[HN Gopher] Clubhouse for X - The emerging trend of audio-only a...
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Clubhouse for X - The emerging trend of audio-only applications
Author : tyler109
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-01-18 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (forum.ei2030.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (forum.ei2030.org)
| chente wrote:
| So party lines are back?
| votick wrote:
| I'm pretty bullish on this trend.
|
| Relevant project (mine): https://audiblogs.com (lets you listen
| to any blog posts in your podcast player. It's like Audible for
| blogs.)
| afro88 wrote:
| This looks great. Looking forward to firefox support.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| can you export them as MP3s?
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| I never plug here, but I am building a live audio school for
| group studying. At me here if you guys want to try it out. The
| project started in April 2020 and a week after I started
| prototyping I find out about clubhouse. _Face palm_.
| stevewodil wrote:
| It's not clear what you mean by "live audio school for group
| studying". Is that anything different than a discord audio
| channel?
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| Yup, we make it super easy for you to make study materials.
| And you can share them with other groups.
| cvhashim wrote:
| Clubhouse is in a completely different domain from the problem
| you seem to be working on. Just think of clubhouse as twitter
| for audio. Audio-based social media platform is how I view it.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| Yeah for sure, I've been on Clubhouse for a bit now and it's
| devolved from casual hangout dominant to self-promo/shark-
| tank like room dominant.
| slezyr wrote:
| I wonder how popular this trend is going to be? I don't like
| audio books/podcasts, etc. and prefer text-only content.
| petercooper wrote:
| Audio is always going to be a thing. As is video. As is text.
| As are books. And so on. It's not a zero sum game. People will
| continue to blog, tweet, and write books for us to enjoy even
| if lots of people are having a great time with podcasts or
| Clubhouse :-)
| novok wrote:
| Audio is good when your busy doing something that doesn't
| engage the language part of your brain, like workouts, driving,
| walks alone, washing dishes, standing room train commutes, etc
| scandox wrote:
| I am text and audio. Dislike photos and video. Someone probably
| needs to start classifying these preferences into some kind of
| shorthand. People can declare them with their pronouns and
| orientation.
| genericacct wrote:
| Preferring text-only content is one of the reasons i come to HN
| a lot but as i get older my eyesight is getting worse. Maybe
| one day TTS will be good enough to be a pleasure to listen to
| but I think audio-only forum software could lead to interesting
| results.
| pmontra wrote:
| I'm on the same trajectory but audio and also video are slow
| compared to text, even if you listen and watch at faster than
| real time speed. You can read this message almost at a
| glance, you would have to listen to all of it and maybe
| again.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| This likely depends a lot on lifestyle - those with long
| commutes, workout a lot, certain types of jobs, etc. will have
| very different preferences than a WFH programmer
| matwood wrote:
| I hate video, like audio for discussion type topics, and text
| for everything else.
|
| But, nothing annoys me more than when I'm looking for how to do
| something (let's say fix my refrigerator), and I have to
| watch/skip around a 10 minute youtube video then pause so I can
| see the picture and then listen to bits over and over to
| understand what I need to do. Maybe I'm just old, but a few
| pics and text description would be so much easier.
| newsclues wrote:
| Are we trending towards more focus or multiple experiences
| dominating our lives?
|
| I love reading but am audio book while I mow the lawn offers
| two experiences at the same time. More time.
| cvaidya1986 wrote:
| There's audiences for both
| dharmab wrote:
| And contexts for both, too. I prefer text at home and audio
| in the car (even as a passenger) or on the train.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I thought I preferred text but because I spend so much time
| online in my "free time" I prefer audio books and podcasts.
| narrationbox wrote:
| We never expected audio to be this popular either when we built
| Narration Box :)
| baskire wrote:
| Video is draining. You have to always be "on".
|
| It's worse than physical meetings as the camera is always on.
|
| Audio on the other hand let's you focus on just the speaker. And
| what they are saying. No fancy UI to distract. No looking at the
| bookshelf in the speakers background. Just audio.
| mellosouls wrote:
| More on the main contender:
|
| https://www.joinclubhouse.com/check-1-2-3
|
| I note that while one of its main claimed aims is to encourage
| diversity, it is Apple only...
| solumos wrote:
| "Diversity is important [as long as you're on iOS and we think
| you're cool]!"
| dimensi0nal wrote:
| Android users make your app less cool
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| Same with web users apparently...
| stevewodil wrote:
| It's very common for new apps to launch just on iOS because
| it simplifies the development process. We've seen this time
| and time again (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.).
|
| If they get big enough to justify a bigger more diverse dev
| team I'm sure they'll get around to a web version as well
| if they can deliver the same experience on web.
