[HN Gopher] Clubhouse is the big stinker that nobody wants to ta...
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Clubhouse is the big stinker that nobody wants to talk about
Author : shp0ngle
Score : 153 points
Date : 2021-07-25 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ez.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ez.substack.com)
| rvz wrote:
| > I am asking you, dear reader, do you know a single soul who has
| spent more than a few minutes on Clubhouse in the last 3 months?
| If you do, do they spend regular time on the app?
|
| Yes. It is only A16Z and the other investors, still pumping the
| dying hype and spamming the notifications on Clubhouse.
|
| Everyone else seemed to have moved on. This thing is not worth
| $4B as I have already said many times before. [0] [1] [2] [3]
|
| To Downvoters: So I'm assuming someone is now able to provide a
| justification as to why Clubhouse is worth more than $1B (now it
| is $4B), when I asked 6 months ago? [0]
|
| You are more than welcome to change my mind. Discuss.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883362
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26861613
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27035533
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26672637
| Superblazer wrote:
| The clubhouse front page is filled with trash tiktok title like
| names. It made me cringe everytime I opened it, what's the point
| of asking me my interests if it is never respected. I uninstalled
| clubhouse a few days ago
| legerdemain wrote:
| I think most people just wanted to join because they thought
| they'd get private access to Elon Musk. Instead, they got the
| social network equivalent of Qibi.
| tomhoward wrote:
| I joined CH in January, and I initially felt the same sense of
| excitement I felt when I first joined Twitter in early 2008 and
| started connecting with new, likeminded people.
|
| But that excitement died off within about two weeks, once I
| realised how little really interesting discussion there was.
| There were some highlights, and I still dip in now and again when
| a compelling name pops up, but it's mostly pretty uninspiring.
|
| I was listening to the Good Time Show last week with CH co-
| founder Paul Davison talking about opening up to all comers, and
| I heard him make the claim that Clubhouse has bigger potential
| than text-based social platforms, because talking has less
| friction than writing, therefore more people will use a talk-
| based app. I've heard others make this claim before, and it's
| always struck me as a deeply flawed thesis.
|
| Sure, most people are comfortable spending plenty of time
| chatting with one person or a small group of trusted people, but
| far fewer people are comfortable talking in a large group of
| strangers.
|
| The confidence threshold is much much lower for text and photo-
| based platforms, as you have time to craft your content and you
| can always (where supported) edit or just delete post if you have
| second thoughts.
|
| But public talk-based platforms trigger all the same fear-
| reactions that live public speaking triggers, so far fewer people
| are comfortable doing it, and hence we get exactly what we see -
| a platform dominated by a relatively small number of outlier
| extraverts/confident speakers.
|
| I keep thinking: Andreessen Horowitz aren't stupid investors,
| they must have thought of this and must be working with the
| founders to develop ways to keep growing user numbers and
| engagement. But I'm yet to see any signs this is the case, and
| more and more it feels like everyone has bought into this flawed
| thesis, and that we're witnessing a giant naked emperor scenario.
| ta988 wrote:
| I had the same experience with lunchclub.
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, here are some musicians playing the harp?
|
| https://www.clubhouse.com/room/xq7bKDed
|
| Listening to people babble incessantly about shit they don't
| understand might suck, but being able to follow your favorite
| independent musicians (or poets or whatever) around the various
| open mic nights or invited performances they do to listen to
| them playing live music in different audience contexts might be
| more fun. I happened to follow a musician on Clubouse whom I
| was(/am) sponsoring on Patreon, and it was fun getting
| notifications "Kris Angelis is now playing" every now and then
| (and before anyone tries to assert as such, no: you can't
| replace this experience with following her YouTube account,
| which I also do, for the same reasons people play open mic
| nights in real life rather than either always doing concerts or
| simply selling CDs; the Clubhouse mechanism surrounds following
| individual people, not shows, through shared experiences that
| generally would be inappropriate to attach to your own feed...
| YouTube could try to add this--"someone you follow was tagged
| in this uploaded video" and "someone you follow is right now
| appearing in this live video"--but the mechanism is non-obvious
| since they don't do the muxing and is anyway very different
| from their current experience).
| ngc248 wrote:
| >>> because talking has less friction than writing, therefore
| more people will use a talk-based app.
|
| In a way this is true, those who don't know how to read or
| write also can use a talk only app.
|
| But talking BS also has less friction ... so there will be more
| noise than signal I presume.
| codethief wrote:
| > I heard him make the claim that Clubhouse has bigger
| potential than text-based social platforms, because talking has
| less friction than writing
|
| Finding people that talk about stuff is one thing, finding
| people who like to listen to other people talking is the other.
| Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than
| reading._
|
| Sure, for a minority of consumers like yourself.
|
| However, for most people that make up the mass audience...
| they do not like to read long-form text whether it is
| articles in Vanity Fair, The Atlantic or books.
|
| Yes, people would rather _read the text_ of a temperature and
| weather forecast on their smartphone -- instead of listen to
| a long-winded presentation by a tv news meteorologist. But
| when we compare apples-to-apples of _long-form high word
| count_ type of content, an audio medium for listening is
| preferred by mass consumers.
|
| Most would prefer _hearing_ Joe Rogan and his guest speak
| rather than reading 50000+ word transcripts of a 3 hour
| conversation. Likewise, talk radio is very popular and has
| higher audience counts than the circulation numbers of long-
| form magazines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-
| listened-to_radio...
|
| Also, reading has its own "frictions" because text is missing
| tonal inflection, length of pauses, deadpan vs incredulous
| delivery, etc.
| dcow wrote:
| So how does clubhouse change the game? We already have
| youtube and podcasts. You can listen to Joe Rogan over
| bluetooth in your car. You can even ask Siri to play it.
