Rolltape is a voice messaging app that’s supposed to help you share personal, emotional moments with friends. Now, with the launch of Rolltape Radio, it can help you share those stories on a broader scale.
The change is pretty straightforward. Previously, Rolltape messages (which are recommended to be five minutes or less, but have no hard limit) could only be shared with friends, either individually or several at once. Now, those messages can be shared publicly — within the Rolltape iOS app, on the Rolltape Radio site and anywhere else on the web via links.
Co-founder and CEO Jessica Taylor told me that adding public broadcasts was always part of the plan, something she hinted at when we talked last year.
“What we recognized was that we have a lot of creative users on the platform,” she said. “We’ve positioned Rolltape first and foremost as a messaging app — this is just going to allow them to scale their communications.”
Anyone who’s used social media before shouldn’t have too much trouble wrapping their head around the distinction between public and private messages. For example, if a user wants to talk about some personal problems, or problems that their spouse is having, that’s probably something for a private message. But if they want to share some good news, like if they’ve given birth, then they can post a public message about it.
To illustrate the need for a platform like Rolltape, Taylor pointed to recent news that users are sharing fewer personal updates on Facebook because of “context collapse.” In other words, as you have more and more Facebook friends (or “friends”), you’re less comfortable being really candid and emotional.

“You don’t need to buy a microphone, you don’t need to buy any audio editing software,” she said. “Just do a five-minute podcast and experiment.”
Taylor suggested that bloggers and comedians could also use Rolltape Radio to promote their work.
You can download Rolltape here.
