[HN Gopher] Clubhouse Is a Cargo Cult
___________________________________________________________________
Clubhouse Is a Cargo Cult
Author : ivanagas
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-08-06 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| api wrote:
| I called Clubhouse "TED meets chat roulette."
| rchaud wrote:
| These days, it's more like "TEDx meets Yo".
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Lol I didn't think it was that bad with a whole status hierarchy.
| I thought it was just a bunch of chat channels like discord. It
| confirms my feeling that this is totally not for me.
| asimjalis wrote:
| I never understood Clubhouse's obsession with preventing
| recordings. This is the main reason I left.
|
| I had some great conversations with people on it. What I liked
| about Clubhouse was the serendipity of the conversations and the
| spontaneity.
|
| If Clubhouse made it easy to record it would create a permanent
| stream of podcasts and YouTube audio recordings that would
| virally bring more and more people to the platform.
|
| Instead of Clubhouse I use Zoom for my podcast interviews. Would
| have preferred Clubhouse. The Zoom setup is so straightforward.
| Meanwhile Clubhouse seems to be hostile to the idea.
| rchaud wrote:
| If the recordings are distributed outside the app, there's no
| real reason to join Clubhouse, because all the 'good' content
| is no longer exclusive to Clubhouse. You wouldn't need to sign
| up with them if there's a good chance that the highlights of
| some important conversation will end up on Twitter in a day or
| two.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| They could also be distributed inside the app. Twitch (and
| FB/IG/Twitter) already do this with live content and it's
| been fairly successful.
| Clubber wrote:
| I would guess because the famous people felt they could say
| something that could ruin their image / brand? I have no idea.
| Most people when they know they are or could be recorded act
| very reserved for obvious reasons.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Whatever THAT means...
| abvdasker wrote:
| I like this analysis because it avoids the trap of passing
| judgment on or revealing contempt for the high status people in
| question. Instead it focuses on the _system_ that was Clubhouse
| and how it functioned to reinforce the hierarchy from which high
| status individuals benefit.
| illumanaughty wrote:
| This is true for literally any social media, Clubhouse is just an
| easy target given the UI doesn't have to be used for the primary
| content. I mean Facebook is awful for many reasons and yet you
| can still get utility out of it. I'm sure Clubhouse is no
| different. Easy to sit on the sidelines and focus on one aspect
| of it, though.
| simonw wrote:
| Facebook is much more about friends and family - there's status
| stuff on there too, but you can find Facebook useful without
| any interest in playing status games.
|
| I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are using
| it to talk to have group audio conversations with their friends
| and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are for.
|
| Twitter is a bit more about status, but it also has a much
| stronger focus on niche interests. There are plenty of people I
| follow on Twitter who have low follower counts but consistently
| post interesting things about niche topics that I'm interested
| in.
| briandear wrote:
| > I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are
| using it to talk to have audio conversations with their
| friends and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are
| for.
|
| Did I miss something? What happened to the telephone? Been
| using that for audio conversations for quite a while and
| don't have to be a part of privacy-compromising social media
| companies.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I remember reading an advice column where the author told a
| woman who was vexed that her children insisting on texting
| their friends instead of just calling them, "take solace in
| the fact that one day they'll likely be asking their own
| children, why don't you just text your friends?" I don't
| use apps like Whatsapp myself but it seems like they appeal
| to a lot of people for one reason or another.
| simonw wrote:
| Edited my comment to clarify I meant "group audio"
| conversations.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Club-what? I vaguely remember some app with an obnoxious icon...
| that's all.
| [deleted]
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Once again, the only place I've ever even heard of this site
| Clubhouse is HN. As an early adopter of crypto the first rule of
| fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Many people didn't
| get the memo.
|
| Talk about something and evangelize it, you're participating in a
| pyramid scheme or maybe your persona makes you a natural
| salesperson and shill for whatever the cause. Crypto(currency),
| OTOH, is something that through network effect and social media
| echo chambers has come to fruition - for better or for worse.
|
| Let the market discover itself has been my mantra for 9 years,
| going back to G+ early days is when I promoted, shared, and
| prophesized about crypto. I came to the realization that any
| information shared runs against my personal goals to capitalize
| on markets.
