Cord News

Less text. More message... and in this case also more text.

[cordproject]

Cord Project Joins Spotify

We started Cord Project in 2014 to get people talking again. And you have! Voice has made a huge comeback and audio is quickly becoming the way we interact with computers and communicate with each other. At Cord we’ve been at the center of this shift, creating products that explore audio and how we interact with it.

Cord was designed and built as a simple audio messaging platform for any device (even things we couldn’t have imagined when we started, like the Amazon Echo). Over a million of you, from around the world, have used Cord on phones, tablets, watches, and the web. It’s been amazing to watch such a simple product find so many uses. Everything from a simple hello or singing happy birthday to staying in touch with grandparents or starting a group dedicated to the fine art of beatboxing.

Shortly after launching Cord we began a series of Cord ‘projects’, little experiments meant to explore audio and how it intersects with the latest technology and trends. These projects helped inform Cord and some even took on a life of their own. Chhirp became the fastest way to share audio to Twitter from your phone or watch. Shhout explored the edges of anonymity, audio, and extremely minimal interfaces. While PaperCraft and Snakemoji, simple games on the surface, were pushing the boundaries of what a smartwatch can do.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ll be joining Spotify to form the foundation of a team dedicated to exploring new ways to discover and listen to music. We’ll be leveraging what we’ve learned at Cord Project and Spotify’s amazing analytics, data, and music catalog to reinvent how we engage with audio across a number of platforms. Certainly our biggest Cord project yet.

Unfortunately, over the next few weeks we will be sunsetting Cord, Chhirp, and our other projects as we prepare to join Spotify and begin the next phase of our audio adventure. You are now able to request a download of your Cord favorites and please contact us at [email protected] if you have any other questions about the future of Cord.

It’s impossible to express how thankful we are to so many people. To our investors, families, friends, and most importantly our users — Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We’re more excited than ever about the future of audio. We hope you’ll keep an eye out for the big things coming from us at Spotify.

Thanks again and talk soon, Thomas, Jeff, & the Cord Team

[cordproject]

Introducing Cord 2.0

Today we’re launching Cord 2.0 worldwide on iOS & Android for phones, tablets, and watches. You can download it now and just start chatting or read on for a little bit more about 2.0 and how we got here.

It’s been almost a year since we released the very first prototype of Cord on the App Store, with a harebrained mission: get people talking again. We’ve expanded a bit, making Cord available around the world in 16 languages, and releasing our app on Android & iOS phones and tablets. We leveraged the flexibility of our platform to build two other voice-first apps, Shhout! and Chhirp, to experiment with new technologies and trends. We released Cord on Android Wear so you can record and send audio right from your watch. And, of course, we added a few features to Cord along way, like group messaging, while our team grew from 2 to 7 here in New York.

Cord has been growing fast in the 8 months since it graduated from beta, reaching half a million registered users in June. All around the world, you’ve been asking for the opportunity to meet new people in our app to talk about common interests, such as music, inspiring quotes, jokes or even learning a new language. That’s why, today, we’re introducing Channels. Channels are a bit like public chat rooms. Anyone can create a Channel or join existing ones. Between new moms in Brooklyn sharing tips, chatting about the latest episode of your favorite show, beatboxing contests, or just saying hi to people around the world, there is a Channel for everything. And if there isn’t, creating it takes a few seconds. Jump into #HelloWorld and start chatting now.

More than 60 hours of voice is shared through our platform every day. It’s not just plain old communication, people are having a lot fun with their voice. We wanted a way for you to have even more fun. The solution? Voice filters of course. If you record a message using the mic button, you have the option to customize your voice with a variety of filters from a high-pitched bird to a strange alien. Here’s an example...

We all speak faster than we type. That’s why Cord is designed around one screen for a one tap experience. Inspired by the dialer of your phone (who is dialing numbers anymore?), we’ve built the home screen out of your most recent contacts and this simple interface has come to define Cord. Simply tap to listen, and hold to reply. Today, we’re introducing lot of exciting improvements to that core experience. Your home screen used to be limited to 12 friends. Now, it’s scrollable and will surface up to 48. And, based on your feedback, we’ve added a shortcut to your chat history between you and a friend (tap the speech bubble while listening to someone’s message), the ability to clear an entire conversation, delivery status, read receipts, and a few more tiny tweaks.

With more and more people sending voice messages around the world, great wearables and connected devices like Amazon Echo and Apple Watch freeing us from keyboards, and the growth of voice-first platforms like ours, we’ve never been more excited about our mission to get people talking again.

Here’s to less text, and more message.

The Cord Team — Thomas, Jeff, Christine, Matt, Andrew, Dare, & JJ.

[cordproject]

Ok Google, start Cord

Cord for Android Wear is the only way to send and receive audio messages from your watch.

