Roost: The slow-social app turning digital messaging into bird flight

Logan Mendelsohn, a Ticketmaster trust and safety manager, initially built the tool as a side project for friends. The concept is simple: your digital correspondence moves at the speed of the creature you assign to it. A falcon delivers text rapidly, while a turtle or snail offers a meditative pace. Following a viral Threads post about teenagers exchanging messages in Elizabethan English, the user base exploded from 10,000 to over 300,000 in just over a month.

This rapid growth brought both community enthusiasm and unexpected friction. Users praised the platform’s wholesome, intentional nature, yet pushed back sharply against Mendelsohn’s use of AI-generated bird art. Acknowledging the community's stance, the founder is now pivoting to replace the AI assets with human-created illustrations through a contest. Despite the reliance on AI for coding the app itself, Mendelsohn maintains that the platform’s core direction remains human-led. By prioritizing privacy—limiting location sharing and restricting photo exchanges—Roost has carved out a niche for those weary of the relentless speed of traditional social media.