|
| The first time I mined crypto in 2011 I documented all the steps
| on my blog for Ubuntu 8 with all the AMD and opencl goodies.
| Eventually I 410'd the whole blog and decided "don't talk about
| it"
|
| Another almost billionaire who doesn't tweet or join social audio
| apps. But I do read the commentary and according to sentiment,
| act accordingly.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| In march, I discussed with my wife why Clubhouse became so
| boring. We decided that it is because it is so February.
| areoform wrote:
| > Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather
| than the people involved
|
| And this is a good thing. I recently did a room with an optics
| engineer from NASA who made the optics for Cassini's Composite IR
| Spectrometer. And now the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and
| the Vera Rubin Observatory. The conversation went into exacting
| depth, with all of us enjoying it a lot and learning along the
| way. It felt like a salon, not a club.
|
| Earlier I was doing a room with the discoverer of 2014 UN271, the
| largest comet discovered so far. The Chief Scientist of NASA
| joined in and we spent an hour discussing possible missions
| through this ancient comet's plume.
|
| The discoverer of the object got to meet NASA's Chief Scientist
| to talk about his baby, and NASA's Chief Scientist got to nerd
| out with us on the largest comet ever found.
|
| We also talked about algorithms etc for better finds.
|
| These conversations exist. They often happen in private. Or in
| clubs like Small Steps & Giant Leaps. There weren't more than 40
| people in the "room" and if you'd had raised your hand, we'd have
| pulled you up to nerd out with us.
| FabHK wrote:
| And how do you discover these good conversations? And how can
| you enjoy them async (I'm probably in a different timezone from
| your chat)?
| areoform wrote:
| I didn't follow any of the people clubhouse told me to. On my
| first day on the app, I sought out and found scientists,
| astronauts, and engineers.
|
| I started joining these rooms, then talking in them, and now
| I host them.
| vmception wrote:
| I joined my first Twitter Space yesterday, by direct link to the
| room! Same concept, some same and some different mistakes, wider
| audience.
| Animats wrote:
| "Cargo cult" is misused here. It's a status display area, which
| is quite different from a cargo cult.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| The "misuse" is using it at all. It's meaningless shit, just
| like a lot of the douchey titles on here.
| bin_bash wrote:
| I feel like you could draw a better metaphor to ponzi schemes
| Traster wrote:
| I'm not sure you're right, what they're saying is the low
| status individuals are cargo culting high status individuals.
| cjdaly wrote:
| I agree with you. Cargo cult is when physical goods are
| delivered by some high-tech society to a lower-tech one
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult).
|
| Buying stuff from Amazon is more like cargo cult than Clubhouse
| is.
| krinchan wrote:
| It's evolved beyond that definition to encompass people
| imitating the actions of others with the belief that those
| actions will grant them something. In this case, it's low
| status people thinking that hosting rooms and talking inanely
| will increase their status when the reality is those
| activities are merely ways to _show_ status, not gain it.
|
| Similarly, "cargo-culting" can be applied to a piece of code
| or script everyone copies and reuses without actually knowing
| how it works and then being confused when they've effectively
| built a wooden airplane and no goods have arrived.
|
| It's very common slang in tech circles.
| Traster wrote:
| The only criticism I would have of this article is that it misses
| the underlying issue. There was never a reason for high status
| individuals to be on clubhouse, the reason they were there has
| nothing to do with the pandemic - it was because of the pump and
| dump style of Andreesen Horrowitz and the silicon valley
| obsession with being an early adopter.
|
| A16Z seemingly thought simply by telling everyone how excited
| they were about Clubhouse they could turn Clubhouse into being
| something to be excited about. The problem being that the reality
| undermined them though - just as they were telling people to be
| excited about the innovative conversations on Clubhouse, the
| number one story was some CEO getting arsey about a journalist
| reporting the news- a fundamentally petty and narcissistic look
| for an App that needed to be seen as cool and new. So Elon and co
| did their "Oh look at us we're early adopters dance" but never
| invested in the platform - because there was _never_ a reason to,
| and that failure to give a value proposition to the people they
| wanted to harvest value from was their core issue.
| achikin wrote:
| In Russian segment most of the mentions of Clubhouse were about
| what (somewhat) famous person was banned in what room.