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| Why not begin on web though? I mean I get it for
| clubhouse, instagram and snapchat because they're making
| use of phone functions like easily being able to record
| audio or take pictures... still it's interesting how much
| web gets belittled compared to apps these days.
| stevewodil wrote:
| Oftentimes it has to do with the native APIs that are
| available.
|
| I'm building an app, and being able to deliver a better
| experience when selecting an image/video to upload was a
| consideration and one reason why I didn't use a mobile
| site and instead went with an app.
|
| Push notifications are another big appeal of apps vs. a
| website, although I know that has changed somewhat
| recently it probably won't cause any massive shift in
| mobile site development.
|
| Oh, and tracking :)
| stevewodil wrote:
| As an Android user I can confirm this, I am not cool
| accosine wrote:
| This comment made me login into my dormant HN account just
| to upvote it.
| samvher wrote:
| Relevant project, voice only forum for sharing agricultural
| knowledge: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1753326.1753434
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Interesting but seems like this was conducted before smart
| phones really took off in India (2010). Curious if a more
| recent study has been done.
| dakial1 wrote:
| I don't have the app, but from what I've seen from some reviews
| of it, it seems that Clubhouse is only popular because there are
| interesting people interacting in it. That will be a problem to
| scale because, as we all know, the average human being is not
| that interesting. I can think of many apps that were like that in
| the beginning only to become something else afterwards (not
| necessarily being unsuccessful). The first that comes to my mind
| is Quora, that was a very interesting place in the beginning, but
| not so much today (but hey, still valuable!)
| chasing wrote:
| For what it's worth, I built what I call a "zero screen app" for
| an art installation a couple of years ago. "Zero screen" meaning
| "you're supposed to be experiencing the space around you, so the
| app has almost nothing on-screen worth looking at and is
| basically just black." Even though the idea was that the
| participants would be using the app to interact with the space.
|
| It's kind of liberating! Makes you consider the physicality of
| the device itself in entirely new ways. Recommended!
| system16 wrote:
| I find Clubhouse interesting in that its the first social media
| app I've tried that I really could not understand the widespread
| appeal, even if it didn't appeal to me personally.
|
| The rooms I did listen in on seemed to be full of people
| promoting themselves to each other. Most seemed like almost
| caricatures of Bay Area VC or entrepreneur types, or the most
| left-leaning Twitterati. I just kept asking myself, who would
| want to listen or engage with this?
|
| Clearly I'm the minority as it seems to be blowing up.
| ignoramous wrote:
| As a sports fan, I can see why Clubhouse solves a real need.
|
| After a major sporting or political event, a lot of people tune
| into News to listen to expert opinion. For sporting events,
| people even want to see what other fans are saying. You can see
| an explosion of activity in related subs on reddit: For
| example, r/tennis during ATP 1000+ events, or r/soccer every
| weekend.
|
| There's always drama and there's always an urge to find out
| what others are thinking right at the moment; or in a few
| cases, the urge to share what you are thinking, as well.
|
| I've been on r/tennis many a time to know how much redditors
| complain that the expert analysis post-match or the commentary
| during the match wasn't any good, and that they'd rather prefer
| some other commentator who's unfortunately not employed by the
| Network that owns broadcast rights in their country.
|
| I believe clubhouse is an interesting clone of Reddit, Twitter
| / Instagram, and YouTube.
|
| I imagine Clubhouse _Live_ where folks listen to experts chime
| in real-time as events unfold; Clubhouse _Roundtables_ where
| experts invite themselves and aren 't beholden to the Media
| companies selecting the panels; Clubhouse _Stations_ where
| folks tune in to listen to "Networks" broadcasting high-
| quality content.