| What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access or
| produce high word count content in audio form? How is
| clubhouse helping creators monetize their content? Why
| would I go to clubhouse instead of patreon for the type of
| content you describe?
|
| Not a clubhouse user, genuinely curious.
| jasode wrote:
| _> What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access
| or produce high word count content in audio form? How is
| clubhouse helping creators _
|
| I'm not sure there's an exact parallel of "creator" in
| the Clubhouse paradigm. I'm not a Clubhouse user so my
| info is 2nd-hand based on how others describe it but this
| is my understanding of its original differentiation from
| podcast platforms and Youtube.
|
| Consider the scenario of:
|
| - Interesting Person A is not a podcast host or content
| producer. Person A also does not write text articles and
| opinion pieces in magazines or newspapers.
|
| - Interesting Person B is also not a podcast producer.
|
| - Person A and Person B can talk to each other _in a
| public performance setting on an adhoc basis with
| audience interaction_. Yes, Youtube livestream can also
| have multiple talking heads but that 's video. With
| Clubhouse being _audio_ , it lowers the barrier for
| participants who are ok with speaking but don't want to
| be seen.
|
| - this means "interesting" people who are not podcasters
| like CEO Tesla Elon Musk can talk to CEO Robinhood
| Vladimir Tenev in a public forum which attracts an
| audience. Neither are of them are the "host" or the
| "guest" in a traditional sense. Neither have to set up a
| podcast or "upload" their conversation.
|
| That was the original hype with it. The exclusive
| "invite-only" of famous people created buzz. Maybe the
| COVID lockdown and bored consumers looking for new
| entertainment helped boost its initial audience count.
| However, that doesn't mean the idea of scaling that up by
| "letting everybody in" ... a.k.a. "The Eternal September"
| makes Clubhouse more valuable. It seems to have the
| opposite effect.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > Neither are of them are the "host" or the "guest" in a
| traditional sense.
|
| This can be entertaining for a bit, but after a while
| turns into an unstructured dialog ... nice for a fan base
| and their star, but not for people who want to consume
| information or entertainment as content.
|
| A good moderator can ensure a conversation works and
| serves the audience.
|
| > Neither have to set up a podcast or "upload" their
| conversation.
|
| That's the job of specialists. Like radio or podcast
| producers. Those also ensure that the audio is of usable
| quality.
|
| There certainly is a room for adhoc conversations, both
| with famous people as well as within peer groups, though.
| forkLding wrote:
| From what I can see, podcasts vs Clubhouse is a bit like
| Youtube (without streaming) vs Twitch. One is more
| spontaneous and interactive whereas the other is
| consuming content.
|
| I'm guessing it's the sense that users get to participate
| as well (probably more than a normal stream or Twitch
| stream) which interests people, the value proposition is
| being able to contribute to a Joe Rogan podcast as a
| roundtable discussion instead of just listening to it.
| sorval wrote:
| Part of the idea was that it would be more authentic and
| kinder. When people are completely anonymized they are
| free to be their worst selves. Your voice is personal.
| Its slower though because its more 'single threaded' for
| lack of a better term, than a reddit sub.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Part of the idea was that it would be more authentic
| and kinder.
|
| Did that work out? All I know about clubhouse in this
| regard is stuff you you can find at google searches for
| e.g. "clubhouse misogynist", "clubhouse racist",
| "clubhouse anti-semitic"
|
| I have never been there, and part of the reason is the
| reputation that it has from afar be being the opposite of
| "kind".
|
| Wikipedia entry for "Clubhouse (app)" says as much in
| para 2.
|
| Maybe, being not anonymous isn't a cure-all for bad
| behaviour. After all, there were racists before they
| could be anonymous online.
| nift wrote:
| Not a clubhouse expert but it seems clubhouse is better
| for "spontaneous" conversations/talks, as in I don't have
| to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc
| to get my content out.
|
| It also allows you to promote your audience to speakers
| so it's more of an interactive podcasts, so you can
| actually ask questions to a panel or the speaker.
|
| Again, haven't used it much but this is what I understand
| Clubhouse brings to the table.
| dcow wrote:
| Sure but the argument in the comment I was responding to
| was "look at all this long-form produced spoken content,
| clubhouse can tap that". I don't experience much (any)
| spontaneous short form spoken content on the internet.
| The interactive element is interesting if that can
| somehow become relevant.
| derefr wrote:
| > as in I don't have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do
| post-processing etc to get my content out
|
| That sounds like shirking the responsibility of not
| wasting the listener's time, i.e. lowering the barrier to
| production at the cost of raising the friction of
| consumption. For the app to be _popular to use_ -- rather
| than just _popular to publish on_ -- wouldn 't you want
| the opposite?
|
| Or, to put that another way: wouldn't "an edited
| recording of a talk recorded on Clubhouse, posted to
| YouTube" become a more popular way to consume Clubhouse
| content, than actually _going on Clubhouse_? And would
| this not kill any hope Clubhouse would have of ever
| monetizing, since there would be no users _on the app
| itself_ to ever show ads to?
|
| (I think this is truly the thing that really did "kill"
| Vine, in the end: there was no reason for most people --
| who are not, themselves, performers -- to engage with
| Vines _on Vine_ , when they could just engage with Vine
| compilations on YouTube. The creators saw the writing on
| the wall and sold it. TikTok came up with a better model,
| "democratizing" Vine's professionally-produced-
| funny-6-second-clip model into the much more widely-
| engaged-with "clip of a pretty person being silly with
| platform-licensed music in the background" model.)
| derefr wrote:
| I think you're incorrect/dated about what you consider to
| be the modern medium for engagement with "long-form high-
| word-count content."