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| > There was never a reason for high status individuals to be on
| clubhouse
|
| Sounds like early-stage Quora.
| chc wrote:
| Quora doesn't really depend on status. If some random
| 17-year-old in Nicaragua who's really into the topic you
| asked about can provide the answer to your question, that's a
| good outcome. Clubhouse was not about knowledge transfer in
| that way. While Quora works like a "ask a librarian" hotline,
| Clubhouse was more like Comic-Con, where the identity of the
| speaker is the most important thing.
| [deleted]
| arn wrote:
| Early Quora was remarkable by how many high profile people
| were answering. That was a big part of its early appeal.
|
| An example I still remember. Someone asked How much it cost
| for AOL to distribute all those CDs in the 90s... and Steve
| Case answered!
|
| https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-
| distribute...
| potatolicious wrote:
| I think you hit on a good point re: status, and in that way
| Clubhouse is very reminiscent of TED (remember when that was an
| obsession?) - people gathering to hear pre-eminent experts and
| learn.
|
| Which of course is an admirable thing to do! Listening to well-
| crafted presentations by learned experts and expanding your
| knowledge is fantastic!
|
| But of course we know how that went - participation in TED
| quickly became a status marker (not helped by the exorbitant
| cost of tickets), and the organization capitalized by spinning
| off TEDx talks all over the world that ended up being filled
| with more charlatans and hucksters than genuine experts...
| which seems to have been the direction Clubhouse has also gone.
|
| It's a bit sad - I think Clubhouse could have been something
| great - though arguably the "listen to experts talk" thing is
| better fulfilled by podcasts than a live format. Maybe what the
| world needs isn't a live streaming platform but an authoring
| tool that makes it _really_ easy to get people together to
| talk, record a podcast, and distribute it. The bar to
| podcasting has been lowered a lot in recent years, but it 's
| still substantial to produce a quality product.
|
| I think there's also something to be said here for FOMO and
| what I've taken to calling "the unknowability of ideas" - I
| think genuinely investors have _no idea_ why some ideas succeed
| (see: Facebook), but are terrified of missing out on the next
| big thing. The combination of this is that many SV VCs seem to
| regard the quality of ideas as unknowable - you can _never_
| pooh-pooh anything, because the last thing you thought was
| shite turned out to be a multi-billion dollar company, and
| therefore ideas are literally unjudgeable. The FOMO seems to
| induce a lot of hype over some companies /products even though
| the people doing the hyping themselves don't seem to understand
| why.
| CPLX wrote:
| The problem with Clubhouse is the product sucks.
|
| The idea of listening to party-line style conversations isn't
| totally insane. Hypothetically good content _could_ be created
| this way, and it seems that happened at least a few times. But
| the product was and is just awful.
|
| The discovery function sucks, it's just a crappy stream of
| mostly low-value hustle culture nonsense that feels like
| mid-2000's junk mail subject lines. There's no way (that
| actually works) to change that to something that guides you to
| decent content.
|
| There's an alternate version of this story where they had a
| really great technical founding team that reacted to the influx
| of users and hype by really rapidly iterating on the product
| and making everyone have a great experience.
|
| Instead everyone signed up via exclusive invite and spent a few
| rounds trying to figure out why they fuck they should care and
| eventually gave up because they shouldn't.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >The idea of listening to party-line style conversations
| isn't totally insane
|
| I honestly think it's one of the most perverse ideas in a
| long time. We built the internet, a tool of frictionless
| communication, where everyone can talk to everyone without
| the limits of the physical world, and what do we get, a
| nightclub with artificial room size limits so people can brag
| about attending a virtual cocktail party with Elon Musk
| rchaud wrote:
| I hadn't thought about it like that. A16Z is behind Substack as
| well, and they seeded the platform by paying well-known writers
| six-figure advances to set up Substack exclusive newsletters.