We started Cord Project with a mission to get people talking again. As phone screens got bigger and brighter, texting and 😜-ing took over as the primary way most of us ‘talk’ on our phones. But things are changing. Wearables are coming and they’re already forcing everyone to rethink how we get in touch with each other. They have tiny screens (if any), less power, and demand quicker interactions. Voice is becoming a huge part of the UX on these smaller connected devices. We’ve had this in mind since day one while designing and developing Cord.

Cord for Android Wear is the first time we feel like we’re really sharing our vision for voice messaging across devices. This is an early step, but we’re taking advantage of everything the Android Wear platform has to offer. It’s been designed for super simple, one tap messaging. And it is truly the only way to send a quick voice message to any of your contacts, whether they use iOS or Android, a watch or a phone.

Check out this quick demo:

Pretty cool right?

We’re just getting started here at Cord Project, as these new devices and platforms open up we’ll be building super simple messaging across them all (no audio for third parties on the Apple Watch yet). Very soon actually talking will simply be the best way to get in touch… again.

Talk soon, The Cord Team

--

P.S. — Don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day on Sunday!

[cordproject]

A big Android update

Today we’re very excited to reveal a huge update to our Android application.  More devices.

Our biggest update today is the launch of our first Android tablet application. We originally designed Cord to be flexible across any screen size but really wanted to do more than a bigger app for bigger screens. On phones, Cord has proven itself to be an amazing way to communicate while on-the-go, which is why we focused our phone interface around what we’re informally calling the “dialer”: a grid of shortcuts towards your most recent and important contacts. 

When we started thinking of tablets and bigger screens, we envisioned more of a lean-back experience, a beautiful voice machine that you are happy to go back to, a place where you browse your favorite messages and conversations with friends. That’s why you land on this scrollable grid of all your messages, in chronological order. 

We also moved the mic button and our main action buttons to the bottom right corner and made a left-handed mode available in our settings. 

More design.

With Cord, our goal is to give you the most pleasant experience possible. That’s why we spent time integrating the latest Material Design guidelines and we’re excited to contribute to this great effort of harmonization across the Android platform. 

More friends. 

Since the beginning, we wanted to let our users talk to anyone they want, whether they have Cord or not. Starting today you’ll have the ability to send a Cord message to anyone in your address book (even if they’re not on Cord) via SMS. After recording a message with the mic button, you can now choose one of your Address Book contacts as a recipient. If you do so, we’ll then host your message on a unique private URL and send that link to that contact. The recipient will be able to listen to the message by simply clicking on this URL. No need to install Cord at all. Of course, this happens to be a great way to invite friends to install Cord. 

More control.

This new update provides you with more control over your contacts and messages. You can now delete any message from your phone, including the ones you sent. You can also delete and block users, if that ever becomes necessary. We'll also give you a heads up when your phone has no internet connection.

If you’d like to keep up with the latest updates on Android, please join our Developer Community on Google+.

Talk soon!

[cordproject]

Introducing Chhirp, a mic button for Twitter

This post is an abridged version of our Medium post.

Today is #WorldVoiceDay, and we’re super excited to announce the launch of our latest Cord project: Chhirp. 

Chhirp is a simple marriage of our short audio messaging platform and Twitter’s API & Audio Cards. You log in with Twitter, press & hold to record, then share. Chhirps are instantly shared to all of your followers on Twitter and Chhirp. Followers can listen to chhirps anywhere they browse Twitter, whether it’s on iOS, Android, or the web.

Chhirp is available on iOS starting today. 

Thanks to the power of voice, Chhirp brings nuance, emotion, multiple speakers, ambiance and more to your tweets, without losing the brevity and immediacy of Twitter. 

We just can’t wait to hear what people say...

[cordproject]

Embed Cord Messages Everywhere!

We just added the ability to embed Cord messages in your web pages. It’s pretty simple.

1. Record your Cord message from the app, using the Mic button

2. Choose “Share with anyone” in your recipient list. This will generate a web page with a short URL like www.cord.im/m/ABC123 with your Cord message on it. 

3. Go to this web page, and click on the “...” button below your message. Copy paste the embed code into your web page and you’re done!

Here’s an example for a message living at the following URL:  https://www.cord.im/m/t8yrJf

[cordproject]

Less Text. More Love.

We designed Cord to be the perfect way to share a quick but meaningful message with your loved ones, and undoubtedly a lot of heartfelt messages will be sent through Cord on February 14th. 

So we made a short video to celebrate some of our favorite “I love you”.  

❤,  The Cord team.

[cordproject]

Cord, on iPad

Today, we announced the launch of our first iPad application. 

Thanks to its camera and microphone, iPads have quickly become a communication hub for a lot of families around the world. The simplicity of Cord lets us flex onto tablets relatively quickly. This isn’t just a bigger version of the mobile app. A few key changes make the iPad experience feel more like a place to lean back and listen to meaningful messages, highlighting the personal nature of voice over text.

Jeff Baxter, Co-founder & Creative Director.