|
| Beyond engaging with blog posts, _or_ podcasts, _or_
| Twitch-style livestreams, the real #1 way people are
| consuming long-form content these days, is _serialized_ --
| i.e. as "tweetstorms" or their AV equivalent in
| Instagram/TikTok. Pre-prepared, granularized "bites" of a
| long-form piece, that are pushed out one-at-a-time -- and
| engaged with one-at-a-time _between_ other things, as time
| permits, if you 're consuming them "live" -- but which also
| permit/encourage all-at-once consumption if you find them
| after-the-fact.
|
| There _is a reason_ people use Twitter for blogging, rather
| than "just having a blog." And that reason is that readers
| are able to concurrently engage with several ongoing text
| threads at once, if presented serialized in this manner, in
| a way that they would find harder to, if presented long-
| form, or impossible, if presented in a higher-engagement
| medium like voice or video.
|
| And when readers are able to concurrently engage with
| several ongoing threads at once, they become willing to
| consume threads that, in a "consume all-at-once" medium,
| would never be able to "win" their full attention. Authors
| can settle for being the thing everyone is scheduling into
| their #2 or #3 or #5 attention-slot, rather than their #1
| attention-slot, and _still get engagement_ based on that.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I did not have a need for content to fill the gaps between a
| YouTube video, a podcast, and a phone call or group video
| chat. The exclusivity and talk of rampant racists [0] on the
| platform killed any interest I had in checking it out. I
| really don't get what problem they think this solves for
| users.
|
| 0. https://www.thelily.com/women-in-tech-are-networking-
| through... - there are more if you Google around but this was
| the first thing that came up and I recall reading something
| similar.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You'd think, but look at the plethora of sports programming
| of people sitting in a studio talking about sports. Just
| talking. Very little clips of sports. Just talking. Then,
| they have the same kind of shows on fantasy sports. Some of
| these shows are double duty of a radio program, so it's
| people talking into a microphone so even less need for actual
| sports footage.
| sunstone wrote:
| On the other hand both YouTube channels and podcasts have
| found a spoken audience. And YouTube is often just someone(s)
| talking (eg PBS Space Time) that could easily be a podcast.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| SpaceTime has AMAZING graphics though, I don't think it's
| the best example of a channel that would not lose quality
| on an audio only format.
| Firebrand wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I find the concept of hiding behind my
| profile picture while I speak to potentially hundreds of people
| in my pajamas to be not nearly as frightening as uploading a
| video of myself for hordes of 12-year-olds to roast in the
| comments. There seems to be enough everyday people comfortable
| enough to do that on TikTok to make it work, though.
|
| Clubhouse's demise seems to come from entering such a mature
| space without much of a marketing budget, then. Not enough
| extroverts know about it to keep the app interesting 24/7 and
| not much incentive to keep returning to talk on it as well.
| tomhoward wrote:
| I wasn't comparing the creator threshold with TikTok; that's
| a much bigger leap for me too (though it probably wouldn't
| have been when I was a teenager, if I was sharing stuff with
| people my own age).
|
| I was comparing it to Twitter, Facebook and (original)
| Instagram, etc, in which a much greater proportion of users
| are posting content rather than just consuming.
|
| It's the having time to think about what you're
| writing/posting that makes people more comfortable posting on
| those platforms. And of course you can hide behind an avatar
| on those platforms too.
| mathattack wrote:
| The VCs take risks. It's egg on their face but they made enough
| on Coinbase and others to cover the loss. The market cap may
| have been 4 billion but the amount invested dramatically less.
| ourcat wrote:
| Audio is fairly unique in that it's a medium that can be
| consumed _and_ created while doing something else.
| ekster wrote:
| I signed in a few times and it was just full of get rich quick
| scheme scammers. It was disappointing as I was excited too, but
| never really had a reason to go back after that.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Sure, most people are comfortable spending plenty of time
| chatting with one person or a small group of trusted people,
| but far fewer people are comfortable talking in a large group
| of strangers.
|
| This is exacerbated by the real name policy clubhouse has.
| Maybe there's room for an anonymous voice chat app?
| achenatx wrote:
| there are certain patterns that have been true with
| communication media over a long period of time. You can see
| that all electronic forms of communication follow these
| patterns. There is immediate/delayed, one way communication,
| two way communication, communication with a single person,
| communication with a group, written, spoken, and visual. You
| can form combinatorics with these options and find historical
| examples for all of them.
|
| 1) written one way communication to single(e.g. mail, email)
|
| 2) written one way communication to audience (e.g. newspapers,
| blogs, online news)
|
| 3) written two way communication - immediate (e.g. notes passed
| in class, telegram, instant message, slack)
|
| 4) written two way communication delayed (e.g. mail, forums,
| reddit)
|
| 5) spoken one way communication to one - delayed (e.g. message
| passed to a friend, answering machine voice message, voice
| mail)
|
| 6) spoken one way communication to many (e.g. speech, radio,
| podcast )
|
| 7) spoken two way communication to many (e.g. meeting, talk
| radio, phone party lines)
|
| etc etc
| okareaman wrote:
| I wonder if they still have 2 line advertisements for party lines
| printed in the back of cheesy magazines? I never used them, but I
| did meet someone who found a long lost sister while chatting with
| strangers
| jitl wrote:
| The best thing about Clubhouse is that Twitter created Spaces,
| and some of my favorite voices in tech started doing shows there.
| I enjoy listening to Bryan Cantrill talk.
| [deleted]
| fullshark wrote:
| They should have remained very small, very exclusive, and you
| have to pay for access. There's a market for a private social
| media platform for "elites" with premium features based around
| privacy and data protection.
| catillac wrote:
| I have to second everything the author said about content. I
| joined early in CH and there were a bunch of interesting people
| talking about interesting things. It was like being a fly on the
| wall listening to people much more interesting than me have
| insightful conversations, especially around things like software
| and science and venture capital. Now everything is about wellness
| or the latest crypto currency fad or straight up con artists
| selling self actualization as the author pointed out, or
| strangely, people starting rooms for the purpose of begging for
| positions in the Biden administration. I spend a few minutes a
| month recently logging on and looking for something interesting.