|
| It's impossible to do that with Clubhouse, because people are
| joining to hear the rich and famous speak, and the rich aren't
| going to set up residencies on some app.
| rvz wrote:
| > it was because of the pump and dump style of Andreesen
| Horrowitz and the silicon valley obsession with being an early
| adopter.
|
| Just look at the hype at the peak of the mania: [0]
|
| They orchestrated and they (a16z) got others to hype the app
| that raised $1B and they don't even explain why it is that
| valuable.
|
| They tried to exit to Twitter and it fell through. Now the hype
| squad panics and immediately injects billions into Clubhouse
| totalling it to $4B valuation, which I do not understand and
| they start spamming the notifications in the app.
|
| This is what they do. This is what the hype squad does and they
| did it well with Clubhouse. Well played; Except I saw all
| through the hype.
|
| [0]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/135741388036900...
| nzmsv wrote:
| But it could have worked. At some point the hype cycle could
| have become self-sustaining. What you are calling pump and dump
| could be seen as starting an internal combustion engine. It's
| just that Clubhouse sputtered instead of firing up.
|
| Come to think of it, isn't all celebrity news like this? People
| who are famous because they are famous?
| pfraze wrote:
| The status game is their answer to discovery, because ultimately
| Clubhouse's biggest problem is content quality. I ticked all the
| interests boxes, perused through the suggested rooms, and never
| _ever_ waltzed into a room that I found interesting (after about
| 20 tries).
|
| The exception is a weekly room I was invited to by a friend. That
| room has been amazing. I've met people, had fun and interesting
| conversations, and gotten a lot of value out of the app.
|
| So Clubhouse is using one mechanism that's probably Almost Right,
| the "follows," to help discover rooms that are going to be worth
| your time. This then creates a status game, and it's very real;
| our weekly room had a million-follower person get on stage for
| about 15 seconds, and we suddenly had 1000+ people in the
| audience. It was a bit like a Twitch raid from a popular
| streamer.
|
| > Now that high status people can be seen in person again, they
| are spending less time on Clubhouse. Lower status people are left
| trying to be seen amongst themselves. Without high status people,
| Clubhouse is not serving its purpose of helping people be seen.
| It is a cargo cult: low status people recreating the actions of
| high status people, after they have left, thinking it will cause
| them to be high status.
|
| I have to agree. Clubhouse imploded around February and it's been
| a sad scene since then.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| Voice has the problem that you can't easily skim through.
|
| And it's more limited than video, you're limited to sound only.
|
| Basically need to spend multiple minutes to understand what's
| going on and whether is worth it or not
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| A friend gave me an invite a couple of months ago. He seemed to
| really like it so I figured I'd give it a go. WTAF? Seems to be
| mostly teens gossiping at this point. I quickly deleted the
| app.
| riffic wrote:
| > ultimately Clubhouse's biggest problem is content quality
|
| lol, that's not even the biggest problem. This is a service
| known to send identifiers as cleartext[0], among other privacy
| and security flaws[1].
|
| [0] https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/clubhouse-china
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/clubhouse-privacy-security-
| growt...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Their security could be perfect, and I still wouldn't use it
| because there is nothing on there that I really care about
| hearing. Meanwhile, their imperfect security would not stop
| me from using them if there was good content on there. So I
| do think, at least for a not insubstantial slice of their
| possible userbase, content is probably a bigger problem than
| their security and privacy.
| riffic wrote:
| I just think it speaks to a bigger issue, which is one that
| is cultural - if they can't get the fundamentals right,
| what else are they screwing up? This isn't the 90s - in
| this day and age this stuff matters.
| rvz wrote:
| > if they can't get the fundamentals right, what else are
| they screwing up?
|
| It was the lack of an Android app for more than a year
| (Android accounts for more than 70% of marketshare
| worldwide) [0], plus they have kept the invite system in
| place even when all their competitors have already cloned
| them to death.
|
| Finally on top of that, the end of lockdowns for hundreds
| of millions, worldwide and getting back to normal.
|
| By the time all of that was phased out and the Android
| app released, everyone went back to Twitter, Discord and
| Reddit and the Clubhouse hype died.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-
| market-sha...
