AuraTap is an upcoming social network for Vision Pro users, which hopes to get members forming genuine connections by putting Apple’s realistic Persona avatars at the heart of every interaction.
The News
AuraTap isn’t an XR social platform in the traditional sense, where users meet in shared virtual environments to chat and play games together. Instead, members join short video calls with other Vision Pro users—of course using the headset’s exclusive Persona system, which serve up photorealistic avatars featuring both eye and mouth-tracking.
The biggest selling point though is that chats start out lasting only two minutes, putting you on something of a temporary trial basis. If you’re both vibing with the conversation, and independently choose to connect, the call clock disappears and you carry on with making a new friend.
What’s more, choosing a chat partner also requires both to consent. Users signal interest in a chat by tapping on their profile. If the other person also taps, you’re matched, and can start chatting.
AuraTap was founded last year by serial XR entrepreneur Artur Sychov, who is also behind social VR platform Somnium Space, crypto-based social network Authencity, and Somnium VR1, a wide field-of-view PC VR headset for consumers and enterprise.
The app was designed by Phil Traut, an iOS and visionOS designer behind chocolift, a launcher app that lets you open Mac apps with your iPhone.
AuraTap is slated to launch exclusively on Vision Pro on March 27th. You’ll find it over on the App Store then, with pre-orders coming sometime before launch.
My Take
AuraTap is an interesting idea, mashing up things like Chat Roulette, speed dating, and a healthy slice of tech bro mixer culture. Notably, the studio bills it as “the future of networking.” And to me, this concept could only really work on Vision Pro.
While Personas are extremely lifelike, they also give users an insulating level of abstraction from strangers—something you don’t really get when truly face-to-face on a video call. Almost like wearing an idealized mask, Personas let you capture yourself when you’re at your freshest, most awake, and totally not fighting back a cowlick since you just rolled out of bed.
The requirement to scan a physical face also makes it difficult to spoof Personas, which is something hardly any social network can claim right now.
Granted, someone could technically scan someone else’s face and use the headset, although there’s no practical way to then scale that idea and create a network of scammers since Personas are stored on the device itself and can’t be imported or exported as a sharable file.
The biggest problem though is making sure there are actually enough Vision Pro users online at one time to make the app useful. Much like the early days of multiplayer VR games, populating servers—or in this case, a contact list with online users—requires a constant inflow to benefit from the network effect.
I wish AuraTap well, because it might just be the right thing for Vision Pro-owning business types looking for the next digital mixer. That said, the studio certainly has its work cut out for it if they want it to become an indispensable companion app to Vision Pro.