| Nothing.
|
| Also seconded about unlike Twitter I have to make an effort to
| use CH. I put on headphones, make sure I'm listening to get any
| signal at all otherwise it's like being on the subway.
|
| It's hard for me to see how CH could be interesting generally to
| anyone except those who want to be influencers talking to other
| influencers or pump up their cryptocurrency.
| matco11 wrote:
| For me Clubhouse worked for a few weeks, not a few days... I
| haven't used it for the past few months, but I think it's just a
| matter of time before they figure things out to make it more
| usable again:
|
| 1) I feel the growth in the number of users (and rooms) has
| overwhelmed their notifications-based system;
|
| 2) the "enjoy the live conversation or nothing" approach they
| have works great for content creators (which is key), and for
| people that enjoy serendipity (which is great), but makes it hard
| to use for many users that may just want to enjoy the content and
| are not in creator mode at all times.
|
| A lot of the great stuff that happens on CH just happens at the
| wrong time of the day.
|
| Adding DMs was a great way to help translate participation in
| rooms into something more valuable and that continues to bring
| value beyond (outside) CH.
|
| I suspect next steps are going to be in the direction of:
|
| 1) supporting the many people that would be willing to trade
| interactivity in a room for greater flexibility to listen to it
| passively but at any time;
|
| 2) introducing a content recommendation system that allows users
| to discover the right content that is not live;
|
| 3) bring on a user rating system that relies on more than just
| the number of followers.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I love podcasts, I love livestreams (archived, mostly - I rarely
| have the time to sit and listen), yet this whole concept doesn't
| appeal to me. It seems to want to combine half of the concept of
| Discord (IRC with voice chat) with the atmosphere of a
| conference, spontaneously. Maybe given time people can find the
| organisational backbone to make it happen but that sounds like it
| would kill the spontaneity and also probably the mass appeal
| goal.
|
| I remain a luddite in this regard. I hope they make it if it's
| possible, though. There's rarely much new under the sun nowadays.
| bilater wrote:
| It's basically a feature rather than a company. Unless they offer
| something drastically different, Twitter Spaces will (has?)
| periscope them.
| Havoc wrote:
| Not just clubhouse. I get the impression that a few of the major
| apps are dying. FB - nobody really seems to be posting anymore.
| Insta - two people actively posting on my feed (I think, hard to
| tell under all the ads pretending to be posts).
|
| Twitter and tiktok appear to be holding their own though. Seen
| more "delete twitter" sentiment lately though
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > FB - nobody really seems to be posting anymore. Insta - two
| people actively posting on my feed
|
| Their actual engagement numbers across the general population
| are quite good. This sounds more representative of your bubble
| using different platforms than the general state of the app.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| I unfortunately don't know how the numbers break down.
| However, I see a lot of people that use Facebook for groups.
| As a result, I wonder how much of their engagement is driven
| from people posting inside of various groups that might be
| private.
|
| It might lead to the situation that OP describes where most
| of the "forum" conversation has died down but it's thriving
| in various segments.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Single data point here. I haven't actually used FB
| regularly for 5+ years. When I was single, there were a few
| dating apps that required it so I kept it around for that
| reason. Currently the only two features that are even
| remotely tempting on are groups and marketplace. The latter
| seems to have taken over the role of "classified section"
| for the internet from Craigslist so I feel like I'll have
| no choice except to use it on occasion. But yeah, groups
| seem increasingly important to FB for locking people in to
| their site.
| dd36 wrote:
| Yes. IME, Facebook surfaces group postings over friend
| postings.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Facebook is now for old people; but I think that's fine,
| honestly. The old people now are quite tech savvy, people
| that are now grandparents already have quite good grip on
| computers.
| bredren wrote:
| Which engagement metrics are you using to make this claim?
| What does "general population" describe demographically on FB
| products?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Their actual engagement numbers across the general
| population are quite good.
|
| I got to see how teenagers were spending way too much time on
| their smartphone this summer: it was all tiktok and
| instagram, some twitch, and absolutely zero FB. To them FB is
| their parents' platform. Their parents are my friends and in
| my friends group nearly everybody stopped posting on FB. My
| father (74 y/o now) was at some point relentlessly posting on
| FB. He got tired of that and never uses the site anymore.
|
| I remember when FB was big, really big, among my friends and
| family. Now it's a complete wasteland.
|
| I don't dispute that their numbers "across the general
| population" are good but I just don't see where it's coming
| from. What's the age group still using FB? For what? Doing
| what?
|
| WhatsApp and Instagram, sure, people are using that a huge
| lot: I see that all around me. But FB? Who's still using FB?
| I just don't see it. Among my friends and family across
| several groups of age it's as good as dead.
|
| Once in a very rare while (once a year?) I log in to see if I
| got a private message. Then I check various long lost friends
| to see if they posted anything new and I see the same old
| picture they posted years and years ago: nothing new since.
| If anything people actively _remove_ old pictures.
|
| I don't see people around me just abandoning FB: I see them
| abandoning it in drones _and_ covering their tracks by
| deleting past posts / pictures.
|
| Now I'm not worried for FB the company: with WhatsApp and
| Instagram I'm sure they're doing fine.
|
| > This sounds more representative of your bubble using
| different platforms
|
| Sure but we're quite some to have our "bubbles" behaving the
| same way.
| vidarh wrote:
| Twitter is a cesspool with islands of high value. The cesspool
| is tolerable because you don't have to swim in it once you've
| found some decent islands.
|
| I'm guessing the others are similar, but I don't use them much.
|
| The problem appears to be that most social networks get to a
| stage where they've saturated their potential markets enough
| that their only way to grow is to find ways of growing
| engagement, and one major way of doing that is to try to get
| people to interact more with each other.