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| If you think security is the determining factor in the
| success of a startup product, you're seriously disconnected
| from reality.
| FabHK wrote:
| Not at all the determining success factor, but a good
| indicator at how much they value engineering, privacy, and
| their users.
| capkutay wrote:
| Clubhouse is fundamentally a poor user experience. Dropping
| into a live discussion mid-stream is a pretty inefficient way
| to consume content...takes about 10-15 minutes to understand
| the flow of the conversation.
|
| Most of the clubhouse influencers treat it as a low-effort way
| to just start a channel and brain dump whatever's on their mind
| compared to curated/planned content that you see on Youtube or
| high quality blog posts. In fact that's how it was sold to
| marketers (low effort, high yield).
| rvz wrote:
| Everyone, including some small startups have already added
| Clubhouse-like functionality into their own apps.
|
| Look at Discord, Facebook / Instagram, Twitter, Reddit,
| LinkedIn, Spotify, Telegram, and even small startups like
| 'Public' have treated it like a feature, which is why Clubhouse
| is losing users.
|
| The only daily active users there are a16z and the same VCs of
| Clubhouse. I still don't know why it is worth $4B.
|
| And now Slack, with Slack Huddles [0]
|
| [0] https://slack.com/intl/en-
| gb/help/articles/4402059015315-Int...
| redisman wrote:
| Discord has had that for years before clubhouse?
| addicted wrote:
| It is a useful feature, but I doubt that's why clubhouse is
| losing users. If clubhouse truly had interest conversations
| from interesting people all of whom derived benefit from
| these conversations it wouldn't have lost to these other
| platforms because of network effects. Everyone was on
| clubhouse.
|
| I think the article does a good job backing up their theory
| about why clubhouse's network effect has evaporated. People
| were there because it was a great way to show status during
| the pandemic. Now that other status displaying activities
| have opened up, they've left it en masse.
| ttmb wrote:
| > Everyone was on clubhouse.
|
| Anecdatapoint: I don't recall hearing anyone talk about
| Clubhouse - or at least not in enough detail that it
| actually stuck with me what it was - before this post.
|
| I may live under a small rock, but others must be under
| here with me. Some app? Okay, moving on. Sometimes the
| network effect is so focused that the in-network and the
| out-network can't perceive each other.
| rvz wrote:
| > Everyone was on clubhouse.
|
| Given that Clubhouse peaked in January - February 2021 [0],
| where were the Android users at the time then?
|
| [0] https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/18/clubhouse-
| reaches-8-million-d...
| villasv wrote:
| I do think that Clubhouse was aiming for a different use case
| than what's happening in these other apps. I say this as a
| daily user of Slack Huddles (love 'em) and frustrated week-
| long Clubhouse user, but mostly as a product market-fit
| analyst.
|
| The problem is, the market Clubhouse is trying to create is a
| Wild West without near-perfect content curation. It's going
| to fail a hundred times before taking off and when it does
| it's not going to be as big as everyone though initially,
| much like groupon.
| redisman wrote:
| > The exception is a weekly room I was invited to by a friend.
|
| And that is already solved well by a weekly repeating zoom
| meeting
| rvz wrote:
| I wonder if their logo will land them in a dispute with
| Houseparty for confusion.
|
| Maybe they should exit to Epic Games and rebrand to
| ClubHouseParty.
|
| EDIT: So these logos are not similar no? Clubhouse [0] vs
| Houseparty? [1]
|
| I guarantee (and I think Houseparty is watching them) that if
| Clubhouse decides to do video, Houseparty will file a lawsuit
| against them.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/clubhouse
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/houseparty
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| This piece resonates a _lot_ with me. There are a few rooms that
| are utilitarian in nature though (shoot your shot dating rooms
| for instance), and some where the people being seen are definite
| experts and it's interesting. Agreed that people with status have
| generally been leaving though.
| gambiting wrote:
| I read this entire article and I still have absolutely no idea
| what it's talking about. What is clubhouse? I thought it was
| about the clubhouse music, but some of the comparisons were far
| too out there for music - so what is it then?