|
| The key innovation is Clubhouse is voice-only: Voice is faster
| and substantially low effort than text. With voice (unlike with
| video), there's substantially less pressure and more comfort.
|
| You're right that as the community grows, it'd keep getting
| harder to surface quality content, but that's a good problem to
| have and almost every major Social media has that but are doing
| just fine. I hope Clubhouse doesn't turn grow to be as
| disappointing as _Quora_ has.
| petercooper wrote:
| _I imagine Clubhouse Live where folks listen to experts chime
| in real-time as events unfold._
|
| I'm not so sure about the 'experts' yet, but I saw rooms
| spring up around the storming of the Capitol as well as for
| numerous Premier League football matches so far (I follow
| quite a few Brits though).
| solumos wrote:
| Same. What really seals the "echo chamber"-ness for me, is that
| they have a priority on their "about" page claiming they're
| serious about inclusion, yet it's still an iOS-only invite-only
| beta.
| astrea wrote:
| I mean, you said it yourself, it _is_ a beta.
| petercooper wrote:
| iOS-only aside, Clubhouse is one of the most diverse modern
| social apps I've been on. As a white man, I often seem to be
| in the racial or gender minority which is refreshing and
| helps me hear more interesting conversations and viewpoints.
| bschne wrote:
| Joined yesterday after it started taking off in part of Europe
| for some reason or other.
|
| First impression is that it's nice that people talk longer,
| don't cut each other off as much as in other debates, etc. but
| it definitely sounds like mostly berlin tech entrepreneurs &
| VCs (and some tech-adjacent politicians/journalists/...) at
| this point, and the "diversity" on panels is somewhat
| superficial (people from mildly different backgrounds who think
| alike vs. people from whatever background with deeper
| differences in viewpoints). That being said I also randomly
| ended up in a room with improvised music & poetry, so there do
| seem to be different things going on.
|
| I can see myself using this if the content diversifies further
| into different topics, e.g. I'd enjoy loose discussions about
| e.g. academic / more technical topics, etc. For now it sounds
| mostly like your run of the mill panel discussion at a big tech
| conf., which can be inspiring for a bit but not everyday.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| Could I ask you why/how it started taking off in Europe? Was
| there a specific big name who joined, pulling everyone in?
| For example, when Joe Budden joined C.H. in early October, he
| mobilized many people in the ATL music scene to join. And
| there was a sudden influx of music industry and Music
| adjacent people.
| bschne wrote:
| TBH I don't know, it seems to be mostly tech and tech
| policy people, but the hype with people mentioning it on
| LinkedIn et a. has gotten to the point where mainstream
| media is covering it.
|
| One thing I've noticed: If one of my contacts signs up for
| the waitlist, I can give them access w/o using up one of my
| two invites, so it might be that they just relaxed the
| exclusiveness on that front to push it.
| dakial1 wrote:
| |The rooms I did listen in on seemed to be full of people
| promoting themselves to each other.
|
| This is the image I have from people in SV, every time that I
| talk with someone from SF/SV tech/startup world I can expect to
| hear: - Their romanticized accomplishments - Name dropping some
| SF/SV pop star
|
| It must be very tiring to have social interactions like that
| all the time...
| cvhashim wrote:
| I thought that too when I first started using Clubhouse. I
| really couldn't see the value in it as I don't care for VC
| takes or opinions. If you ignore all the VCs, wantreprenuers,
| and influencers, you can find interesting rooms that discuss
| niche and interesting topics. Just follow people and groups
| which appeal to you.
| petercooper wrote:
| Clubhouse has a rather intriguing "hallway" that varies
| _hugely_ depending on who you follow. I encountered a lot of
| similarly low value rooms for a while but once I rounded out my
| followings more, the value shot up and I get much better rooms
| recommended now. This seems to be a common experience.
|
| One thing to avoid is following all of the default suggested
| people. This really messed up my feed. Once I cleaned it up,
| happier times followed.
| JohnCurran wrote:
| Clubhouse looks cool! Has anyone gotten approved from the
| waitlist and know about how long it took? I just signed up
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