|
| Unfortunately that often trigger actions that are completely
| counter-productive, in e.g. trying to push content people don't
| want across the islands, and in doing so reducing the value of
| the platform to users. You may get short term boosts in
| engagement but long term rot as people are less happy. E.g. see
| the frequent complaints about Twitters algorithm and how they
| try to avoid you sorting content chronologically.
|
| [incidentally I have a code base I used to do very basic
| bayesian filtering and ranking of tweets, as part of a bot; it
| worked very well at surfacing better content, so sorting the
| good stuff from Twitter is possible. But I got other things to
| do and also had concerns about investing more time in anything
| that relied on the good will of Twitter to keep working...]
| api wrote:
| Your first sentence also perfectly describes Reddit.
| makapuf wrote:
| Also the Internet
| ta988 wrote:
| Also group of humans in general.
| JonathanMerklin wrote:
| The generalization we're looking for here is Sturgeon's
| Law.
| valtism wrote:
| I've only ever seen the "delete twitter" sentiment here on HN -
| mostly by the crowd who gnash teeth about "cancel culture" and
| social justice.
| mordymoop wrote:
| The thing that you notice almost immediately is that the vast
| majority of people suck at the medium of Clubhouse. It's like
| scrolling through an endless list of the worst podcasts in the
| world.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Good quality content is almost always edited, not live.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| And what is live is almost always well-rehearsed.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| > It's like scrolling through an endless list of the worst
| podcasts in the world.
|
| And from my experience those were some of the better results,
| second place goes to "how to get rich quick" (and similar)
| encounters that just gave me the feeling of walking through
| some pyramid scheme/scam convention buried in tons and tons of
| emojis.
| ugjka wrote:
| Dumbassery regarding being IOS only and invite only resulted me
| never trying it and I no longer care to try it, the hype is
| over
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| In my part of the (3rd) world, people on Twitter(!) would
| boast of being in erudite and sophisticated Clubhouse rooms
| while speaking down their noses at Android peasantry[1], most
| times in good nature. Since twitter launched spaces, that's
| all I hear about - I don't recall anyone mentioning CH even
| once.
|
| 1. I'm embarrassed to say that the iPhone has become
| something of a status signal
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Exactly. My first introduction to Clubhouse was when some
| startup guy at a Hackathon I was attending in Windsor, ON
| mentioned that he "bought and carries an iPhone just for
| clubhouse," and said that we (broke college students) should
| buy iPhones too so we can "network" on Clubhouse. I promptly
| lost all interest in the app.
| babesh wrote:
| The hype brought in people acting with good intentions that you
| would otherwise not meet and served as a catalyst to chat with
| people you lost touch with.
|
| This metastasized into agenda pushing of many forms (complaining
| about black men, both left and right politics, supposed business
| networking, etc...) from people wishing to exploit this new
| venue. This drove away most people.
|
| Other social networks deal with this metastasis via the follow
| mechanism and good suggestions. Without good versions of these,
| you are left with a public audio chat to talk about events.
| locallost wrote:
| I think the author is generally right that the format is
| difficult to do these days. Everything is on demand, and people
| are used to that. I certainly can't get used to sitting in front
| of a TV anymore and waiting for the scheduled programming, unless
| it's something that's really only possible at a certain time
| (think Super Bowl).
|
| I think it's also true that Twitter has copied it with Spaces in
| a very useful way. I see it sometimes after a big event, people
| who are there anyway start it to discuss what they experienced.
|
| But people wrote off Snapchat a few years back too, and
| apparently they're not doing bad these days even though I don't
| know anybody using it. Maybe the number of people online is so
| large now that you don't need total domination anymore to be
| successful, especially if only a small part of the users are
| creators and the rest just tunes in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Are there any credible estimates for Clubhouse's remaining
| runway?
| rvz wrote:
| Probably getting sued by Houseparty (Epic Games) for copying
| their logo.
|
| They might as well beg to them for an acquisition and rebrand
| to ClubHouseParty.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Galloway and Swisher pegged Clubhouse correctly months ago on
| their podcast, saying it's a feature not a platform. All the
| actual platforms are just cloning it.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| If Galloway is bearish on Clubhouse, I'm now bullish on it even
| though I uninstalled the app. The next Facebook!
| chamsom wrote:
| Just as this author stated, the rooms in Clubhouse have turned
| into a garbage dump and many are things most people don't want to
| be associated with. You could be flicking through and
| accidentally enter one of these due to the way it's designed.
| villgax wrote:
| I was pretty much aware of their capability considering how
| delayed they launched their Android counterpart considering the
| Agora SDK was literally geared towards making cross platform
| stuff a breeze.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I see the potential. It's radio or podcasts, but unlike those,
| listeners can participate. You could ask questions. It's kind of
| like going to an in-person panel, but you don't have to solely
| dedicate yourself to it. You could have this going while driving,
| or working, or however people normally use podcasts/radio, then
| there's this added benefit. Can you imagine joe Rogan where some
| of his fans could talk with him? Could be nuts (in a good way)
|
| I think the platform is going thru the hype curve, where it's
| going to have to find the types of content that work best for
| that, and build around that. That's what happened for live video
| - it also used to be a smorgasbord of chaos, everything from
| people talking to people just streaming themselves sitting there.
| Justin tv realized gaming was working / leading to a lot of
| engagement, and relaunched around that concept (twitch).
|
| I wouldn't rule it out just yet.
| IceDane wrote:
| Who is the "everybody" that is talking about clubhouse? I haven't
| heard any mention of this since it was introduced. It's totally
| dead in the water.
| spodek wrote:
| People kept saying, "Josh, you _have_ to get on Clubhouse. It 's
| growing fast. A land grab. People are staking claims. You could
| be _the_ sustainability guy on the site. Don 't miss it." I don't
| use Apple, so had to borrow a friend's old phone to try using it.
