Dialup

Join us in reinventing the magic of the phone!

Dialup is a voice-chat app that connects people all over the world in serendipitous phone calls. Whether you're a farmer in Alaska, a cartoonist in Oregon, a pet psychic in Wisconsin, a therapist in Palestine, a barista in South Korea, or a filmmaker in Ghana—Dialup creates unexpected connections between the 30,000+ vibrant members of our community. We're a constellation of ties that keeps growing.

Since our early beginnings in 2019, Dialup has blossomed into a community of fascinating people across 183 countries with wildly different backgrounds. Our app is a simple but thoughtful mechanism that schedules phone calls and pairs people in 1-on-1s throughout the week to discuss a variety of topics like cooking, movies, relationship advice, or the full moon.

In the last year, we've hosted 80,000 solid hours of conversations! Some calls feel like an ephemeral conversation on a train. Other calls are the beginning of an enduring friendship.

The Guardian reporter Jessica Pan describes her experience:

"Voice is intimate. I hear these people laughing, sighing, searching for the right words. It feels very personal, despite the distance between us… I have travelled virtually to Paris, Lagos, New York, Milan, Atlanta, Colombo and a small village in Finland (and, all too fleetingly, Galway). I have listened to the voices and stories of strangers: a pastry chef, a drama teacher, a foreign-exchange student. Briefly, I understood what it was to be them – and they understood what it is like to be me."

VICE reporter Alessandro Pilo wrote that Dialup offers:

"a unique perspective from someone living a totally different life"

Yowei Shaw from NPR's Shortwave said that our app:

"allows you to catch glimpses of yourself through a new person's eyes, like parts of you that you might have forgotten about."

Our app was the backdrop to a NYT Modern Love story. It's been featured in the IrishTimes, New Yorker, but in addition to that—we've read thousands (literally) of your anecdotes describing your calls.

As you might have experienced yourself, Dialup is full of moments of magic, but it’s also an app that requires labor! What might seem like wizardry is actually the results of hundreds of hours of coding and design work.

Support us financially and meet the community.

Paid support from our users is essential for working on this app in the long-term.

Dialup was originally created by two friends and internet artists: me (Danielle Baskin) and Max Hawkins. We were experimenting with automating phone calls between ourselves and dreamed about an app that connected people outside their circle of friends. We wanted this app to focus on good conversations and nourishing connection without broadcasting into the void or being a passive audience member. We designed the app to be a good experience even if you're an introvert. On Dialup everyone gets a chance to participate.

Through initial investments and limited resources we were able to focus on Dialup and turn into into a robust iOS and Android app. We've worked with engineers at different points along the way: Manual Grondona, Carlos Franchella, Max Goodhart, Chris Harris, Michael McLaughlin, Anna Kopp, and Kelvin Chinchilla. The supporting investors that fueled our initial costs are Roy Bahat and Minn Kim at Bloomberg Beta, and the angel investors Frances Haugen, Daniel James, Marty Ringlein, Alan Dunn, Prateek Sharma, and Conor White-Sullivan.

Many of Dialup’s next steps are designed but only partially built: the ability to discuss more niche topics at more convenient times, the ability to reconnect with previous matches, to save a list of buddies, and to use Dialup for your own private communities and friend groups.

I’m setting up this Patreon to give us space to continue to experiment and build features, as well as turn Dialup into a sustainable and thriving business that could support hiring people to work on it! Dialup is run by just one person. If people are working on Dialup, it's a better experience for you. Financial support isn’t just for necessary bug fixes and call stability, but it will help us build new features that will expand what's possible with voice and strengthen the existing community that has emerged on Dialup.

If you're a Dialup user or just a fan from afar, please consider choosing a price tier that works for you and paying us monthly to continue to provide this service and build it into a better app! 

We’re giving our supporting members access to our Discord chatroom.

If you're a Dialup user and become a paying supporter on Patreon, we’re inviting you to a special Discord to meet other members of the worldwide Dialup community.

This will be a place to hang out with other Dialup users, swap stories about calls, find your missed connections, and learn about new behind-the-scenes features in progress. (Read our community guidelines here.) While you don’t have to join the Discord, we, and we appreciate your support anyway, if you become patron you’ll receive an invitation.

(If becoming a Patron is financially difficult for you right now, but you would still love to join the Discord, email me at [email protected].)

Thanks so much for being part of Dialup!

-Danielle Baskin