Today we announce that Trending lists will be removed from Zello apps. Trending lists were intended to allow our channel owners to showcase channels with quality content which would appeal to existing and new users.
Zello is a unique platform. No other voice messaging app has the capability to bring together thousands of people in real time like Zello. We love that our live chat channels give users the opportunity to make new friends from all over the world. We offer many tools that allow anyone to create, customize, and moderate their own channels. We published community/moderation guidelines and put mechanisms in place to fairly rank channels based on activity and responsible moderation.
For many new users, discovering Trending channels is one of the first experiences with the app, so it's critical that this experience reflects Zello values of respect, privacy, and acceptance. Unfortunately, too often the channels displaying on Trending have been the opposite of this. We have seen more and more channels devoted to "roasting" people, exposing personal information, and promoting illegal activities. At the same time, good channels appearing on the Trending lists would often become targets for trolls, making moderation difficult.
After much debate and deliberation, our team concluded Trending was not working to promote Zello in the way we wanted, and we made the difficult decision to remove the lists. The feature will be disabled and completely removed from the apps after December 10, 2018.
The main purpose and spirit of Zello channels is still intact: to connect and enable live voice communication among groups of people, no matter where they are. You can use the Add Channel > Find a channel > Search function to find active channels by keyword, topic, or names. Owners can promote their channels by using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, or other social media outlets. Owners can also invite users and share their channels as before using QR codes and URL links, or embed channel audio streams into web pages using Channel Widgets.
We will continue to look for other ways to improve Zello and make it a welcoming space for all our users. If you have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them at support@zello.com.