|
| I participated in a few conversations and met some people, but
| that's what I would have done otherwise. I'll still participate
| in it sometimes, but the iPhone has been sitting in the closet
| for a while and I haven't installed it on my regular phone. I
| don't regret the time I spent on it, but will be more prepared
| for the next trendy trend: "Oh, you mean like Clubhouse?"
| wombatpm wrote:
| Clubhouse appeared to be live call in radio programs with random
| hosts - on the internet
| manigandham wrote:
| This was fairly predictable. There's a good thread by Shaan Puri
| about how it would all go down that I found amusing:
| https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1371972261004070913
| habitue wrote:
| This was a long thread but it was very entertaining. Read like
| an episode of Silicon Valley.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Ed Zitron, the guy who wrote this, is a publicist. Whenever I see
| a publicist taking time out of their busy schedule to publicly
| tear down a brand, it always makes me curious about their
| current/future client list
| prestigious wrote:
| They didn't iterate fast enough. Nothing to do while listening,
| at least now you can dm but it needed chat a long time ago.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| > Nothing to do while listening
|
| I've never used it but I know folks who liked Clubhouse because
| they could listen in while getting other stuff done in their
| loves. Like radio but a bit specialized? Idk.
| pylon wrote:
| I have trouble understanding how Clubhouse was supposed to grow
| like other social media apps. It doesn't have the traditional
| social network growth. If I meet someone at university for
| example, we can add each other on Insta or Snap (these days also
| TikTok).
|
| Clubhouse doesn't have that. It's closer to Twitch instead, but
| the difference is Twitch is primarily to broadcast the most
| popular entertainment media and it has video streaming, something
| that people want even for podcasts these days.
| varelse wrote:
| So what you need to do is take each of these talkers and load
| their transcripts into a GPT3 model and then let people "talk"
| with that model.
|
| Call it GPP(tm) and see if anyone gets the reference. For
| giggles, expand the context length to 4096 tokens and it will
| even have a better "memory." Now store that context for each
| ongoing conversation. CH could soon stand for Chatbot Heaven.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/jessica-simulation...
|
| I think the appeal of clubhouse was its exclusivity and that we
| were all in lockdown craving contact and its time of
| release.That's mostly over now despite the Delta variant taking
| this into extra innings so who needs this thing? It's just
| another social network now.
| addicted wrote:
| Wasn't the initial draw of Clubhouse almost entirely the fact
| that there were a few celebrities and famous people using it, so
| you might join a room where there were a bunch of celebrities and
| you may also be able to talk to them!
|
| And Bitcoin.
|
| That's
| wdr1 wrote:
| I used Clubhouse for a bit, but I didn't really care for it. It
| came across as a smug version of AM talk radio.
| imglorp wrote:
| I'm curious about the name collision between clubhouse.com, the
| audio people and clubhouse.io, the project management people.
|
| Was whoever second not aware? Was it not a concern? Is
| clubhouse.io afraid of getting any misplaced flak from the big
| security breach at clubhouse.com?
| indymike wrote:
| I got invited a bunch. Never accepted because Clubhose on Android
| didn't exist. Android is the daily driver. I only use my iPhone
| to click on OK in the Apple developer app... and occasionally to
| do Facetime. I guess they launched on Android in May... I haven't
| seen an invite in a few months, so I assumed that ignoring
| Clubhouse is probably a safe bet.
| [deleted]
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I enjoyed the Clubhouse for a week. There were very dense and
| valuable conversations in certain segments.
|
| However, it quickly became the case for changing the saying
| "marketers ruin everything" to "marketers ruin everything really
| really fast"
| libertine wrote:
| What did "marketers" do to actually ruin everything?
|
| Why can't people just accept the fact that it was just hyped up
| by some people with a lot of media exposure at the right time:
| namely when Robinhood VS /r/wallstreetbets was kicking in and
| people got access to a bit of backstage/roasting, and everyone
| wanted to be part of it with the whole exclusive invites deal.
|
| People felt like they were special because they had privileged
| access to something for a few days. They were among "few"
| celebrities.
|
| At the moment 2 of my old bosses - not tech savvy and usually
| out of the loop on a lot of matters - sent a message to a group
| chat saying they have Clubhouse invites for the people in the
| group, I knew it was over.
|
| Wasn't long before the whole Clubhouse hype died off.
|
| Somehow... it was marketers who ruined it? You simply can't
| have something exclusive if everyone has access to it. It's not
| like those celebrities are spilling secrets there, they knew
| what they were doing there. You were not a fly at a special
| dinner table listening to exclusive gossip (i'm not saying you,
| you, but you the user who had that motivation, which I think
| was the vast majority).
| dcow wrote:
| One might argue this was their "viral" marketing strategy and
| hence may deserve some blame for ruining things. Large VC
| shops are basically marketing engines for their portfolio
| companies.
| libertine wrote:
| But wasn't that the end game of the app?
|
| Or that app should have remained exclusive to some users?
| What users? Who would be the judge of that?
|
| Just multi millionaires? Just founders? Or tech people? I
| don't even know what "tech people" means.
|
| Even so, if it was supposed to be like that: what would be
| the appeal for those users if they didn't had access large
| audiences listening to them? If they want exclusive talks
| they can just pickup the phone and get any number. Elon
| wouldn't be roasting Vlad if he didn't get a large audience
| listening.
|
| People were joining because they wanted to be one of the
| few that had access to Clubhouse, even if they didn't
| listen to a single talk.
|
| That's not marketing, that's just the _status quo_.
| Clubhouse, crypto, pokemon cards, Supreme, a ride on a
| rocket to space, you name it.
|
| If they wanted exclusivity for rich people they could have
| charged 5k USD/year subscription, that would thin it out.
