A Guy Created a Social Network Where Messages Are Delivered by Pigeons

While the biggest social networks compete over who can deliver a notification the fastest, a young developer has proposed the exact opposite idea. His app, Roost, deliberately slows down communication: messages here are delivered by virtual birds flying at real speed. A letter may take several hours, and sometimes several days. And that is exactly what unexpectedly attracted hundreds of thousands of people.

After signing up, the user assembles a personal “aviary,” choosing several birds. Then they write a message, select a courier bird and send it to a friend. On the map, you can watch the bird slowly make its way along the route. The speed depends on the species: a falcon will deliver a letter much faster than a hummingbird, and for the most patient users the app even offers snails and turtles, which stretch the wait even further.

Roost creator Logan Mendelson originally developed the app as a small personal project for friends. However, its real explosion in popularity came after a post on Threads, where a mother said her daughter was chatting with friends in “Elizabethan English” through an app that sends messages at the speed of real birds. In just three days, the audience grew from 10,000 to 100,000 users, and after about five weeks it had approached 300,000 people.

According to the developer, the success is explained by people’s fatigue from endless notifications and the need to reply instantly. When a message is not going to arrive right away anyway, the sense of urgency disappears, and users begin to pay closer attention to what they write.

The app also includes anonymous chats with people of the same age, mini-games, and an emphasis on safety: by default, friends only see the user’s city, while exact geolocation can be revealed manually only to trusted contacts. At the same time, the service does not yet allow photo sharing — the developer decided to first create a more reliable content moderation system.

Amid the race for instant communication and attention-grabbing algorithms, Roost turned out to be an unexpected reminder that sometimes waiting only makes communication more valuable. And judging by the rapid growth of its audience, the idea of a “slow social network” has clearly found favor with users.