Dabel is an audio app after all):

Why Not Everybody Feels Heard

On Clubhouse, the conversations that stand out are the ones done by celebrities and influencers, where they use the platform as a place to project their message to their listeners. On Dabel, the focus is on creating an open environment where everyone can join a conversation and be heard, regardless of stature or influence.

Conversation shouldn’t be exclusive to those with influence and we want to democratize the tool that is our voice. We’ve seen a major shift in the dynamics of content creation: we go from just listening because someone is talking to start talking because someone will listen.

Like Going Out, Without Having to Go Out

It’s like meeting someone new at a cafe; that joy of breaking the ice and starting a conversation with a stranger that becomes a friend.

Until now, voice communication has fallen under either the phone type or radio type. Those are the two categories that voice services we have known fall under, but with audio social platforms, we’re introducing a new way of thinking about voice communication. We can talk with other users we already know, like on a phone, but oftentimes we end up meeting and talking with people we just met. Not only that, you can go from listening to a stream to joining and becoming a part of the stream, which you can’t do with radio or podcasts.

Many social apps are centered around having a set of friends you already know and maintaining relationships with the people already in your friends list. With Dabel, we wanted to create a place where a user can not only meet new friends, but have meaningful conversations with them. This way you can quickly go from strangers to acquaintances, and then to friends you can share deep, honest conversations with.

Taking Back Conversation for Anyone Who Wants to Talk

While calling Dabel “social radio” describes the basic functionality of the app, it doesn’t get to the heart of our mission. In a radio broadcast, there’s an inherent barrier or distance between listener and host, which doesn’t exist in Dabel. Some personality types prefer talking and some just listening; we want to welcome both, because the community needs both.

Our focus is not repeating what social media has become, with influencers and listeners. Dabel isn’t about status or clout, we’re democratizing conversation again. Getting back to the warmth of conversation as the way we connect with friends, new and old.

👋🗣 Get invited to get access to the new Dabel 2.0 platform at dabelbeta.com!

Why users say Clubhouse is like a conference hall, but Dabel is like going to a friend’s house was originally published in Dabel Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.