| dcow wrote:
| I've heard it called viral marketing before. I don't
| disagree with your points. Probably just a semantic
| difference.
| libertine wrote:
| Ah but you're right, it is viral marketing.
| prox wrote:
| So what exactly brings this turn about? Is it the notion of
| content becoming an advertisement?
| throwawayswede wrote:
| My sentiment exactly. It felt like there is something
| interesting that could be done with a piece of software like
| that on mobile (I used it mostly while out on runs or walking).
|
| I remember thinking that there will surely be a fedirated/self-
| hosted version spun up in no time and then we'll see if the
| idea really takes off.
| mathattack wrote:
| Scams and self promotion too. :-)
|
| The speed of people adding and then ignoring outpaced Google
| Plus.
| rospaya wrote:
| Sounds like Linkedin.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I used it a ton during the Israeli conflict to gain some
| perspective of the other side. Hearing from real ppl, and being
| able to share my experiences. But honestly it just supported my
| previously held beliefs of who they were. I was hoping to hear
| something new, but of all the people I spoke with, it turned out
| the news perfectly represented them.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I've been having fun with Clubhouse, spent the last 3 weeks
| integrating it with GPT-3 and Google Speech.
|
| https://github.com/thomasdavis/omega
|
| Writing a blog post at the moment to post on HN this week.
|
| Draft: https://lordajax.com/post/Omega-Clubhouse-GPT-3-bot/
| okareaman wrote:
| You could turn it into Lenny Bot 2.0 to further frustrate
| marketing callers.
|
| [NSFW] Alice from Your Debt Relief Program tells Lenny to f--k
| himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3qAItE7lxw
| pierre_clubdeck wrote:
| Clubdeck dev here - pretty cool idea :)
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| Awesome! Do you guys have a discord? I'd love to chat about
| Clubdeck and API's. Not looking for features, just love
| talking dev. Can do a demo for your team too. (finishing a
| video demonstration atm)
| pierre_clubdeck wrote:
| No we don't. You can find us on Twitter (see contacts on
| our website)
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| No worries, been following you on Twitter for a while
| now, keep up the good work!
| aetherson wrote:
| Clubhouse's moment in the spotlight seemed to be largely due to
| the eagerness of certain media types to try to embarrass VCs and
| silicon valley personalities. I think the appetite for "let's
| just find someone's social media output and shame them" is
| receding somewhat, and the lack of exclusivity in clubhouse is
| also attenuating its value there.
| md_ wrote:
| I can't help but think of this hilarious NY Times weddings
| announcement about a couple of "influencers" who met on
| Clubhouse: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/style/natasha-
| grano-micha....
|
| Yes, it's the Times Wedding announcements, which are always sort
| of like this, but it's hard for me to see this as anything other
| than an indicator that Clubhouse is a niche app
| for...influencers...who influence...other influencers? I guess?
|
| Or perhaps I'm just old.
| mongol wrote:
| How is the blogosphere doing? Is it all about forgotten? Or is it
| alive and well? I don't follow any blogs, but am very glad that
| they exist. It seems to me to be the most genuine expression of
| social media.
| gbear605 wrote:
| I follow hundreds of them and they're mostly still alive, so my
| area of the blogosphere at least is.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Substack is the new rage now.
|
| I don't really understand _why_ - it's just a blog with mailing
| list! - but maybe the addition of payments make it work.
|
| I have to say I really enjoy Substack as a platform. But I
| thought that about Medium few years ago, and now I actively
| avoid Medium articles. So, whatever.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I think the difference here is that medium tried to be free
| and then charge, while substack leaves that up to the author.
| Medium followed the Web 2.0 model, substack is following Web
| 3.0? Creators get to choose how to monetize their product,
| platforms just act as platforms and get out of the way.
| areoform wrote:
| ClubHouse has been the generator of profound experiences for me.
|
| Day before yesterday, I got to take part in a session with the
| discoverer of 2014 UN271 with a physicist and an ex-JPLer. It
| took some wrangling to get everyone together, but the
| conversation was stimulating. We touched on the possible origin
| of the object, improving the algorithms, the discovery process
| for making a groundbreaking find etc.
|
| While we were having our discussion, a very senior NASA official
| stopped by. After listening for some time, the official came up
| on stage. We ended up discussing the possibility of a mission to
| capture samples in aerogel for this object like NASA's Stardust
| project. We have about a decade before it reaches its perihelion,
| so we have some time to figure out what to shoot at it to get as
| many samples as we can.
|
| It felt awe inspiring to sit there and watch people connect. And
| actually talk about something that matters with people who can
| _do something_ about it.
|
| I have no doubt that as ClubHouse grows, these moments will
| become rarer. There's already change in the air. The community is
| responding organically. The vast majority of rooms on CH aren't
| public. Most of the interesting rooms in my "hallway" are private
| and amongst busy people leading active intellectual lives who are
| seeking to connect in the least obtrusive way possible.
|
| Furthermore, ClubHouse usage seems to be highly network
| dependent. There are some people for whom it is incredibly
| sticky. There are others for whom it just doesn't stick. However,
| I've noticed that despite Twitter Spaces, Greenroom etc. more
| people seem to have been sticking with ClubHouse than other
| platforms. And I suspect that's because of the very subtle +
| clever product decisions the ClubHouse team has made.
|
| For e.g., Spotify's Greenroom has a "gems" systems, and the
| platform quickly devolved into people giving each other "gems"
| for being on stage etc. I suspect this is meant for monetization
| later on. But it made the conversations feel less organic. And
| the app seems to be a mild ghost town now. (as you can't make
| rooms privately, when I last checked - and you had to do it under
| a public topic, I couldn't find any activity on there).
|
| Twitter's Spaces also has similar issues with retention, though
| the cause there is more complicated. We explored it more heavily,
| and it wasn't sticky in the same way ClubHouse was.