| samatman wrote:
| Clubhouse is a case where I expect the Twitter clone (Spaces) to
| eat their lunch.
|
| Twitter gives a social graph, and an asynchronous way to get to
| know people (accounts, really, one of the signatures of Twitter
| is how normal pseudonymity is).
|
| Spaces then gives the ability to throw together a little
| Clubhouse (synchronous voice chat) on top of that.
|
| My bet is that this works better as a feature, not a platform,
| and that the rise of Clubhouse was in fact an artifact of the
| pandemic. We'll see what happens.
| paxys wrote:
| That's always the expectation when a startup blows up to fill a
| niche in a space dominated by giants.
| "Facebook/Google/Microsoft will release this any day now and
| all the users will move over." Historically speaking, the
| chances of that happening are very slim.
| samatman wrote:
| That's not the argument I'm making.
|
| Where Clubhouse is concerned, it's just... not social enough.
| If you load it when you don't know something special is
| happening, and just wander into random rooms, the chance of
| disappointment is high.
|
| In that moment, it isn't competing with Twitter Spaces, it's
| competing with podcasts. I would bet most users of Clubhouse
| also listen to podcasts, and the chance that they can load up
| some audio that they know will be interesting is pretty high.
|
| So Clubhouse's social network is weak. You can't just flip
| through Clubhouse real quick when you're stuck in line, and
| even when you have some time to kill, it's a crap shoot
| whether you'll find something fun. Where it really shines is
| special events, but that's not much of a moat.
|
| Twitter and Spaces is synergetic, since Twitter is always
| there, ready to offer you an infinite scroll of witticism,
| cute cat pictures, and the Main Character of the Day. It's ok
| if Spaces is kind of useless unless there's a special event.
|
| There's also the serendipity effect where you can be
| scrolling the timeline and see someone say "hey we're hanging
| out on Spaces", and just pop over.
|
| Clubhouse has a head start, and some remaining halo effect,
| but no real moat, nothing to keep the conversation on
| Clubhouse. The big draws on Clubhouse all have Twitter
| accounts, they can try out Spaces any time they want. If it
| works for them, they switch, and if enough of them switch,
| it's over.
|
| It's not inevitable, but it is something I'm starting to see
| happen in the circles I frequent.
| mostdataisnice wrote:
| There's a really salient point about reliability of quality
| content here - I curate which podcasts I listen to, so in
| my downtime, I can quickly pull those up. Unless my
| downtime is after 6:30PM at night, all the Clubhouse convos
| going on are amongst completely random and irrelevant
| people
| babesh wrote:
| I think that the synergy between Twitter and Spaces is more
| based on real time events where a group of people you
| follow can talk about the event.
| echelon wrote:
| Same with Snapchat versus Instagram Stories.
|
| Except Snapchat was able to use their position and funding to
| invest in AR. Now they've got an incredibly compelling lead in
| that space.
|
| It'll be interesting to see what VR/AR/XR/metaverse products
| that Apple and Facebook have in the pipeline will do to that
| lead.
| baby wrote:
| What's their lead in that space? I saw some quite impressive
| filters there, although it's just filters, and there are the
| snapchat spectacles which are interesting and I'm happy they
| iterating on that. Am I missing something?
| addicted wrote:
| Aren't the Instagram filters equally good anyways?
| baby wrote:
| I'm not a filter pro, but I feel like there's a real
| difference between the ones on snapchat and the ones on
| instagram. Actually, so much that people use the snapchat
| filters and post them on instagram and tiktok. I figured
| that out when I wanted to try these crazy disney princess
| filters after seeing them everywhere on these platforms.
| It looks like this if you want to see why I was impressed
| seeing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zts4s2IbANo
| vmception wrote:
| Snapchat's is just advertising space. The pie is bigger and
| big enough to accommodate Snapchat's ability to sell shares
| at the $100bn valuation.
|
| Every fledgling idea and initiative everywhere uses borrowed
| or pooled money and tries to go viral by doing their
| ambiguous "marketing" on those platforms. If you don't, your
| stakeholders will blame _you_.