[cordproject]

Introducing Group Messaging.

Less than two months after our official international launch on iOS and Android, we released today group messaging across all platforms.

Among the many updates and improvements launching today, the ability to send group messages is certainly the most significant. This opens the door to private jokes between friends, awesome family updates, and productive conversations with a team. We’ve seen tremendous traction over the past few weeks and group messaging quickly became the number one feature requested by our users.

Since its official release on December 16th, 2014 Cord has already reached hundreds of thousands of users. Over sixty hours of voice are sent through our servers every day. The US remains our first market but with 34% of our user base in Asia and 42% in Europe, we are heavily international.

This new release comes right in time for Valentine’s Day and undoubtedly a lot of heartfelt messages will be sent through Cord on February 14th. Cord has seen a 60% increase in sent messages around holidays such as Thanksgiving or the New Year’s Eve, proving how much people use it to communicate with their loved ones. We believe in the power of voice and we designed Cord to be the perfect way to share a quick but meaningful message with family and friends.

[cordproject]

We all want to communicate more, and Cord allows us to better communicate. By nature, voice adds more emotions and nuance to our messages. With its elegant interface and vision to expand on wearables, Cord is designed for the upcoming trends in communication.

Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, CEO & co-founder of PriceMinister (acquired by Rakuten)

[cordproject]

We always envisioned communication to be operating system agnostic so I’m thrilled about our Android launch. Android represents a huge opportunity for Cord and the future of communication with its unprecedented global growth and suite of wearables.

David Hirsch, Managing Partner at Metamorphic Ventures

[cordproject]

I'm a big believer that voice is the next big thing in mobile. With the launch of Android, the Cord team is perfectly positioned to lead this movement.

Kenneth Lerer, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures

[cordproject]

Cord, now on Android.

We Launched Today in 16 Languages on Android and iOS.

We announced today the official launch of our flagship app, Cord, on both Android and iOS. An early version was released on iOS in September, but the launch today introduces new features, languages and improvements to the platform.

Cord combines the best of asynchronous communication, an innovative user experience, and the emotional power of voice to create a truly new take on messaging. Cord reduces the friction of typical messaging apps by replacing threads of conversations with the faces of the people you talk to the most. The interface, optimized for voice, boils down to two simple gestures: tap to listen and hold to record.

Cord is designed to feel at home on any device. The huge variety of hardware that Android opens up for us really lets Cord show its flexibility. It’s a super simple interface that works as well on a tiny three inch screen as it does on a tablet.

Among the many updates and improvements launching today is the ability to share Cord messages with anyone, anywhere, through a short link on the Web. This opens the door to sharing short voice messages on nearly any platform such as SMS, email, Twitter or Facebook. And with the official Android launch in 16 languages, Cord is now truly global. The app already draws two thirds of its user base from outside of the US, spread evenly across Europe and Asia where Android’s penetration is particularly high.

Having Cord available on both Android and iOS means that we’re now officially launched. Today, no messaging service can thrive as an app that only works on one platform. When we want to talk to people, we don’t want to worry about which OS they’re using.

The next few months are particularly exciting for voice-centric applications given the upcoming launches of wearable technology such as the Apple Watch and more mature Android Wear devices. These new connected devices should be talked to, not typed on.  

Talk soon!

The Cord team.

[cordproject]

Let's Shhout!

Today, we are very excited to introduce Cord Projects, an on-going series of experiments meant to explore short voice messaging and how it intersects with the latest technology and trends. The first Cord Project, Shhout!, is a one button broadcast app to send short, anonymous voice messages to all your friends, all at once. 

Shhout! is available now for iOS. You can read more about Shhout! here. 

[cordproject]

We have known Thomas and Jeff going back to their Google days, and are excited to join this terrific investor team in backing them as they build out the Cord Project and bring back the power, simplicity, and intimacy of voice communication to connected devices.

Kamran Ansari, Principal at Greycroft

[cordproject]

We are so excited to work with Jeff & Thomas, two fellow ex-Googlers. The flexibility of Cord with its voice-based interface and the founders’ experience in connected devices will help speed innovation around connecting messaging, voice and audio content around the next wave of devices.

David Hirsch, Managing Partner of Metamorphic Ventures

[cordproject]

We're building a team!

Today, we announced the close of $1.8 million in seed round funding. Metamorphic Ventures and Lerer Hippeau Ventures led the capital round with participation from Google Ventures and Greycroft. The syndicate also includes a select group of tech entrepreneurs and media personalities such as Dave Morin via Slow Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk via Vayner/RSE, Carmelo Anthony and Stuart Goldfarb via Melo7 Tech Partners, and French businessman Xavier Niel. The full list of our investors is available on Crunchbase and AngelList. 

This round will help scale our team here in New York. We are now hiring amazing engineers, so please reach out to us if you're interested: [email protected]. 

We can't be more excited about the future...

Talk soon!

Thomas, co-founder & CEO.