|
| There is usually a reason why these things get valued at absurd
| amounts. Some of it is the broader asset bubble. A lot of it is
| irrational exuberance. But there has to be something to be
| exuberant about.
|
| Few people believe me when I tell them this, but if you're the
| right kind of person, _there 's something here_. The people who
| love this thing love it a lot. And the experiences it produces
| are magic.
|
| I got to do a discussion with someone who worked in the early new
| space industry, in the early '00s, right after Virgin Galactic's
| flight. His friends died to make new space a reality. And it was
| one of the most moving things I've experienced. I cried when he
| talked about their sacrifice. And how it was a step towards a
| better future for all humankind.
|
| However, at the same time, the company has made many missteps.
| Discovery sucks. My talk with the discoverer of the largest comet
| ever found, the senior NASA official, and a bunch of very well
| informed physicists and space nerds barely cracked 30 listeners.
| Other times, a topic might skyrocket and end up getting 400+. The
| application succeeds in creating interesting experiences. But it
| fails to _surface_ them. A lot of manual tuning is required.
|
| The end of the invite-only system was short-sighted. It gave
| ClubHouse the unique ability to nuke trolls, fake accounts, and
| their enablers by looking at the social graph of who invited
| whom. They seem to have given this up in exchange for rapid
| growth.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| Great story.
|
| I've had plenty of similar experiences, I've connected with
| more relevant people in a couple months than I have in years.
| areoform wrote:
| Feel free to hit me up :)
| dalbasal wrote:
| The PR success may be the problem. Once something is "the next
| big thing," people jump in for that reason, which isn't a great
| reason. At that point, you have a lot of people there randomly
| just for the sake of it... trying to "succeed at clubhouse" in
| the abstract, rather than do something they themselves find
| compelling.
|
| That said, I don't think the concept is the problem. Live _is_
| compelling. Look at twitch, youtube livestreams, legacy radio,
| zoom, sports. That, but less barrier between consumer and creator
| isn 't a bad idea.
|
| CH may or may not sort itself out. Ultimately, social media is an
| extremely competitive "market." People will either find stuff
| worth listening to, or leave. It doesn't really matter how many
| bad podcasts or youtube channels exist and the this blog would
| have applied equally to twitter, FB and every other medium in its
| early days. That doesn't mean CH will succeed, it just means that
| the such points are irrelevant.
| dcow wrote:
| Facebook suffered from get rich quick con artists in it's early
| days? I don't think so. FB required you to be a student at a
| high school or college to participate.
|
| Youtube and podcasts are a _better_ radio because they leverage
| technology to make content more broadly available and in new
| media forms and persistently. Nobody listened to radio because
| they thought they were part of an exclusive fireside chat. It's
| because it was the only medium available. IMO without
| persistent content, without creator platforming and
| monetization tools, clubhouse is a regression.
| phpisatrash wrote:
| Clubhouse is a strange case of hype app which deliveries
| basically nothing. I got a invite and I have been testing it for
| a while, but for me the main problems with clubhouse are:
|
| - lack of a better algorithm on club tab
|
| - lack of interaction: it has not chat for listeners.
|
| - too much marketing as the article well said
|
| - boring people
|
| - not inclusive. How does deaf people can use it?
|
| Clubhouse could have better features and a better social
| interaction mechanism but it fails on that.
| arvinsim wrote:
| > - not inclusive. How does deaf people can use it?
|
| Wasn't Clubhouse iOS only at the start?
| namibj wrote:
| They finally fixed that problem?
| xg15 wrote:
| Never was invited, but for some reason the app was heavily
| promoted in germany for a time. For some period of weeks during
| the pandemic, all kinds of already well-known public figures were
| announcing moderated clubhouse discussions.
|
| That made the app feel like a platform for audio-only panel
| discussions or TED talks. Interesting, but even if someone had
| invited me, it would have never occurred to me to create a room
| myself or interact anymore than you'd interact with the panelists
| at a conference.
| todd3834 wrote:
| This was a very well written article on this person's opinion
| backed with some, in my opinion, sketchy data points. As I read
| it, I couldn't help but to feel a little cringy like reading a
| gossip magazine. Sorry to be off topic but what motivates someone
| to write an entire article to prove to everyone that a startup
| sucks. The very fact that they felt compelled to try to convince
| people the startup isn't relevant all the while acknowledging
| that it is relevant enough to warrant this post is interesting.
|
| It reads to me like, "stop talking about X so much, no one cares
| about X".
|
| I think it is great that startups can raise money during a hype
| cycle and hopefully find product market fit. The truth is that we
| just really don't know what Will take off. If it were super
| obvious it would already be done. Yet we have break outs all the
| time.
|
| With the money, hype and time that Cloubhouse has left, I really
| hope they become huge. I love seeing people build things and I
| love seeing money poured into them to watch the experiment have
| time to grow.
| [deleted]
| derangedHorse wrote:
| The motivation for writing this post is the same as the
| motivation for any post --- it's an interesting story. It seems
| like you might be taking offense from a post that's just trying
| to analyze a case where the perceived hype, and the underlying
| assumptions for the reason for the perceived hype, were
| disassociated from the actual numbers seen during the general
| release of the app.
| todd3834 wrote:
| That's a fair point. I'm not taking offense but I did feel
| cringy reading it. I did think it was well written.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| the hype machine worked well though. In fact the hype is their
| biggest asset. Nice. Do mighty app next
| bluescrn wrote:
| It was an exclusive club that sounded very appealing to those
| on the outside.
|
| But when you actually got inside, the place was covered in a
| mess of emoji vomit and it wasn't easy to find an interesting
| conversation.
|
| It was also constrained to mobile, with a UI that doesn't seem
| great (especially for large rooms). May have been more usable
| if it had supported desktop/web clients.
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