|
| Dabbling in VR is a tiny tiny tiny part of why the story
| works right now. Big maybe about the future. But its a
| rounding error right now.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| It's an interesting take but the phenomenon is obvious in other
| alternatives to Clubhouse. Like the Spotify backed Greenroom. I
| signed up and waltzed in because Clubhouse hadn't sent an invite
| yet. Got an eerie feeling listening in some rooms.
|
| These apps can be a good supplement to likes of HAM radio for
| non-technical people but who knows what will become as things
| continue to ramp back up to being normal again for physical
| interactions.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Normal seems surprisingly elusive.
| farmerstan wrote:
| Clubhouse is an talk radio station that can occasionally take
| listener calls. I never understood the fascination.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Kind of a mix between Citizens Band, Ham and Talk Radio
| hashkb wrote:
| Sounds like this could be easily generalized to basically
| everything in society.
|
| Edit: typo
| unixhero wrote:
| When did the high status people leave and where did they go?
| rchaud wrote:
| Wouldn't all the non-high status people like to know!
| unixhero wrote:
| Lol
| andybak wrote:
| > Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather
| than the people involved.
|
| The fact this statement was meant to be negative rather
| undermines everything else written here. That sounds fantastic to
| me.
|
| Bragging about being aware of status games is another status
| game.
| zem wrote:
| it's doubtless negative from a vc perspective, because it
| generates value rather than profit.
| codesnik wrote:
| thanks, I forgot the name of the app!
| dalbasal wrote:
| ehh.. so...
|
| I agree that this is _a_ thing. I 'm not sure its _the_ thing.
| Clubhouse got a fast start with appearances but the likes of
| Musk, high interest content like the CEO of Robin Hood 's
| appearing mid-gamestop craziness, etc. That, combined with the
| invite system meant that people were hearing about clubhouse and
| it gained reputation as the new exciting thing. Its now
| struggling to find a persistent place in the world. The former is
| remarkable, the latter is default.
|
| "Mountains of shite" has never been a real problem for social
| media. Twitter, blogs, youtube and others all had this claim
| leveled against them. 99.9% is crap and no one cares. All cats
| and sandwiches. The absence of 0.1%, bad discovery systems and
| such _have_ been problems. That said, the "minimum viable"
| discovery method is twitter.
|
| Anyway... _most_ successful social media thus far has either done
| it with home grown talent, like youtube, or being Twitter.
| Twitter requires very little commitment or effort, and is much
| better than facebook for famous people. Youtube eventually got
| youtubers... Twitch, Tiktok. IG is somewhere in between, with a
| lot of celebrity action but also IG-grown celebrities.
|
| CEOs and celebrities are ok as boosters, but they're not going to
| be there daily. The equivalent of a youtuber will have to emerge
| for clubhouse for it to stick. Cargo cult...eh. stretch.
|
| And yes. Ego, self promotion, a desire to be front and centre
| like Elon will play a big role. That goes without saying.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > The exclusivity from launching as invite and iPhone only is
| wearing off now that anyone can join including Android users.
|
| People still unironically believe shit like this, that your
| choice of phone OS says what kind of status you have??
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| From what I understand it absolutely does for US teenagers, if
| not anyone else. You don't want to be the "green bubble".
| guscost wrote:
| > Can Clubhouse ever recreate the magic of being a high status
| place to be seen?
|
| I sure hope not. That clout chasing crap leads to the worst and
| most boring conversations.
| drops wrote:
| Just forget about it and let it die. That's what everyone did
| everywhere except for America, it seems.
| rchaud wrote:
| Well, an American VC has millions of dollars tied up in this,
| so they have to keep promoting it as the "future of
| conversation" or some other vomit-worthy overly grandiose
| descriptor
| [deleted]
| mikestew wrote:
| Having no interest in what Clubhouse is advertising to offer, I
| don't know that I've even seen a screenshot until reading TFA.
| And I'll admit that I probably don't run in the right circles
| anymore to judge the popularity of Clubhouse based on what my
| friends are doing.
