Reddit told me my onboarding sucked, so I rebuilt my social app
A couple of months ago I posted an early version of my project, Verbal, on Reddit looking for feedback.
The idea behind Verbal is simple:
Instead of typing comments, people reply using short voice notes. The comment section is spoken and heard rather than typed and read.
The feedback I received was useful but one point came up repeatedly:
People hated the sign-up wall.
Users couldn't really understand the product before being asked to create an account.
At first I was tempted to defend the decision. Instead, I listened.
Over the next couple of months I rebuilt a large part of the experience and added:
- Demo mode so people can browse before signing up
- Profiles and voice bios
- Notifications
- Threaded voice conversations
- Images with voice replies
- Clips with voice replies
- Better feed ranking and navigation
The interesting lesson for me wasn't the feature work.
It was learning that sometimes the biggest improvement comes from removing friction rather than adding functionality.
I'm now running another round of feedback and trying to figure out where the concept works best and where it still falls short.
Has anyone else had a piece of user feedback completely change the direction of a product?
Project:
get-verbal.com
The signup-wall change was the right move, but I think the bigger question now is not onboarding. It is context.
Voice replies probably will not beat text in every comment section. Text is faster for low-effort reactions, arguments, and quick browsing.
Where Verbal gets more interesting is in places where tone, personality, or emotional context actually changes the value of the reply.
A few possible wedges:
founder/community feedback where tone matters
creator communities where fans want to feel closer
support groups where empathy matters more than speed
language learning or practice communities
small private groups where people already know each other
I’d probably test Verbal less like “a new social app” and more like “voice-first conversations for communities where text loses too much context.”
That gives you a sharper question to validate: which community feels noticeably better when replies are heard, not just read?