|
| So I'll ask: was Clubhouse _ever_ all that popular? One doesn 't
| need to be very cynical to understand why it started as invite-
| only. Were they able to leverage that FOMO into anything
| resembling a user base? Or is this just 2021's more complicated
| cousin to the Yo app[0], in that there's a bunch of hype up front
| but no real substance? TFA makes it sound like it's the app for
| narcissists and their hangers-on.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _was Clubhouse ever all that popular?_
|
| I remember, a few years ago, the entire tech press being
| unabatedly abuzz about Bloom Energy. It confused me until I
| realized it was a press pool coordinated by Sequoia. The
| gushing about Clubhouse may be organic. But Andreessen Horowitz
| bet big on the company. They're one of the media savvier shops
| on Sand Hill.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| This sort of media blitz happens way more than people know.
| Some are very good and subtle. But many are just 'out of the
| blue so and so is talking it up'. It is kind of the same game
| as spam. If you get enough out there and many still walk away
| you can sometimes get a bit of sticky and make money. It is a
| fascinating style of pump and dump.
| inamiyar wrote:
| I'm an Iranian-American and it's MASSIVE in Iran, only heard
| about it here and there in the US
| Telemakhos wrote:
| So, this is an unencrypted (not end-to-end at least),
| intercept-ready chat network that was popular among (a)
| people with social status in the US, who might be of
| intelligence interest (sc. Elon Musk), and (b) people in a
| nation state that is definitely of interest to US
| intelligence? Is that right?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend thing?
| or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on phones?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend
| thing? or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on
| phones?
|
| Is it because the authorities are unaware of it and haven't
| blocked it, so there's a brief window where uncensored
| conversations can take place?
|
| Something like that happened with Clubhouse in China:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-
| clubhous...
| void_mint wrote:
| The hype was mostly from building manufactured exclusivity.
| Influencers got invited and then made a big thing about it,
| people that chase influencer content desperately wanted to be
| in the app.
|
| It's all just manufactured excitement. A new vehicle for
| influencers to pump content. If you're not an influencer, or
| not interested in listening to influencers, there's really
| nothing there for you.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| > was Clubhouse ever all that popular
|
| Honestly I have the same doubts and still can't help but come
| to the conclusion that it wasn't much besides a very aggressive
| marketing campaign. It felt like every post about Clubhouse had
| that one person talking about how lifechanging and unique
| Clubhouse was supposed to be using variations of the same
| examples.
|
| Also the period of many articles that tried to tell us about
| the massive success. Given how extremely fast that fad died I
| can't help but come the conclusion that the Clubhouse hype was
| mostly artificial.
|
| Shows how disconnected investors and tech news can be from
| reality. Seems to me like way more people _talked_ about
| Clubhouse than actually _used_ it.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I used CH for a little while, but my CH experience was soon
| overrun by marketers, self-promoters and the wrong kind of
| cryptocurrency people (wrong kind = people who are only into
| cryptocurrency because they want to make $$$, and they will
| evangelize cryptocurrency for all the wrong reasons).
|
| So I lost interest and stopped using it.
|
| But it's hard to tell from an experience like that, if it's
| indicative of CH as a whole or if I just ended up in the wrong
| circles on CH.
|
| Compare to Reddit for example, I subscribe to very specific
| subreddits that are about my interests and generally have good
| luck finding interesting things to read and to watch on Reddit.
| Whereas if all you ever saw was the front page of Reddit, you'd
| have a very different experience. So maybe CH is the same way,
| maybe there is some really good stuff I am missing out on, who
| knows. And maybe it's all trash. Either way, I'm not inclined
| to spend any more time on CH in order to try and find something
| that may or may not exist. Chasing Nessie or Big Foot would be
| more productive use of my time :p
|
| However, if someone told me about some actually good rooms then
| it'd be different and I'd be willing to check those out. So I'm
| not completely writing it off. Just saying, I'm not going to
| spend more time there on my own trying to find good rooms.
| areoform wrote:
| Yes, it's absolutely the same. We host a ton of fascinating
| discussions all the time from orbital megastructures to
| cities on Venus and few people join us. Which is okay, we
| aren't doing it for the numbers
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